Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by rmc | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

rmc·

You did purchase the book. It says "Buy" on the website.

Amazon: "Would you like to Buy this book for your Kindle?"

Customer: "Yes" click

Looks like a sale to me. They don't use the word "Rent" or "Borrow". You "buy" it.

View on HN

Trouble is, you are bound by the license agreement, not by the text on the buttons, as the Conditions of Use and Sale makes clear, which is linked to on every page of Amazon's site.

Unless a judge decides that due to the manner in which it's sold, that it constitutes a sale under the law, and hence all your normal "I've bought a thing" rights come into play. Anything in the T&Cs that takes away the rights the law gives is hence null and invalid.

Agreed. But, we've yet to establish if indeed they do take away rights that the law provides. I would have thought HN would have uncovered such a law by now.

A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article on DRM suggests the law is favourable torwards DRM and all that that entails.

It probably wouldn't be a "law" per se in terms of statutes, it would be down to case law. In other words we won't know until this (or something very similar) goes to court.

It's not so much about DRM per se but rather about what rights you can expect when "buying" an e-book.

At least as far as the US is concerned, shrink wrap licenses restricting your fair use rights were not received favorably by courts up until the late 90s. This has changed somewhat in the past decade and change. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the supreme court on the 'first sale' case, which is a closely related topic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com