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Comment by pochamago | Hacker News Reader

Amazon is, of course, right, unfortunately. Licenses is pretty much all anyone sells in media, and many of those are quite restrictive

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The courts will decide whether Amazon is right. One totally reasonable outcome might be that Amazon and other vendors will not be allowed to use the word "Purchase" for content that you do not own outright in perpetuity with rights similar to those of a book purchaser.

I think this is the key point. They want to have their cake and eat it. Either sell me things or stop using everyday words that imply you are.

I really want an EU directive to define what is a "Sale" and what is a "License" or "Rent" and make it impossible to use the word "Purchase" when it is licensed to you, only to be used when you truly own the product.

I mean I agree with that this would be nice but I don't think this change would actually benefit ... well anyone because you can't buy really copyrighted works. The law turns any work on physical media into a single restricted-use indefinite transferable "license." It's not the word change would spawn a digital market where you could actually buy.

Even a book purchaser only gets a "limited license" on the book's contents. The property rights only extend to the physical item, not what's printed in it.

That's the whole issue with online consumption. The physical medium has disappeared and so only the license remains. The legal framework has not caught up yet.

Amazon T&Cs' wording is wishy-washy ("on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time") and that wording may cause them problems especially where consumers protection is extensive. My limited knowledge on contract law is that this sort of unspecified duration may not be permitted because the parties (especially the consumer) cannot know what he is signing up to when entering into the contract.

When buying a book, the only right that you don't get is the right to copy all or part of the book. Otherwise, you can keep it forever, sell it, lend it to others, sell it overseas (subject to any import/export laws, of course).

This is not the same with a CD for a video-game, for example. I still remember that my copy of Starcraft had a note that I should notify Blizzard if I indended to lend the CD to any of my friends!

The big difference is that the CD for a video-game is just a transport medium to allow you to copy its contents on your computer.

Sure you own the CD and can actually lend it but the person you lent it to has no right to effectively use that CD since only you were granted the right (license) to copy it on a limited number (which can be 1) of your own computers.

Same if you buy a copy of MS Word. You do own the CD but you only get the license to install it on a couple of computers.

Any term that purports to prevent you from lending your property has no value. The key point is that the license prevents others from installing the software/video game.

You are more or less right, even in the EU. I think the only part where you are clearly wrong is here:

> Sure you own the CD and can actually lend it but the person you lent it to has no right to effectively use that CD since only you were granted the right (license) to copy it on a limited number (which can be 1) of your own computers.

The second-hand gaming market is obvious proof that you are it is indeed legal for multiple people to copy the game to their own computers from the same CD. The only limitation is the same one that applies to books: copying a book that you own for personal purposes falls under fair use, but selling/lending the book without also passing on / destroying the copy invalidates the fair use exception.

I commented about lending, which is not the same as selling on and what you describe, so I don't really understand how my comment is wrong.

The same rule would apply for lending: as long as, at the time of lending, you do not retain any copy of the work; and, at the time of returning the work, the borrower also does not retain any copy, there is no copyright infringement.

This can also be seen from the existence of game rental services, and there are even libraries that lend video games.

No, you still obtain the right to copy all or part of that book. The only right you do not have is to distribute your copies. But, as you say, you may distribute your original (bought) copy as you see fit.

It is more complicated than that. In general, there is no explicit right to copy that book, though an archival copy would certainly fall under fair use. But it would not be fair use if you buy a book, copy it, and then sell the original book while retaining the copy (obviously, the chance of being prosecuted for something like this are essentially 0, but it is certainly copyright infringement if someone were to actually care - e.g. if you were to setup a site for wide distribution in this manner, where members would pass around and "copy for personal use" a book that was only purchased once).

Yes, of course. Major omission on my part. I don't know how it's actually implemented by law, but I believe you lose the right to have the copies when you transfer your original to someone else. I believe this doesn't happen if the original is destroyed, but I really don't know how the law works in that respect.

It is the same for video games, at least in most countries. Publishers liked to argue that you bought a licence but that isn't how consumer laws worked. In fact EULAs aren't even legally binding in the EU.

This has been one of those instances where if enough organisations tell enough consumers something is true and for long enough then people start to believe it, even when it technically isn't true.

The biggest problem with copyright and digital products is that there is no way to use a digital product without copying it - you copy the program from some medium to your harddrive, and then copy parts of it from your harddrive to your RAM and so on.

Now, each of these could be considered to fall under fair use, but they are definitely complicating the legal case to a great extent.

Also, given that Windows is sold with a limited number of installations (license activations) allowed, even in the EU, I'm not sure that the copyright case is as simple as you claim.

I didn't claim it was simple. I only claimed that EU law does allow you to lend a game. However the points you're raising now are different issues.

I cover some of those points in a more detailed post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24929034

As for your point about copying to RAM, you have to bare in mind that the law talks about intent and human impact rather rather than scientific specifics (be that physics, computer science, etc). This is a trap many techies make on here (since we're trained to think technically) and a point I've touched on before with regards to comments some made about youtube-dl. With regards to your specific point: if your playback software copies the file into RAM then that is considered playback (because that is the intent) not copying. The fact the playback requires copying is irreverent so long as the playback isn't used with the intent to copy. However the fact that RAM is volatile reinforces that intent (otherwise we'd have an issue with almost all tech, old and new. eg LCD panels buffer image data to be displayed).

> Also, given that Windows is sold with a limited number of installations (license activations) allowed, even in the EU, I'm not sure that the copyright case is as simple as you claim.

That's a little different there because the license activations grant additional permissions rather than adding limitations (generally speaking, of course). eg if you're licensed to install on two machines then that's more copies than copyright law normally allows. It's a bit like how GPL et al grant additional privileges that normally wouldn't be allowed under the default copyright laws. The thing to remember is that companies can grant you additional rights but they can't remove any rights you already have. So a company can say "this license allows you to install on 3 computers" but they can't say "this license doesn't allow you to install on any yellow computers".

When you torrent a movie you own it, physically, for as long as you want. It's ironic that the only way to own something is to steal it first.

What happens if I torrent a movie and buy a license on Prime? Is the torrent still illegal?

To be clear - I don’t understand downloading a torrent to be illegal at all. Just uploading to others. So depends on how you set up your BT client. ;)

> What happens if I torrent a movie and buy a license on Prime? Is the torrent still illegal?

Not legal in any country of the world I can think of.

They are correct, imagine if you had a subscription to prime and then copied / made all of that available on your own ad-supported service for free. So Amazon has to put a license on the content.

Whether the license is fair or not is up to the consumer to decide. The Buy vs Rent labelling is misleading - but as always, buyer beware.

Surely that's a different issue though? I can't buy a bunch of blurays of movies and Game of Thrones from a store, rip them and put them on my own ad-supported free service without getting in trouble. But the store doesn't have to stop me taking the bluray home just in case I do that.

It’s a licensing issue- you could do that if HBO granted you a license to do that. They don’t when you “buy” GoT online. I’m sure if you offered them a few hundred million dollars they’d let you.

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