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| Everylibrary |
A little reminder for people who say that they don't need libraries because of e-content.
You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer
NBC News: 10.24.2012 by Joel Johnson
On a dark and stormy night, an employee of
your local bookstore strolls into your home, starts tossing books you'd
purchased over the last few years into a box, and — despite your protest —
takes them all away without saying a word.
Thankfully that's not what happened to Linn
Jordet Nygaard. Well, not exactly. The Norwegian woman found herself on the
wrong side of bureaucracy, but the outcome was much the same (without as much
mud on the carpet): Amazon turned off her Kindle account, blocking her from her
own books. And they wouldn't tell her why.
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. . .
. . .
The core issue might actually be a simple
matter of semantics: when we click a digital button that is labelled
"Buy," we expect that we're actually buying something. But we're not
buying anything, we're licensing it. Just last year, the Supreme Court ruled
that the first-sale doctrine does not apply to software — or e-books. Or apps.
Nor pretty much everything you "Buy" online that doesn't get shipped
to your home in a cardboard box.
Those long End User License Agreements you
have to read before you use a new piece of software? Those are are legally
binding, because you've clicked a button labeled "Agree." But for
some reason, online retailers can label their buttons "Buy" when they
actually mean "Rent," and there's nothing we can do about it save
filing a lawsuit. READ MORE !
