Thread: Re: Renting Ebooks
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Old 09-02-2007, 06:39 PM   #47
Nate the great
Sir Penguin of Edinburgh
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
I'm sorry Nate, I don't understand what the issue is. If you go to Fictionwise and buy a book with MobiPocket DRM, say, then the site clearly tells you before you buy it that you will only be able to read the book on certain specified devices, and that you won't be able to print it. Those are restrictions imposed by the DRM mechanism, and you are buying the eBook with the full knowledge of what those restrictions are.
The point is that I was trying to bring up ownership versus license. I wanted to learn the actual legal details.

Please go back and read the first post on this thread. The guy I quoted was not told that his PDFs would be nonfunctional after a year. The first response I got on this thread said to the effect,"Well, yeah. The license he purchased expired". He was not told that he purchased a license. He thought he purchased an ebook.

If you own an ebook, it can't suddenly stop working. If you license it, it can. Remember, he thought he owned the PDF.

Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT View Post
We seem to be talking semantics - you can call those restrictions a "licence" if you wish. Whatever you want to call them, the restrictions on your use of that file are certainly legal; you are being told about them before you make the purchase, and are agreeing to the terms of the sale by buying that eBook with those restrictions.
But he wasn't! That is the whole point.

FYI: HarryT, I checked with a lawyer. The definition you apply to the word "license" is not correct in the USA.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney View Post
I think he's complaining about the same thing people have complained about in software EULAs. You are covered by a license agreement you never explicitly agreed to.

His complaint seems far more about what are essentially licensing issues (IE: can he legally convert from one eformat to another) than with copyright per se.
______
Dennis
I was not complaining. I regret that it came out that way.

Conclusion: I started this thread because I wanted to learn about the legal details of ownership versus copyright. I did not learn anything here. I'm going to go analyze the user agreements from the various ebook content providers. I will then post summaries here of exactly what you agree to, such as which one sells you a license and which one sells you ownership.
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