[latexr]

And while you’re at it, do you expect to sue Steam, and the App Stores, and most other digital marketplaces owned by billionaire corporations? You’re not going to win those lawsuits with such a flimsy argument.

They could just as well argue that you are not buying the book, but a license to access it under certain conditions. A movie theatre is a comparable example: You say you bought a ticket, not that you rented access to the movie, but it’s only valid for one specific viewing despite being a sale.

[reassess_blind]

A movie theatre is a bad comparison. Nowhere does it say “Buy the movie” and it’s clear to the purchaser that they’re purchasing a one time viewing. That’s not the case with an Amazon eBook where the marketing and reasonable expectation of the average consumer is they’re buying the eBook itself.

Not that I necessarily agree with the other comment either.

[globular-toast]

Exactly. The button should just say "read on Kindle" or "watch on Prime" etc. Including the word "buy" is at best misleading and at worst deceptive.

[latexr]

> That’s not the case with an Amazon eBook where the marketing and reasonable expectation of the average consumer is they’re buying the eBook itself.

Good luck proving that in court without reasonable doubt.

Look at the image again. It’s extremely vague about what you are in fact buying.

https://blog.pixelmelt.dev/content/images/2025/10/image.png

[reassess_blind]

Whether it’s correct, and whether you can argue it in court against a multi-trillion dollar company’s legal team are indeed two very different things.

I wouldn’t be confident in court, but I would be confident that most users expect that ebooks they “bought” in the past could be viewed on their new Kobo eBook reader.

[latexr]

> Whether it’s correct, and whether you can argue it in court against a multi-trillion dollar company’s legal team are indeed two very different things.

Exactly. And because this conversation started because someone was asking about suing them, what you can argue in court is what matters for this thread.

I don’t agree with what Amazon is doing and thus don’t buy DRM ebooks from them, but that’s beside the point of the argument.

> I wouldn’t be confident in court

Which was my argument. Everything else you added were tangential arguments no one was refuting in the first place.

> but I would be confident that most users expect that ebooks they “bought” in the past could be viewed on their new Kobo eBook reader.

You think most people who buy books for ereaders expect that when they buy a book for Kindle, they can just load it up on their Kobo? I wouldn’t be that confident without a survey, but I would welcome seeing one.

People don’t seem to have trouble understanding that when you buy an app on iOS, that doesn’t work on Android, and vice-versa. It is plausible they might have the same intuitive understanding regarding the Kindle and Kobo stores.

[reassess_blind]

You’re right. The answer to whether they could be sued for this is obviously yes, because they have been, and Amazon won.

I got sidetracked. Really, my only argument is that that your theatre comparison is flawed.

[latexr]

Most comparisons are flawed, analogies are seldom perfect. The point is that it’s the type of argument they could use.