Can someone paste the text of this? wsj paywall is making wsj useless again.
EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#32While 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?
>> Should phones on a contract be regarded as services too?
Legally, you own your phone, even when on contract.
Philosophically, the manufacturer and/or OS developer own most phones, even those not on contract.
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
I assume pdabbadabba meant "sold as a good".
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#34Can someone paste the text of this? wsj paywall is making wsj useless again.
Do a bing/google search for " eu-court-rules-e-books-are-services-not-goods-1425552050 " and link from there
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
do you think non-DRM'd ebooks will be seen as goods? Being digital, I can lend it or resell it but I would still own a copy, so how can that be a good?
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#36Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)
The argument is:
> The Court points out, first of all, that a reduced rate of VAT can apply only to supplies of goods and services covered by Annex III to the VAT Directive. That annex refers in particular to the ‘supply of books ... on all physical means of support’. The Court concludes that the reduced rate of VAT is applicable to a transaction consisting of the supply of a book found on a physical medium. While admittedly, in order to be able to read an electronic book, physical support (such as a computer) is required, such support is not included in the supply of electronic books, meaning that Annex III does not include the supply of such books within its scope. Moreover, the Court finds that the VAT Directive excludes any possibility of a reduced VAT rate being applied to ‘electronically supplied services’. The Court holds that the supply of electronic books is such a service. The Court rejects the argument that the supply of electronic books constitutes a supply of goods (and not a supply of services). Only the physical support enabling an electronic book to be read could qualify as ‘tangible property’ but such support is not part of the supply of electronic books.
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#38Paywall.
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The ruling doesn't say anything about rights, just the type of VAT to be applied
Re: EU Court Rules E-Books Are Services, Not Goods
#40Seeing how these days you're effectively "renting" any cloud-based DRM-enabled digital content, I think it makes more sense for them to be called services for which you get a "license to use" indefinite (i.e. limited , for as long as the deal vendor/publisher is in place) period of time.
IIRC, even some DRM-free digital content (e.g. iTunes downloads) are rented per the EULA. But yes... I agree that anything that is rented is more appropriately be defined as a service rather than a product.