[thejenk]

It doesn't make sense to me that eBook retailers can claim they're selling licences to view books, instead of the books themselves. If I were to look for 1984 for a kindle, I'd:

1. Search Amazon for "1984 George Orwell" 2. Select the first option (paperback) 3. See the "Format" selector 4. Select the kindle edition 5. Click "Buy with one-click"

Notably, between 4 and 5, reading the entire page gives no indication that the kindle format is fundamentally different from the paperback in regards to who actually owns the copy after purchase.

There may be a notice buried in a EULA that you agree to when setting the device up, but it may be hard to argue that it means they can tell you at the time of purchase they're selling you a book while actually selling you a licence.

[inlined]

Did you pick 1984 because ironically it was once wiped from all kindles?

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

[thejenk]

Yes, actually. Because that event was referenced in the original article, which made it the last book I had thought about.

[grimskin]

I'd like to be devil's advocate here - in case of Orwell books, given that publisher had no rights for them, the situation is similar to the selling of stolen goods.

[patrick5415]

Sure, but if the local grocer realizes he sold me stolen eggs, he doesn’t get to send his henchmen to my house in the middle of the night to steal them back.

The amazon/Orwell fiasco was the moment I decided to never buy a kindle and steer clear of anything with drm.

[thejenk]

I actually agree that it's a situation that's unrelated to whether the retailer is selling licenses or copies of the book, which is what my original comment is about. I do think that Amazon could have handled the situation better though. It probably would have been to everyone's benefit for them to work out the issue with the rights holders instead of passing their mistake forward to their customers. They may have tried to do that behind closed doors and failed, of course.