Terms of Use prohibiting reselling of ebooks are legal German Court rules

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Tarana

That works until your company goes out of business like Books on Board. As far as dying, licenses are not transferable even by a will. What I had to do is ...

Yes, good point. And that is why I don't trust smaller bookstores to stay in business and would not rely on them for cloud storage. All books I bought with DRM are from Amazon. Sure, they could go out of business tomorrow, but I will take my chances. Looks like the odds are in my favour.

As for transferring licenses to digital content in your will: They are already working on it. If you missed it, here is a recent thread about it - Delaware becomes first state to give executors broad digital assets access.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Yes, good point. And that is why I don't trust smaller bookstores to stay in business and would not rely on them for cloud storage. All books I bought with DRM are from Amazon.

Love this reasoning.

Thou shalt buy from the Big Shark, for it swalloweth the small fish and thou shalt be sh** out of luck if thou hast bought from them.
And thou shalt trust the Big Shark for it shall keep all thine Data for all Eternity because it feedeth on them and groweth fat on them.
And if the Big Shark shall ever be eaten by the Giant Whale thou shalt be sh** out of luck and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth and complaining on message boards.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Cause and effect. It is the other way around - you want something changed in the terms, and to do so you question if it was legal to begin with. Assumption is that pbooks and ebooks should be treated equally. And no, that does not work that easy. You are allowed to resell a pbook (the paper, ink and everything) - and yet the new owner cannot do as he sees fit with the words contained in it. Ebooks only consist of the words (the copyrighted stuff) - and limitations are similar to the words contained in a pbook. Only way I can see it get changed is by declaring parts of the copyright laws illegal.

The terms did not exist since the beginning of time. Someone wrote them and put this clause there. Was that legal?

And how it is that despite the format allowing more freedom, the consumers have fewer rights with digital content?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Love this reasoning.

Thou shalt buy from the Big Shark, for it swalloweth the small fish and thou shalt be sh** out of luck if thou hast bought from them.
And thou shalt trust the Big Shark for it shall keep all thine Data for all Eternity because it feedeth on them and groweth fat on them.
And if the Big Shark shall ever be eaten by the Giant Whale thou shalt be sh** out of luck and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth and complaining on message boards.

Why are you so hostile towards me? I did not ask anyone to convert and start doing what I do. I didn't make fun of those that lost access due to a small fish purchase. I also made it clear that I will take my chances in the unlikely event that the Amazon cloud disappears overnight all of a sudden.

And please don't blame my beloved pet shark as the only reason for every death of a small fish. Even BooksOnBoard did not kill their cloud overnight. They encouraged keeping a backup right after purchase, and when they had to pull the plug they said ahead of time to backup now before it is too late. See this article for example:
Indie eBookstore BooksOnBoard Shuts Down Amid Cries From Publishers of Non-Payment

Yes, i do blame agency pricing – at least in part. While I do like the idea of creators and publishers getting a larger percentage of the retail price, that extra money had to come from somewhere. At least some of it came from the pockets of retailers. I know that publishers like to claim that agency pricing was brought about so they can protect the smaller bookseller from Amazon, but they also made it more difficult for the smaller ebookstores to make a profit.

[doubleshuffle]

Sorry, I didn't mean to appear hostile. I just wanted to point out in humorous fashion the logic you follow. You present a very nice, and new for me, argument against DRM: that it plays into the hands of big booksellers and puts smaller ones at a disadvantage.

I don't blame Amazon for the deaths of smaller competitors. I neither like nor hate Amazon. Capitalism is the name of the game and Amazon is very good at playing it at the moment, which is absolutely no guarantee there won't be a new, better player eventually.

So it is of course on option to gamble on Amazon surviving you, but it isn't a gamble I'm willing to take. That's why I remove DRM and will bequeath loads of usable ebooks to my non-existent children.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

The terms did not exist since the beginning of time. Someone wrote them and put this clause there. Was that legal?

Seeing how the ruling ended, I would say it was legal. If it would have violated any pre existing rights according to law, the outcome might have been different. Especially in Germany where taking away rights is very complicated to do. I personally still have a german drivers licence that will not expire - even though newly issued drivers licences do expire.

And how it is that despite the format allowing more freedom, the consumers have fewer rights with digital content?

Because it is so much easier to make duplicates. Blank cassette tapes have (at least they used to) a special tax on them that reimburses the music industry because of potentially being able to make copies of music for personal use. Blank audio cds had that too - not sure if data only cd-r had that tax as well.

[CommonReader]

It isn't a decision by the Federal High Court, therefore it isn't binding. It sends a strong signal, though.
Apparently the consumer protection group has gone over to the dark side by withdrawing its application for review by the Federal High Court.

I do have some sympathy with the publishers. You do see used hardcovers of bestsellers up for sale a few days after initial publication. If you were able to sell on ebook licenses you would probably see that happening some hours after their initial publications with no real way to check that there aren't multiple sales of the same book.
However, it's a pyrrhic victory. The more restrictive the licensing agreements, the less people seem to care about them.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Sorry, I didn't mean to appear hostile. I just wanted to point out in humorous fashion the logic you follow. You present a very nice, and new for me, argument against DRM: that it plays into the hands of big booksellers and puts smaller ones at a disadvantage.

I don't blame Amazon for the deaths of smaller competitors. I neither like nor hate Amazon. Capitalism is the name of the game and Amazon is very good at playing it at the moment, which is absolutely no guarantee there won't be a new, better player eventually.

So it is of course on option to gamble on Amazon surviving you, but it isn't a gamble I'm willing to take. That's why I remove DRM and will bequeath loads of usable ebooks to my non-existent children.

No problem. I wasn't 100% sure which part was clearly sarcasm, and which was your true opinion. Without any hints, it is hard to see where and then the threshold is crossed.

I am against DRM myself and would prefer if it didn't exist, but I am not actively removing DRM anymore from my books either. Dropping a book into calibre looks and feels exactly the same if the book came with or without DRM. That is one temptation I do not want to see everytime I purchase a book - the big question: Why should I pay?

[hidden.platypus]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

The terms did not exist since the beginning of time. Someone wrote them and put this clause there. Was that legal?
And how it is that despite the format allowing more freedom, the consumers have fewer rights with digital content?

Because every time the consumers gain more rights a shareholder cries. And every time a shareholder cries an angel loses their wings.

So we mustn't let the shareholders cry.

We just mustn't.

[GlennD]

I have a hunch that over the next few years we'll move to a Netflix-style license for music and books. It's really not much of a stretch given Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program. At that point it'll be irrelevant who owns what, since you'll just be paying a monthly fee to access all of it.

[Rbneader]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I have a hunch that over the next few years we'll move to a Netflix-style license for music and books. It's really not much of a stretch given Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program. At that point it'll be irrelevant who owns what, since you'll just be paying a monthly fee to access all of it.

All subscription services have the same problem - they lose content. Netflix changes it's TV show availability all the time. There's no way they can afford to have all the shows all the time. Perfectly reasonable, but what it means for consumers is that the service is essentially unreliable. Another big problem is that if users can't keep paying the subscription price they lose access.

Subscription services are great supplements to owning media, but they're not a replacement for most people. Everyone I know who subscribes to Netflix/whatever also owns movies.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Seeing how the ruling ended, I would say it was legal. If it would have violated any pre existing rights according to law, the outcome might have been different. Especially in Germany where taking away rights is very complicated to do. I personally still have a german drivers licence that will not expire - even though newly issued drivers licences do expire.

But would Germany support more rights for the consumer or more rights for the publisher.

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Because it is so much easier to make duplicates. Blank cassette tapes have (at least they used to) a special tax on them that reimburses the music industry because of potentially being able to make copies of music for personal use. Blank audio cds had that too - not sure if data only cd-r had that tax as well.

Isn't that tax on every storage option that the consumer has?

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Isn't that tax on every storage option that the consumer has?

Indeed it is. Here's the list.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

Indeed it is. Here's the list.

Wow, they really went crazy with it.

Did not see crayons on the list. Everything else is on it.

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Did not see crayons on the list.

Hush. They might hear you...