Microsoft is taking back ebooks

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Cory Doctorow is a clown. If you want to have a personal book, buy it in a store in paper. The cheap licenses to read the text of a book on your computing devices do not entitle you for a life-long ownership.

What world do you live in that you call a 12-25 $ ebook (quite a lot of newly released ebooks cost that much) "cheap license"?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by haertig

This has got to be the most poignant illustration for "if you can't remove the DRM, don't buy it" I've ever seen.

It would of course be copyright infringement to retain a copy of the book after your licence to read it has been revoked and your payment refunded.

[Sarmat89]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

What world do you live in that you call a 12-25 $ ebook "cheap license"?

1. The printed books are even more expensive;
2. With e-books, you don't pay for delivery.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

1. The printed books are even more expensive;
2. With e-books, you don't pay for delivery.

1. Not much or not at all, at least with the big publishers
2. Not with paper books either if you buy directly from the store

And in no way is an ebook with the price tag of 15$ or more cheap. Unless you're a millionaire.

That said, I can see no particular reason to complain if Microsoft refunds the books. It isn't like they carried any exclusive content that you can't buy elsewhere. It's worse when you get store credit instead, of course.

[jhowell]

Microsoft will add an extra $25 to your credit if you made annotations to your books before April 2nd, according to Engadget.

[drjenkins]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It would of course be copyright infringement to retain a copy of the book after your licence to read it has been revoked and your payment refunded.

And according to Microsoft's FAQ this even applies to free e-books, where nothing was paid or refunded. A license is a license.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by drjenkins

And according to Microsoft's FAQ this even applies to free e-books, where nothing was paid or refunded. A license is a license.

Which is one reason why I use Linux instead of Microsoft Windows. (One of many.)

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

Cory Doctorow is a clown. If you want to have a personal book, buy it in a store in paper. The cheap licenses to read the text of a book on your computing devices do not entitle you for a life-long ownership.

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

1. The printed books are even more expensive;
2. With e-books, you don't pay for delivery.

Sheesh... At least try for a little consistency. Are we to buy it in a store in paper which kind of implies no delivery charge? Or online and pay delivery though most of my online purchases have qualified for free delivery.

As for the cost, again, the cost of many of the ebooks I buy are pretty much at parity with the cost of the paperback edition with quite a few coming in costing more than the paperback. Especially when the choice is between the ebook and a hardcover edition before the paperback edition is released.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It would of course be copyright infringement to retain a copy of the book after your licence to read it has been revoked and your payment refunded.

First, I don't know if the license states it can be revoked unilaterally without cause by the seller when you, the buyer, have done nothing to violate the terms. Second, if it does say this, I simply wouldn't care and would ignore it. Others are of course free to virtue-signal any way they want on this.

I wouldn't ask for a refund, I'd rather keep what I bought (that's the reason I bought it in the first place!) But if they shoved a refund down my throat against my wishes, I'd accept their "gift" and go on with my life as if nothing had happened. If they want to put money back on my credit card, there's not much I can do about it. And there's no requirement I am aware of that says I should try to do anything about it. If there was some kind of bizarre requirement that says I need to take action to do something about their unrequested and unwanted refund, I'd simply ignore that requirement too.

There are all kinds of stupid and unreasonable laws. You have my permission to ignore them if you want. There is (was?) a law in the state of Texas that says it is illegal to have a goldfish in a bowl on a public bus if the goldfish is swimming upside down. If my goldfish was happily swimming upside down, I would not spoil its fun and cart it off to the nearest police station for incarceration. I'm such a rebel!

[barryem]

I think the idea that we're not buying the book is something lawyers and probably a few publishers believe. Also maybe a few stiff-necked people believe it. Probably most of us, when we buy an ebook, feel that we've bought the ebook and it's ours to read from now on.

This doesn't really apply in the Microsoft situation. I don't own any of their books and if I did and they gave me a refund I'd probably either forget the book or buy another copy elsewhere. But if Amazon closed down I have backups of all my books and I'd feel perfectly free to read them as long as I like. Just guessing, but I bet Mr Bezos might feel the same way.

The reason they have the licensing claims and laws is to deal with extreme situations. Also probably to make publishers happy. I don't really think they care what their customers do with their books as long as we're not pirating them. Reading a book I paid for is NOT pirating.

I do re-read books and whether Amazon is still here 100 years from now or not, I'll still be reading the books I bought from them if there's any possible way I can. Of course I'll be 178 years old by then but I'm a pretty avid reader and I'm not sure I'll let that stop me.

Barry

[darryl]

Barry, you do have a point. I'm sure most who have bought e-books in good faith from Microsoft would not care if they are infringing copyright in reading them, irrespective of whether they have their money refunded. Of course, Microsoft's DRM will prevent this. Their service was not popular enough for anyone to be bothered with circumventing their DRM.

Microsoft blundered on this. This is not typical of the company these days. I'm sure that most of us here could have told them that demand would be just about zero for a service where books could only be read on the Edge browser on computers and devices running Windows. To their credit they have quickly realised their mistake and appear to be treating their customers as fairly as possible.

It illustrates once again the dangers of storing your books in the cloud without removing DRM. Those Mobileread members with Nooks would do well to revisit this question now.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by haertig

First, I don't know if the license states it can be revoked unilaterally without cause by the seller when you, the buyer, have done nothing to violate the terms. Second, if it does say this, I simply wouldn't care and would ignore it. Others are of course free to virtue-signal any way they want on this.

I wouldn't ask for a refund, I'd rather keep what I bought (that's the reason I bought it in the first place!) But if they shoved a refund down my throat against my wishes, I'd accept their "gift" and go on with my life as if nothing had happened. If they want to put money back on my credit card, there's not much I can do about it. And there's no requirement I am aware of that says I should try to do anything about it. If there was some kind of bizarre requirement that says I need to take action to do something about their unrequested and unwanted refund, I'd simply ignore that requirement too.

Breaking the law is of course a personal choice, but there are people who prefer to be honest.

[bob_obo]

What about if you're honest about breaking the law?

Originally Posted by HarryT

Breaking the law is of course a personal choice, but there are people who prefer to be honest.

[bob_obo]

Also, have these types of terms of service ever been tested in court? I'm not aware that they ever have, although I'm aware there are lots of things i'm not aware of...

[fjtorres]

What probably happened:

Satya Nadella to staff: "Why are we even in this business?"
Staffer 1: "Uh, but Google..."
Staffer 2: "Apple..."
Staffer 3: "Incremental income..."

Nadella: "Seriously? What income? Nobody is buying them to start with. And with good reason. Whose idea was it to app-lock the whole thing to the browser? When has that ever worked? It's not working, it's never going to work, and it's not important enough to bother with. People want actual files they can backup. If you won't buy it, don't try to sell it! Besides, it has nothing to do with tools or platforms or productivity. Just because the other guys jump off a cliff doesn't mean we have to. What, are we to waste billions on internet TV shows nobody will watch just because Google...?!
"One more time, people: The monkey boy isn't running the show anymore. No more monkey see, monkey do. We're a tools and platforms company. Our business is to help people be more productive. Tools, tools, tools. Stop grubbing for pennies. Shut it down, pay both customers to go away and get back to selling Surface Hubs and Hololens. If you want to copy every stupid thing Google does, move to SiliValley."