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Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

It does nobody any good to have 1000 books on a single device if the whole thing is subject to revocation, especially when you paid full retail price for the privilege of being allowed to read it. This is regression.

What? You can still buy the paperback book, tons of my kindle books are $10 or less, and it very clearly benefits me, which is why I buy tons of Kindle books.

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You don't own the book itself though, you own a license to the book. The doctrine of first sale does not apply, and they can revoke your license at any time.

They have revoked licenses in the past and deleted books from people's devices. I know you have a physical file that contains the book, but that file is secured with DRM.

> You don't own the book itself though,

To be blunt: Who really cares?

I care that I can read it. After I have I don't see further use for the ownership.

Others can claim they can revoke my access before the read event occurs but the chance of that is so low that I imagine it rounds to 0%.

I mean if I'm only going to read a book once I'm not going to spend $10 on it. The only books I buy are books I'd like to own so I can read them again in the future. If I'm paying $10 to read a book once that basically makes Amazon into a really shitty library that also sells knockoff goods and forces their employees to work in sweatshop like conditions.

I’m aware, but I don’t really care. I judge the risk to be really small, and the convenience to more than make up for it. And since I can still get the physical book if I choose, it’s hard to argue that this extra option with its pros and cons is a regression.

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