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EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

wsj.com

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Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#21

Post by tormeh »

pilif wrote: post #16

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us consumers in the mid- to longer term. For all intents and purposes, eBooks are services. Between DRM, vendor lock-in and other consumer hostile "features" of ebooks, seeing them as services and consequently taxing them as services totally makes sense. As an eb…

Totally agree. Ebooks, unless sold in a DRM-free format with no restrictions on reselling, are services.

Goods are a thing you own, can use for whatever purpose you want and can sell on after you've bought it.

This way of looking at things present new questions: Should phones on a contract be regarded as services too?

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#22

Post by dragonwriter »

wahsd wrote: post #18
pilif wrote: post #16

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us consumers in the mid- to longer term. For all intents and purposes, eBooks are services. Between DRM, vendor lock-in and other consumer hostile "features" of ebooks, seeing them as services and consequently taxing them as services totally makes sense. As an eb…

I don't think you appreciate the impact. Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. This seems at least to be an affirmation that ebooks cannot ever be owned by anyone but the publisher and there will now need to be legal mechanisms for revocation of ebooks from your device and reporting and even penalizing and prosecution of anyone who prevents revocation or even simply does no…

> I don't think you appreciate the impact.

I don't think you appreciate the degree to which definitions of categories in law (and thus rulings on the boundaries of such classifications) are specific to narrow domains or even particular enactments. This is about categories under European Value-Added Tax (VAT) rules, not the general philosophical category you are describing.

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#23

Post by rdudek »

pdabbadabba wrote: post #8
boo_radley wrote: post #5

Is it, strictly speaking, possible to pirate a service?

The product/service distinction is orthogonal to the relevant category in (U.S.) copyright law: the work. Only "works" can be copyrighted, but a work can be provided as part of a service, sold as a product, or one of any number of other possibilities. Nice try though. :)

But it's still a product! I can sum this up that all services are products but not all products are services. So if I were to publish a book which would classify as "work" which I can copyright. At this point, I have a product that doesn't exist yet other than a word document ready to be sent off to publishers. The publisher will take my "work" and print it out into a physical book which we can clasify as a product. They can also format it into a electronic version of the book which is also a product. Now, how the publisher can send it off to a service provider like Amazon Kindle to distribute it (that's a service)

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#24

Post by gsnedders »

legulere wrote: post #20
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an extra tidbit of information: Luxembourg was already violating EU rules for having a VAT percentage of less than 5%.

Ireland even has a 0% rate on books according to wikipedia. Lower than 5% tax rates seem to be pretty common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_value_added_tax#...

The UK and Ireland have 0% VAT rates which are allowed as they were essentially grandfathered in. They aren't allowed to be expanded, however.

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#25

Post by detaro »

wahsd wrote: post #18
pilif wrote: post #16

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us consumers in the mid- to longer term. For all intents and purposes, eBooks are services. Between DRM, vendor lock-in and other consumer hostile "features" of ebooks, seeing them as services and consequently taxing them as services totally makes sense. As an eb…

I don't think you appreciate the impact. Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. This seems at least to be an affirmation that ebooks cannot ever be owned by anyone but the publisher and there will now need to be legal mechanisms for revocation of ebooks from your device and reporting and even penalizing and prosecution of anyone who prevents revocation or even simply does no…

I'm not entirely clear if this decision was about all e-books or only those that are provided as services (the article cites Amazon, which I would classify as a service, and it is not entirely clear if a download of an unrestricted file is covered or not)

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#26

Post by tormeh »

wahsd wrote: post #18
pilif wrote: post #16

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us consumers in the mid- to longer term. For all intents and purposes, eBooks are services. Between DRM, vendor lock-in and other consumer hostile "features" of ebooks, seeing them as services and consequently taxing them as services totally makes sense. As an eb…

I don't think you appreciate the impact. Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. This seems at least to be an affirmation that ebooks cannot ever be owned by anyone but the publisher and there will now need to be legal mechanisms for revocation of ebooks from your device and reporting and even penalizing and prosecution of anyone who prevents revocation or even simply does no…

Except for the legal mechanisms it's all in place already. That the implicit becomes explicit is good, in my opinion.

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#28

Post by venomsnake »

Oletros wrote: post #19
Fdndjxjxr wrote: post #10

Richard Stallman warned us about this kind of thing: he warned us and we laughed.

I'm trying to understand what has to do the VAT class with anything Stallman has said

Lets say that a ruling that entitles consumers for the same right for digital book "services" as for physical would have been preferable.

Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods

#30

Post by pilif »

wahsd wrote: post #18
pilif wrote: post #16

While short term, this sucks, I also think that in the way that eBooks work these days, this ruling is actually fair and it might well fix the situation for us consumers in the mid- to longer term. For all intents and purposes, eBooks are services. Between DRM, vendor lock-in and other consumer hostile "features" of ebooks, seeing them as services and consequently taxing them as services totally makes sense. As an eb…

I don't think you appreciate the impact. Services are something you lease and use for a specific period and you never own. This seems at least to be an affirmation that ebooks cannot ever be owned by anyone but the publisher and there will now need to be legal mechanisms for revocation of ebooks from your device and reporting and even penalizing and prosecution of anyone who prevents revocation or even simply does no…

I totally appreciate the impact which is why I said "this sucks right now".

The thing is that publishers who continue their user-hostile practices can now be disrupted by more user-friendly publishers whose offerings will only be taxed at 5% VAT instead of the 20 plus % the user-hostile variant is charged for.

We'll have to see whether publishers can keep this up or whether they have to fix their hostile attitude. I hope it's the latter, because if it's the former, then ebooks are dead.

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