What they say is basically:
> you have no rights
> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have
> you will not do anything the company doesn't like
> the company can do anything whether you like it or not
> the company is not responsible for anything ever
> we make no guarantees about anything
So yes this works _sometimes_, but not most of the time.
For the majority of users who are looking for a very specific book, not just _any_ new book to read, buying it digitally means buying it from a DRM-laden marketplace.
Of course, they have a much smaller selection than Amazon and you likely won't find the book you want. So it's not really a proper alternative. You either accept their TOS or you don't get to read the book you want digitally.
This is an extremely weak argument, IMHO.
For a start, it's clearly impractical for the average person to even read all of the legal documents they theoretically agree to. It would take an absurd amount of time and have a devastating effect on our quality of life and the productivity of our society.
Even that assumes the reader would be qualified to understand the legal implications of a long, often complicated document, possibly written according to the laws of another country, in the first place. This again seems extremely optimistic, given that professional lawyers spend years studying their own legal systems and are then often very well paid for sharing the expertise they have acquired.
So the idea that burying something unfair or unreasonable in a ToS document that realistically almost no-one is going to read and properly understand is really just a conceit of the legal profession (and possibly not even that, since even lawyers understand the fiction that is happening here).
The essence of any legal contract is an agreement, understood and entered into voluntarily by all parties involved, that exchanges things of value to the parties. Different legal systems might use slightly different words to say that, but they mean much the same thing. Hiding shady stuff in the small print of an agreement written by one side's professional lawyers and probably never even read never mind understood by the other side is far from sufficient to meet that standard for a legal contract.
This is why good businesses and their lawyers go out of their way to present the key details of any agreement clearly and up-front, not to hide them on page 91. It's also why courts hearing consumer rights cases sometimes side with the consumer even if something else was stated in a ToS or similar document.
What makes you think that? It seems highly unlikely to me that the average customer of an ebook reader or a streaming TV/movie service or one of the gaming networks has any idea about how the DRM works or how intrusively the provider of their electronic content can later monitor their use of it and change or revoke their access to it. Who do you think is going around and warning all these people, in such a way that they can reasonably understand the implications of what is being said, about the risks that come with these kinds of technologies?
Now, if you were arguing that governments should be regulating these industries, mandating information for customers about the risks and prohibiting abusive behaviours by content providers, then I'd be the first to agree with you. I think such measures are long overdue. But that's not the same thing as what you wrote before.
I used to tell people and most of them ignored what I said.
> It seems highly unlikely to me that the average customer of an ebook reader or a streaming TV/movie service or one of the gaming networks has any idea about how the DRM works
They don't have to understand technical details. They just have to understand one fact: they don't actually own what they're spending their money on.
I told them, they understood and they didn't care.
> Who do you think is going around and warning all these people, in such a way that they can reasonably understand the implications of what is being said, about the risks that come with these kinds of technologies?
Me. I used to tell everyone I know. It was useless.
> Now, if you were arguing that governments should be regulating these industries, mandating information for customers about the risks and prohibiting abusive behaviours by content providers, then I'd be the first to agree with you.
Don't get me wrong. I generally agree with this. Actually I have a radical opinion: copyright should be abolished and it should be illegal to implement DRM in any form.
This doesn't change the fact that these people cannot be helped. They want their pleasure and if you're pointing out issues you're just getting in their way. They absolutely deserve to be blamed if their accounts get banned and they lose everything.
> They just have to understand one fact: they don't actually own what they're spending their money on.
The consequences of losing access don't necessarily follow from that though. Lots of people for example understand the principle of leasing an apartment or car, and in those cases it's much harder for the true owner to arbitrarily take the property away from you.
> Actually I have a radical opinion: copyright should be abolished and it should be illegal to implement DRM in any form.
Radical opinions further tell people that you are not being pragmatic about what you are saying and therefore it can't be very practical advice. That is another reason why I expect people weren't receptive to your warnings.
I don't claim to be an expert. I'm just a guy who cares a lot about this stuff. I suppose I can be dramatic but I don't think that makes me wrong.
> The consequences of losing access don't necessarily follow from that though.
Currently, they do. That could change in the future but right now when people spend money on media they're merely buying some company's permission to enjoy some content. That permission can be revoked at any time and for any reason or no reason.
> Lots of people for example understand the principle of leasing an apartment or car, and in those cases it's much harder for the true owner to arbitrarily take the property away from you.
People aren't leasing content though. They're buying it. They buy books, they buy video games...
> it can't be very practical advice
Ignoring copyright is actually the most practical advice there is.
Everybody understands how to do it. I've yet to meet a single person who has never infringed copyright. People do it without even realizing it. It's how people naturally operate, especially on the internet. When people want something, they right click on it and save it. Nobody really thinks about the creator's rights to monopolize imaginary property.
The only problem with this advice is it's technically illegal. We can fix this by abolishing copyright.
I think you are misunderstanding my point.
What I am saying is that most people's expectation of leasing/renting arrangements is such that there are protections in place to prevent the thing from being arbitrarily taken away.
However those protections don't exist for software services, only physical things like cars and apartments. Thus it is a violation of peoples' expectations that software services don't have those protections.
So it is not enough to simply tell them, "You don't own it and that's the problem". That does not fully explain the problem. In order to fully explain the problem you would need to explain how not only do you not own it, but ALSO there are no legal protections to prevent it from arbitrarily being taken away like a layperson might expect there to be such a situation.
> People aren't leasing content though. They're buying it. They buy books, they buy video games...
Earlier you just said that users don't own the content... so which is it?
> I don't think victim-blaming is a great way to educate people
What would be a better way, specifically?