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Comment by cornell532 | Hacker News Reader

This is a silly conversation.

In either case it's a license. The difference is what the license is bound to.

Amazon kindle ebooks are bound to my Amazon account (I can read same book on my Android or Amazon Kindle device as long as I sign in with same account).

With a physical book, the material is literally bound to the pages of the book.

In neither case do I own the copyright. It's the same as owning a film on DVD or VHS.

You cannot make copies of the content of the book to sell it, you cannot take large excerpts of the book and sell those either. In short, you do not have full intellectual property rights to the book.

You have licensed a single copy for the purpose of reading the book.

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It's not the same thing. In neither case do you own the copyright to the book, but when buying a physical book you legally own that copy of the book. The key difference here being illustrated by that fiasco a couple of years back when Amazon revoked people's access to the copies of 1984 they had on their Kindles. With a physical book they are not allowed to do that (and physically cannot do it anyway).

I think if a bookseller had been making copies of 1984 without permission from the right holder, and you had bought one of these copies, the right holder would have demanded its return. Had you refused, I think you may have been in violation of some law (possession of stolen goods?). I have no idea whether they would have been able to raid your house to recover the book, but it wouldn't surprise me. I'm obviously not a lawyer...

An illegal copy of a book is not a stolen good, since it has not been taken away.. In most countries I'd expect the buying of the illegal copy of the book itself not to be criminal (and certainly not leading to home raids), but the distribution the bookseller did, since he did not have the license to do that.

On the other side, I would expect that many countries have laws that would prohibit a bookseller from selling you a hard-copy but writing in the terms of service that they're free to enter your home to retrieve it for reasons they decide on, since it'd be a very surprising clause.

Edit: s/reading/leading/

In most countries I'd expect the buying of the illegal copy of the book itself not to be criminal

Why? If you make it legal to buy pirated works, and allow the purchaser to keep the purchased copy, you remove all burden from the consumer to validate the authenticity of the goods they are purchasing.

A consumer should not be so vulnerable as to be terrified of purchasing any book, but they should not be immune, especially if they purchased the illegitimate copy knowing it was illegitimate.

If there are laws against buying of goods you know are stolen, then of course you are correct. However, if that's not in place, then the buyer didn't violate any laws (since he didn't break the copyright) or contracts.

To circle back to the original point, wouldn't it be kind of outrageous if a police team were allowed to storm your home and violate your right to privacy in search for an illegal copy of 1984?

>wouldn't it be kind of outrageous if a police team were allowed to storm your home and violate your right to privacy in search for an illegal copy of 1984?

No more outrageous than if they were taking a copy of a DVD that you'd acquired that was produced by copyright infringement.

I think the police (in my country) do have power to retrieve goods on order of the court because you've committed a tort, contributory copyright infringement. If you were aware that you were supporting an act of infringement by paying for the goods produced by that act then I'd expect you could also be sued successfully.

The economics don't work well for the company suing though so this is an unlikely reality.

In my opinion, not really, not if they have reasonable suspicion. I mean, it'd be a complete waste of their time and yours due to the low value of the object in question, but I don't know that low value should mean they shouldn't be able to.

That is, of course, just my opinion. I do not claim that reflects local laws.

Truly speaking, you do not own the information on the pages, only the paper and binding upon which it is printed. I cannot be sure, but I suspect blanking the pages of your book if the license was revoked or fraudulent would be in keeping with both copyright and property law.

We just get the feeling that we own both the object and the information because it is so much more difficult to separate the two than with digital media.

blanking the pages of your book if the license was revoked

Courts in the US would not recognize attempts at such revocations or demands to do this as reasonable or sane. Promise.

Ownership is a legal term, and it grants rights. You own some things, but not eBooks. We're talking about owning what you pay for, not becoming the copyright holder.

It is totally different. Try and sell your used eBook if you don't believe me.

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