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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

>Amazon Now Openly Discloses You’re Buying a License to View Kindle eBooks

"disclosure" of information sounds like a good thing, but in terms of contracts, "a disclosure" is actually "a restriction/limitation" that you are agreeing to. This is Amazon "disclosing" that it is you who is not actually buying a copy of something.

Yes, it's better for you that limitations are disclosed, but the salient point is the limitation, not the disclosure.

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At least it creates a situation where any vendor that does offer "true" purchases will stand out. There's a chance for disruption here.

What would a true purchase of digital content look like? Just the lack of DRM? You could still lose your copy and the company you purchased it from could no longer exist.

Just like you could lose a physical book or the publisher could disappear? It feels like you're doing some reductio ad absurdum right now...

You buy a digital, DRM-free file. It is yours forever. If you lose it (bad storage, malware, deletion), it's gone. It doesn't mean that it wasn't yours. It doesn't mean that anybody owes you a new copy in perpetuity. It doesn't make any of that "fake ownership".

I'm not making any suggestions I was wondering what people would agree is a good solution. If DRM free is good enough then it is good enough for me.

The way most online stores let you buy music is drm free. Seems like a no brainer that this is how it works.

I mean if I lose my copy of any media I own and the seller that provided isn’t around, that’s on me, right?

This is how Corey Doctorow sells his books. Even at Amazon his books are DRM-free. The file is yours forever, and he and his publisher (Tor) are very happy with the arrangement.

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