Selling a Kobo - what to do?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by BookCat

If that were true, it would infringe the license to give or sell a paperback. I have bought many second or thirdhand paperbacks from charity shops and car-boot sales.

Which I am pretty sure is handled by different laws and licenses. But, part of the assumption is that if you sell a paper book, you no longer have access to it. For an ebook, it is easy to keep a copy and could be hard to prove you didn't. And it might even be hard to get rid of all copies depending on your backup strategy.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by BookCat

If that were true, it would infringe the license to give or sell a paperback. I have bought many second or thirdhand paperbacks from charity shops and car-boot sales.

A paperback book is not covered by a license, you have purchased a physical object. As such the concept of exhaustion (what our American friends refer to as the First Sale doctrine) applies (*). You have the right to do what you wish with it (read it, resell it, build a bonfire and roast hot dogs ). After all, unlike an ebook, it's pretty damn hard to sell a physical book and keep a copy for yourself. Much the same rules apply to vinyl records, CDs, etc. though those are getting iffy since it is relatively easy to create a digital copy of a vinyl record and trivial to do so with a CD.

* The doctrine stands for the proposition that the enforceability of the intellectual property rights embodied in a tangible object are extinguished, or ‘exhausted’, after its first sale. The rule, common law in origin, allows for the downstream re-sale of patented articles, trade mark adorned clothing, and textbooks without infringement.

For something more on the situation in the EU which last time I looked, the UK was still part of (I'll leave out my opinion of the handling of BREXIT), you might want to take a look at this item: The EU Principle of Exhaustion of Rightss for your entertainment.