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#136 |
Grand Sorcerer
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
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#137 |
Wizard
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Because we’re having a discussion. Should you not want to think about this specific aspect no one is holding a gun to your head.
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#138 | |
Grand Sorcerer
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
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Quote:
I don't think it will matter anyway. Someone who is going to steal a book will figure out pretty quickly that the way to do it is purchase, download a copy, and then return it before starting to read. Only honest people will be inconvenienced. Last edited by jhowell; 06-30-2022 at 06:02 PM. |
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#139 | |
curmudgeon
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Location: Redwood City, CA USA
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Amazon does indeed have licensing terms that forbid format and or device shifting. That said, it's entirely unclear under US law whether or not that restriction is enforceable. No court rulings on point, that I'm aware of, and plenty of high-powered legal-theory types who argue fairly persuasively on both sides of the issue. For my part, I have in my possession written advice-of-counsel from an extremely high-powered lawyer who specializes in US copyright law. I even paid for it. That advice tells me that both DRM removal and format shifting of legitimately acquired content for personal (and immediate family/household) use only falls squarely within Fair Use, and that license restrictions claiming otherwise are unenforceable. In the absence of court rulings to the contrary, the only thing this written advice is good for is to establish that I've at least attempted to discover my legal rights and responsibilities and to stay within them. Should it ever become a legal issue and I were to lose in court, that would likely — but not certainly! — keep me out of the "3x damages for egregious offenders" penalties. Maybe. The overall point here is that what you can and cannot do with eBooks is both simpler and more complicated than it appears. And that even large companies with lots of lawyers have terms of use and other legal boilerplate that is (or is arguably) inconsistent with the actual law, and may well turn out to be unenforceable. And finally, that we don't really know what the answers are until & unless the Supremes take a relevant case and rule on it. Last edited by Xenophon; 06-30-2022 at 06:24 PM. |
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#140 |
Wizard
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Salzburg AT
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#141 | |
Wizard
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You bought it, you read it, you don’t get your money back, is how Amazon should handle ebook returns. |
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#142 | |
Wizard
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As soon as you are allowed to do something in a shop, it must be possible to do it online - that's what the law requires. An imagined loss of earnings is of little interest. Amazon is selling more books through its lawful approach. Bad luck for those authors who don't want to be bought Last edited by ottischwenk; 07-01-2022 at 02:37 AM. |
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#143 | |
Wizard
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Also try on a pair of shoes online. Let me know how that goes for you. What an utterly ridiculous claim “ As soon as you are allowed to do something in a shop, it must be possible to do it online” is, it’s never been the case and barring significant advances in technology will not be the case for the foreseeable future. |
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#144 | |
Wizard
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In the EU there is a 14-day right of return for online purchases. Precisely because it is impossible to try out when buying this way. |
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#145 | |
Wizard
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If your comment is correct about music/video, it also applies to books. |
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#146 |
Wizard
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I don’t really care about EU laws, especially ones which are written with such a poor understanding of how media differs from other products. A simple provision that media (books, music, tv shows, movies, etc.) once consumed a single time are exempt from returns for the simple fact that you’ve gotten the value of the good and thus it’s not legally fair for you to reclaim the money exchanged would have indicated at least a basic awareness of those who drafted the law.
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#147 | |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Offered solely FWIW. I do want to add...you know, people like me, who feel that we have the right to return really godawfully bad books--the plot dies a terrible horrible death, the homophone errors pile up, the editing is truncated after chapter 2, etc.--we COULD just sit there and download eBooks that are free, in Kindle Select giveaways. Then, nobody would care if we read them or not, because the author would make precisely ZERO dollars. I wouldn't be taking any risk--because again, zero dollars. My thinking on this keeps being cast as either a) I'm just taking advantage of authors, reading their books entirely and then returning them "because I can," or b) that I'm stealing their book. Seriously, I probably don't even return one out of a hundred, but when I return them, I mean it. There are serious flaws with a book that I return. This false equivalency: "would you ever return a book you bought in a bookstore," has two aspects--firstly, prior to the publishing revolution into self-publishing, 99% of the books you found in bookstores had been trade published. Even though that's no guarantee that the products thereof were all perfect, or great books or stories (I give you as exhibit A, 50SOG, after all....), at least editing care and the like had been taken with them. Somebody gave enough of a crap so that I didn't read a sentence, as I did recently, where one character thinks that he can tell what another is feeling "by his continence." That's the first thing. The second thing is, eBooks can be "returned" without making the product unsaleable as new. Print books cannot. If I buy a paperback or heavens forfend, a hardcover at a bookstore and 2 chapters into it, and I'm so appalled by the errors, that I'm going to return it, that book is forever used. It's not resellable as new. With an eBook, that consideration does not exist. (There are, of course, reasons that customers in bookstores do often read 1-2 chapters of a book, prior to purchasing, as someone mentioned upthread, to try to mitigate that risk.) My point is: I seriously doubt, if you asked 1,000 authors, whether they'd rather that a customer like me only download KS freebie eBooks--where they'd earn nothing, whether I liked the book or not--or have me buy and download their $0.99 or $1.99 or $2.99 eBook (or borrow it on KU from which they'd earn page-reads), and risk that I might return it as one of my 1-out-of-100 reads, I strongly suspect that they would take a (paid) chance at being one of the 99 and not the one that gets returned. (BTW, for those of you that don't know this, because you're not in the trade, POD paperbacks get returned all the damn time.) I fail to see, given the options, how my actions don't benefit the author, rather than abuse them. I really don't. I once returned a Perry Mason, which had--I kid thee not--not less than 2-3 scanning/homonym/??? errors per bloody screen, on a Paperwhite set at font size 6-7. That's an egregious number of errors. Should I have just grinned and borne it, for $7.99 or whatever it was? I checked the book's reviews, and those errors had been noted FIVE YEARS earlier in reviews and the publisher had done sweet Eff-Ay about them. What, I should eat that? I don't think so. I returned it, I bitched to Amazon in no uncertain terms. Did the book get fixed? I don't know, but I would be fascinated to know what someone's threshold for "you bought you, you eat it" is. I suspect 2-3 scanning errors/screen might exceed even Zod's. If I'd kept it and eaten it, the subsequent buyers had zero hope it might get fixed--but maybe, just maybe, enough returns and complaints MIGHT fix it. Hitch |
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#148 |
Still reading
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You aren't the problem, Hitch.
I see the situation is more complicated than I thought. However there is a problem with some people (allegedly growing rapidly) misusing the returns system. I don't know what the answers are. There are some things Amazon could do, but they probably won't bother. |
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#149 | |
Bookmaker & Cat Slave
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Now, the question, I suspect, is largely one of numbers. What takes Amazon longer? Processing the returns or arguing about them? I suspect the latter. There are what, 8M books on Amazon now, or even more? (More if you count the godawful Low/No-Content things....). I am 99% sure that they have algorithms in place to keep an eye on serial returners. And I also suspect that TikTok or not, the number of criminally-minded returners is pretty low. IF it becomes a bigger problem (we, cough, more-mature folks tend not to credit TikTok with much, but it seems to have quite an influence on people with as-yet-not-fully-formed brains...), they'll take steps to do something about it. I suspect, sadly, that we'll all find out. That reminds me, what are the return policies for the others? Kobo? iBooks? Smashwords (god help us all)? Hitch |
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#150 |
Wizard
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Join Date: Sep 2012
Location: Salzburg AT
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Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Amazon's E-Book Return Policy | G J Lau | Writers' Corner | 41 | 11-08-2011 05:16 AM |
What Amazon's Return Policy for it? | Font | Amazon Kindle | 6 | 09-26-2010 04:34 PM |
Where to try Kindle and what is Amazon's return policy on Kindles? | pashlit | Amazon Kindle | 15 | 08-22-2010 05:41 PM |
Classic Return Policy | nremondelli | Barnes & Noble NOOK | 1 | 06-10-2010 09:31 AM |
Return Policy? | luqmaninbmore | Astak EZReader | 7 | 09-20-2009 11:08 AM |