Re: Fw: Amazon's Ebook License A Scam, Says Doctorow

On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 1:37 AM, joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:

> Says Doctorow: When Amazon "sells" you a Kindle ebook, they don't really sell it to you. If you read the fine-print, you'll see that they're waving their hands furiously and declaring that you aren't "buying" the book, but rather "taking a license to a limited set of uses" for the book.
>
> [I normally ignore Doctorow; though he has some useful things to say I find his take on copyright confused and distorted by assumptions of the effects of the digital.
>
> Here he seems to be quite failing to appreciate what a digital file is. He uses the Bezos quote, instead of a good interpretation of law  (Jeff Bezos: "[W]hen someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.").
>
> Correct me if I am wrong, but it is within the power of the copyright holder to restrict onward use.

No. When you buy a book, you can give it away or resell it at will;
the copyright owner only has the right to restrict that first sale.

> So far as I understand it a copy, however purchased, is licenced from the copyright holder. And since the digital file and modern technology allows anyone in possession of a file to act as a publisher the assertion of copyright owner's and holder's rights means that it must be licenced and is not 'sold']

Nope. This has been tested in court--Vernor v Autodestk; Vernor was in
the habit of buying secondhand copies of software at yard sales &
selling them on Ebay; Autodesk claimed that was a violation of
copyright; the courts ruled that digital files, like everything else,
are "sold" rather than "licensed" if the terms of transfer matched the
legal terms for a sale.

The most important of those points was a lack of return/destroy
conditions: if the buyer expects to keep it, it's sold, and the
purchaser cannot further limit the buyer's actions. (You cannot sell a
car with the condition, "you may only drive this on weekends." You may
not sell a book with the condition, "you may only read this under
fluorescent lighting." And you can't sell either with the condition,
"you may not resell this later.")

Digital files have a troublesome issue in that it's possible to give
away the file while keeping a copy--but the oddness of tech doesn't
change the way the law works. A person who buys an ebook, puts it on a
flash drive, and gives away or sells the flash drive is within his
legal rights. *Keeping* a copy at the same time is almost certainly a
copyright violation, but the sale is not.

> Joseph Harris - Debt Control Man
> http://www.controlyourdebtcrisis.co.uk



-- 
"I follow Eris blindly in all things. That She is the Goddess of Chaos
simplifies this immensely."  -- Christian the Pagan


------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
-------------------------------------------------------Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/