The Indelible Bonobo Experience

If all the books on your shelf suddenly disappeared, you’d probably say you’d been robbed. But when a Norwegian woman lost access to her Kindle books without warning, she learned she had never owned them in the first place. Linn Jordet Nygaard, 30, an IT consultant from Oslo, said the debacle began two weeks ago when her Kindle stopped working; she later discovered she was locked out of her Kindle account, and could not access her library. (via Amazon tells customer she doesn’t own her e-books - thestar.com)

• In what appeared to be an administrative error, Nygaard was told her account had been closed for violating Amazon’s terms of service, and she was reminded that her e-books were not her property.
• Nygaard’s account was restored Monday, and Amazon is shipping her a new Kindle. But the story serves as a reminder that consumers don’t actually own their e-books or other digital media. They are licensing them — and the retailer can yank them back at any time.
• “It’s a real wake-up call for consumers,” said David Fewer, an intellectual property lawyer and director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic.
• The issue has come before the courts in the U.S., most notably in a 2010 case that effectively ruled the “first sale” doctrine — a copyright provision that allows buyers of physical books and CDs to sell them later — did not apply to digital media. But there is no explicit “first sale” doctrine in Canada and no similar cases have been argued, Hayes said.