In April of 2019 Microsoft decided to close its eBook store, and in doing so taking every book with it. Along with Apple announcing its retirement of the iTunes brand, developments like these call into question, can these companies just take away a product I bought?
Under the First Sale Doctrine of copyright law, once a medium containing copyrighted work is bought, it is yours to keep, sell, or destroy. Thereby, a physical copy of a book, is a trade good and vendible item. However, a clear distinction is made for the digital version of that book, which functionally, legally and culturally are not treated the same.
As Varian (1997) pointed out in the 90s, “information goods” have special characteristics in that although they have large fixed costs of production, they have small variable costs of reproduction. This calls for value-based pricing techniques compares to cost-based, and increases the importance of for differential pricing such as versioning. However, it calls into question, are these eBooks actually goods, or can they be better understood as services. As we have entered what has been heralded the “age of access”, when handing over money to own your book, you are actually only paying for access to the book. According to the terms and conditions of every big eBook store, this book you purchased can be taken away at any moment. When purchasing your book, what you have often actually bought is a non-transferable license to consume that book in restricted ways.
Thereby, when Microsoft decided to close its eBook store – which is treated as a service – it was not recalling the books it had sold, rather it terminated access to them. These books therefore still have intellectual property, just the digital copies disappeared from owners’ libraries. With access-based models becoming the norm, and tech giants wielding increasing power, the question surfaces if these companies should reserve this right to take away content paid for by consumers?
Thereby the moral may be if you really like a book, you may consider picking up a physical copy. Although it may certainly degrade over time, at least it cannot be vaporised simply by a company’s decision to stop their service.
References:
Lee, D. (2019). When this eBook store closes, your books disappear too. [online] BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47810367 [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].
Mardon, R. (2019). Do we really own anything in the digital age?. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/digital-age-ebook-ownership-streaming-a8866981.html [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].
Stim, R. (2019). What Rights the First Sale Doctrine Gives to a Purchaser of a Copyrighted Work. [online] www.nolo.com. Available at: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/the-first-sale-doctrine.html [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].
Varian, H. (1997). Versioning Information Goods. Digital Information and Intellectual Property. [online] Available at: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hal/Papers/version.pdf [Accessed 17 Oct. 2019].
Hey Ronja,
Thank you for this article I never thought about this phenomenon and the risk of losing the book. Usually, when people discuss this subject, the debate turns around the pleasure to read on a physical book more than on a tab or computer. Nevertheless, e-books are very practical to bring everywhere and are often easier to find especially if you are looking for a foreign book. I don’t feel like people are ready to give up on physical books, personally I am m not. But it was a more sentimental than rational. The risk of losing the book will give a better argument to the partisan of physical books.