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Comment by gcanyon | Hacker News Reader

All the comments here on buying vs. leasing are giving me an odd thought experiment:

Suppose you "buy" a paperback book. We all know that purchase doesn't give you the right to replicate the text of the book -- probably not even as a backup copy. So if you have a house fire and the book burns, you no longer have the book you bought, and no recourse.

But paperbacks don't have to burn to be useless. Hundred year old books are generally very fragile. So granted, Stephen King doesn't have the ability to remotely wipe your paperback of The Stand, but it's not eternal.

It's a distinction without (much of) a difference, since the paperback will outlive you and probably your grandchildren, but it's not eternal, and so technically you don't own it, the same way you don't own digital copies. The time frame over which you don't own it is just longer.

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> the paperback will outlive you and probably your grandchildren

On Monday I had in my hands a book bought in 1843 by an ancestor of mine, 6 generations ago IIRC. A few page were damaged, but it could still be read. So a book lasts far more than 3 generations.

> We all know that purchase doesn't give you the right to replicate the text of the book -- probably not even as a backup copy.

A backup copy is legal in my country, and IIRC it's the same in most countries. More importantly, it's also legal to share the book with family and friends, to give it, and to sell it. That very different from a lease where the rights depend on the contract (and the aptitude of the leaser).

> the paperback will outlive you and probably your grandchildren, but it's not eternal, and so technically you don't own it.

There's a confusion between the text and the paperback. When I buy a physical book, I own the object. The seller can't take it back from me, and I'm allowed to share the object and do whatever I want with it, just like any physical object that I own.

But I can not own a text, unless I'm the sole author or it is in the public domain: the copyright holder can forbid me from sharing the text. This is the same for anything patented you buy: you own the object, but if you replicate it, you do not fully own these copies. This concept of copyright appeared during the 18th century in Europe.

> On Monday I had in my hands a book bought in 1843 by an ancestor of mine,

Of course there will be exceptions, but the majority of paperbacks published today likely won't exist in 180 years.

> A backup copy is legal in my country, and IIRC it's the same in most countries.

This seems to be fuzzy in the U.S.? "if you are making a copy so that you may use a copyrighted product in case the original is stolen, damaged or destroyed, your conduct may fall within the doctrine of fair use." [1] Others seem more confident in a yes answer. [2]

re: the several advantages of physical books: yes, of course. My thought experiment was on the (slight, mostly long-term) impermanence of physical books compared to the potentially infinite, but perhaps revocable nature of digital books.

re: the distinction between the text as a concept and the medium in which it is stored: yes, that was the point I was thinking about: that each has drawbacks.

> The seller can't take it back from me

While true in general at the present, there have been many instances in the past where physical media were confiscated -- albeit generally by governments, and I'm not sure that digital copies would fare any better in that scenario.

    1. https://legalbeagle.com/12719016-copyright-law-making-personal-copies.html
    2. https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-to-digitize-paper-version-books-I-bought-into-PDF-copies

You don't own the text, but you do own the manifestation of the text as a physical book. Sure the text doesn't magical stay with you after a fire burns down your house (like all other items in your house) and it isn't eternal (like all other things aren't) but as long as you don't damage the item you own, it has value: the text.

Weired argument to say that you don't own a thing because it can be damaged or fall apart. You own it even if it is damaged by the way. The paper shreds after the fire are still yours.

I should have been more clear in the final paragraph. I didn't mean you don't own the physical copy of the book. I meant you don't own the text itself. Rephrasing:

It's a distinction without (much of) a difference, since the paperback will outlive you and probably your grandchildren, but [the paperback is] not eternal, and so technically you don't own [the text of the book], the same way you don't own [the text of the book when you only have] digital copies. The time frame over which you don't own [the text of the book] is just longer.

At least, you can extend the shelf life of the paperback, and this is in your hands. With digital coffees, you have lost that ability to extend the shelf life of that copy.

Libraries pay 3 times more for hardbound copies because of both paper quality and the hard bound. This is for the shelf life again. When publishers don't sell library copies(hardbound copies), libraries send paper copies for custom binding.

Yep, agreed -- as I responded to another comment, I should have been more clear at the end that I meant neither a physical book nor a digital copy gives you ownership of the text itself. Both implementations of the text can go away -- in very different ways.

Ownership isn’t a matter of physical existence or duration of some physical property.

Agreed? But my point (poorly phrased) was that neither physical copies nor digital gives you ownership of the physical text. If your physical copy burns there is no provision for replacing it because you have a right to the text itself. It's on you to preserve the physical copy.

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