Eh, one “buys” the right to temporarily have the item on their device, until Amazon decides to revoke that right.
As OP said,
> I'm never buying e-books again.
I do something similar.
If the book is worth it, I buy it in material form.
If it’s not worth the bookshelf clutter it’ll cause, I just skip it.
But then again, most of my books aren’t on digital subjects, for that I usually rely on specs and articles, as tech is moving too quickly to be worth being nailed down on paper.
Those listings are usually honest. Misleading, yes, but nowhere in them does it state you are buying anything other than a box. The even more misleading ones, helped by the product name, are selling x-box boxes.
I'd argue that the “buy now” when viewing a Kindle edition listing, or Audible edition, is noticeably less honest, especially as you are usually at most on click away from the dead-tree editions where buy actually does mean buy. I'd have that iphone box that I'd legally bought for as long as I choose to own it, the seller can not revoke access to it arbitrarily like Amazon can, will, and sometimes has (1984 being the most famous and somewhat ironic example) with ebooks and audiobooks.
PSA that audible encryption can be stripped very easily with ffmpeg (`-activation_bytes`; for archival and interop purposes, naturally), and it's faster and easier to crack your personal encryption key than to figure out how to request it from audible servers.
What you describe is a lease. Leasing or renting specifically grants you the right to use something for a period of time without a transfer of ownership. If Amazon are leasing you a book, labelling the button "Buy" is fraud. The problem here is that trade laws were not written for digital-only items so Amazon and their ilk get away with this fraud.
This is so incredibly wrong I have to comment.
Most people's leases roll over into month-to-month. You can easily add clauses to say it goes on for an unlimited time until someone revokes.
Yeah, that's absolutely one way to look at it. It could be less, it could be more. However, I still have access to movies I "bought" well over a decade ago on Amazon Unbox, meanwhile every movie I've "rented" on the service I no longer have access to.
I'd say their record overall points to the license offering potentially more value over the short term defined rentals, if you're planning on watching the content again.
Amazon isn't hiding any of this, there's a link to this that's close to the "Buy" button on their site and they mention you're agreeing to it when you check out. It is pretty easy to read and comprehend, it is not exactly fine print.
FWIW in the above 1984 example it is because lots of people were publishing it when they had no rights to. I do agree that speaks volumes on Amazon not properly policing their platform and that they mishandled it. They should have instead properly credited people access to the properly licensed version.
Especially on Amazon, I don't think this holds muster when "buying" on Kindle is listed directly next to other options which are genuinely purchasing a book with nothing to differentiate that the Kindle one is not actually a purchase of a book.
As OP said,
> I'm never buying e-books again.
I do something similar.
If the book is worth it, I buy it in material form.
If it’s not worth the bookshelf clutter it’ll cause, I just skip it.
But then again, most of my books aren’t on digital subjects, for that I usually rely on specs and articles, as tech is moving too quickly to be worth being nailed down on paper.