> Sellen has learned that many people do not feel much ownership of e-books because of their impermanence and intangibility: "They think of using an e-book, not owning an e-book," she says.
I'm sure most people haven't thought it through that deeply, but when you acquire an ebook, you don't actually own it. All you have is a license to use it for the duration of your life. You can't bequeath it to your heirs when you die, and you can't give it to a friend when you're done reading it. In most cases, you can't even lend it to a friend for a limited period.
> You can't bequeath it to your heirs when you die, and you can't give it to a friend when you're done reading it
Related to this, something that has bothered me about using an e-book reader, and having a 2 year old son, is that I don't have the books on display for him to "stumble upon".
For now he's too young to discover new books off the shelf and read them to himself, but I'm conscious of this limitation with e-books. They're all "locked up" on the device. I got into reading because The Hobbit was on my parent's bookshelf and the cover of the dragon caught my attention.
I've thought about it for a while now and my solution is to read new e-books on a reader, and if they meet my ambiguous criteria of being "shelf worthy" I'll buy physical copies and put them on the shelf, in the hopes that my son will find them.
depending on your definition of "own", you might not own a physical book either. you just have a transferable license. you can read it, you can give it to a friend or heir, but you can't make a copy and both read it at the same time.
Under US law, this isn’t a “transferable license”. You have bought the book and enjoy the rights under the first sale doctrine. The fact that there exist copyright laws that prevent you from doing certain things with the book does not make this into a license. That would be like saying that “you don’t buy a baseball bat, you acquire a limited license under which you may hit balls, but not people, with it.
I'm sure most people haven't thought it through that deeply, but when you acquire an ebook, you don't actually own it. All you have is a license to use it for the duration of your life. You can't bequeath it to your heirs when you die, and you can't give it to a friend when you're done reading it. In most cases, you can't even lend it to a friend for a limited period.