Comments on: More on Amazon’s used e-books controversy

By: ashious ex machina

ashious ex machina — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:56:23 +0000

If you are that hard-up for cash that you need to resell your e-books, maybe you should just sell your e-reader instead? I will bet they don’t want to sell the “used” e-books for dimes on the original dollar like they do for used paper books.

By: Rohan

Rohan — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 15:17:02 +0000

There is a good list of books on Politics & Geopolitics on this Amazon page. The link is http://www.scribd.com/VijBooksIndia
http://goo.gl/KeZcs

By: Rob Preece

Rob Preece — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:54:26 +0000

Seems to me that things have prices. There are books you can buy that come with the right to resell them (you see these all the time on scam sites… at least you do if you’re in the eBook business). When I sell a paperback, I recognize that it might be resold and price that paperback to reflect this fact. When I sell an eBook, I know it won’t be re-sold (at least not legally) and so price it more affordably. However, whether it’s a paper book or an eBook, the words “buy” and “own” need to be understood carefully. Just because you buy a paper book doesn’t mean you own it. If you owned it, you could copy it for all your friends. But you don’t own it, you own the paper… and because the paper comes with print attached, you own the right to resell that paper… without the need to erase the ink first. Similarly, if you buy a painting, you don’t own the right to reproduce it… that remains with the author. In many countries, you don’t even own the right to destroy it… your ownership rights are limited by the rights of others (in this case the painter). So, eBooks and paper books both have limited rights. If you want to argue that these rights should be identical, fine. But don’t try to make this something between “owning” and “renting.” In every case, you don’t own the book, you just own certain rights.

By: willem

willem — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:38:47 +0000

That should be digital of course, no idea what ‘gaining the advantages that comes with didital’ could be!

By: willem

willem — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 22:36:14 +0000

Rather obvious that a lot of people want to keep all the advantages of the physical environment (such as first-sale considerations), while also gaining the advantages that comes with didital. We have had these arguments before, see http://www.teleread.com/copy-right/would-used-e-books-work-redux/

That some pretty stringent DRM would be needed to make the commercial reselling of ebooks even remotely possible is also clear, though in my experience many opponenents of DRM seem oblivious to this.

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:23:55 +0000

Frank, copyright ownership means that only I or my contract partners can say what can and can’t be done with a digital book, and that is included in the license information. If you “buy” an ebook, that doesn’t mean that you can abrogate those terms simply because you have a copy.

To resell an ebook after you “buy” it, is not only against the terms of license for almost all ebooks, it is also against US copyright law. That is infringement.

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:17:46 +0000

@Marilynn, we are not talking about eBook purchasers owning a copyright (a government granted, time-limited and exclusive right to make copies of an original work). We are talking only about eBook purchasers owning a copy of an eBook and thereby having the right to transfer the ownership of that copy to someone else.
In addition to being easily copied, digital objects are more easily destroyed. This leads to the legitimacy of making backup copies. We also make copies whenever we open an eBook. The code is copied to the memory space allocated to an eReader. So, there are lots of legitimate exceptions to the idea that the buyer cannot make copies. To infringe the copyright, one must make a copy, transfer ownership AND, most importantly, retain a copy. Without meeting all three conditions with respect to the same digital object, there is no infringement. We shall see whether Amazon, ReDigi and others can navigate this path.
The preemptive punishment of readers based on the precognition that they will infringe copyrights is reminiscent of Phillip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report” (1956) and certainly subject to all of the contradictions described therein. We are on a very slippery slope.

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:07:37 +0000

Frank, as an author, I own the copyright of my novels. I license the content via a contract with my publisher who licenses the content via contract to distributors like Amazon Kindle and Nook. How, then, can the person who “buys” that book now own the copyright so they can resell it, loan it, or put it online for anyone who wants to download it?

The “buy” button is Amazon and other distributors’ choice, not the author’s or the publisher’s, so why punish us for how the distributor sets up their site? The license is clearly printed on most ebooks or not so clearly placed somewhere on the distributor’s site. Again, those aren’t the publisher or author’s choice in the matter.

Those who think readers should have all the rights and the author none either haven’t thought it through to a possible conclusion like I have in my two articles on used ebooks, or they aren’t really readers. Real readers WANT books to published so they can have new things to read.

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 14:56:14 +0000

@Mima takes a difference in degree and tries to make it a difference in kind. You can retain a copy of a physical book just as you can retain a copy of a digital book. The latter is easier than the former but this is only a difference of degree. There is no substantive difference where a person has lawfully obtained a copy of something, that is, they **own** it. Indeed, one can even own a license or an option to buy or any number of things that are not tangible in a physical way. If you own it, you should be able to transfer that ownership to another person, organization (e.g. library) or whatever. Whether an eBook seller can modify that fact via contracts that consumers really haven’t knowingly agreed to remains to be seen.
The Amazon patent appears to be based on the acceptability of the “delete and forward” concept of first sale as applied to digital objects. When and if they implement this, they will certainly be sued for copyright infringement. Their defense will apparently be, “No we are not infringing because no copy was retained or could have been retained.” If they can establish that this assertion as true, then they will be home free.

By: Mima Pumpkin

Mima Pumpkin — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 10:34:03 +0000

The thing is… almost every time you ‘give’ someone a computer file, you’re actually giving a copy of it. Meaning, you’re not extracting something out of your computer and transfering it, you’re just copying it and each has an ‘original’. That’s one of the major issues of selling used e-books. You can keep it forever and sell as many copies as you’d like. That would definitely be very harmful to publishing companies and authors. You can’t really compare physical books with digital media-they’re completely different in the way they work, so should they also be different in the way they’re handled legally.

By: Frank Lowney

Frank Lowney — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 21:06:43 +0000

If I purchase a physical book, I own that copy. If I subsequently transfer ownership of that copy by any means, I am not infringing copyright. However, if I photocopy that book and transfer ownership of that illicit copy, I am infringing the copyright. This is all well established in law and precedent. Note that authors and publishers of the past only grudgingly agreed to this. Over the years, they mounted one assault after another against First Sale only to be repelled in the courts.
Now comes digital media and, with it, the opportunity to destroy the hated secondary market (libraries are collateral damage). Just because publishers say (in fine print only) that you have not bought the item, you’ve only licensed it doesn’t make that so. They tried to do that with physical books too and that failed.
It is the validity of these “contracts” that will sort out whether a person who clicks on a “Buy” button (not a “Lease” button) actually owns that digital object. If they do own it, then they should be able to transfer that ownership to another person. The possibility fact that they may have retained a copy will have to be dealt with using the same mechanisms that obtained in the print era when one could photocopy a book or read it aloud and record that reading or memorize it and recite it publicly, etc.
The rights of honest consumers should not be abrogated simply because of the ease with which dishonest individuals can break the law. We should never throw the baby out with the bathwater.

By: Iulian Ionescu

Iulian Ionescu — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:27:20 +0000

I agree with you. However, if they ever do it, should the ‘used’ e-books mimic used books? I think so, so they should have doodles, missing and torn pages and marker streaks that sip through three pages

Thank you!

Iulian