
What We Buy When We "Buy Now" - colinprince
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2778072
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golemotron
Companies should not be able to legally use the words "buy" or "purchase" for
anything that can have license or access revoked or does not allow transfer of
ownership.

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Mountain-Jack
Amen to that. It cannot get more misleading than that.

Using the word "buy" instead of "borrow" is done willfully to mislead the
consumer as they know that the consumer would otherwise be less likely to
enter into the transaction. Buying implies that you have the power of having
ownership to a non-exclusive single copy of the work wherein the ownership
lies in the ability to command over that ownership (by, for example, giving it
to somebody else).

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kybernetyk
You might also argue that people are buying a license and thus "buy" is
appropriate.

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Drakim
Then it should say "Buy a license now!" rather than "Buy a product now!"

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mattmaroon
It just says buy now. I've never seen a button that said "buy a product now".

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wtetzner
But it's always next to a picture or description of the product, not a
license. That seems pretty misleading.

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newjersey
I don't like the whole "own it on Blu-ray and DVD" scheme either. I would love
to see the end of copyright and just some sort of compensation for releasing
unauthorized private data without any significant public utility but I don't
know how to define things like public utility.

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awinter-py
Love that when amzn chose a book to 'disappear' off every kindle it was 1984.
Talk about testing the waters.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/172953/amazon_kindle_1984_law...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/172953/amazon_kindle_1984_lawsuit.html)

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noonespecial
Maybe we need a new word? Something short for "buy a lease like license for an
indeterminate time". Halfway between buying and renting. "Brent?"

Ex: "Hey can I borrow your Star Wars movies for a marathon this weekend?"

"Sorry bro, all of mine are brented."

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wtetzner
How about just "License now!"

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dang
Url changed from [https://boingboing.net/2016/05/13/clicking-buy-now-
doesnt.ht...](https://boingboing.net/2016/05/13/clicking-buy-now-doesnt.html),
which points to this.

