I buy used books all the time here in Prague (MUCH cheaper than the real thing). I did it all the time back in Denver (the used book store near Kokoro’s rocks!). But I don’t know how that applies to ebooks (be it .lit, .pdb, .tr, .??? formats). If I buy an ebook and read it, can I then on-sell it to someone? On one hand, I’m buying something that I should be able to do with as I please. On the other hand, what stops me from copying and selling a book online? I mean, once I read it, all it is doing is sitting on my HDD like an old book on my bookshelf. I like to read old books twice (Ender’s Game) but most I just plow through and go on (Any novel by Stephen King- good to read, but read twice? No.)
What is the legal status on ebooks these days? Anyone know?
IANAL. I would imagine that if you sold the e-book to someone, you’d have to erase it from your computer, not unlike selling software you no longer want.
It is a very gray area. Legally, you cannot copy an e-book and give it to someone else – that’s a copyright violation. That is very difficult to police, however. That’s one reason why e-books are catching on slowly: authors rightfully want to get paid for their work, and don’t want someone giving them away without their consent.
E-books have various ways to deal with the issue. One is copy protection (though no copy protection scheme is unbreakable). Another is to use the honor system (Fictionwise does that and is doing quite well.
Remember, when you buy a book, you own the book, but not the words in it. It’s perfectly OK to sell or give away that book, but you can’t make copies of it (that is the “copy right” that gives “copyright” its name). You should be able to, say, sell your e-book reader and all the books on it, but once two copies are made, it’s a copyright violation (there’s also the issue of whether the author is willing to take you to court on it).
Copying a book without the author’s permission is violating his rights. It can badly hurt him financially* – if copies are circulating without payment, he’s not getting paid for them. There are also financial side effects on an author that aren’t obvious to the reader – loss of rights, for instance.
So right now, the move to e-books is slow and have been slowed even further by music file swapping.
*Some argue that making copies helps the author. Though this assertion shows a complete ignorance of the most basic of economic principles, a more important point is that the author should be the one who decides what happens to his property. What gives a stranger that right?