I want to know if that means Random House believes *other* customers own the ebooks they bought. If so, that turns the whole "licensed ebooks" game on its head.
Like PG, I wonder if this is a move to get around the FBT Productions ruling, in which a music company sold "licenses" to customers, but gave artists lower royalties based on "sales." Some musicians took them to court, which decided that the permanent-use DRM'd mp3s were "licenses"--and they owed the artists 50% of those sales, not whatever piddly amount they get for sales.
Ditto for authors... while most contracts specify royalties for ebook sales, royalties for "licenses" for use are different. And authors should be looking through their contracts, to establish whether they could be getting payment for "licensed use" instead of "sales" of books--and demanding that their publishers tell them which one ebooks are.
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Like PG, I wonder if this is a move to get around the FBT Productions ruling, in which a music company sold "licenses" to customers, but gave artists lower royalties based on "sales." Some musicians took them to court, which decided that the permanent-use DRM'd mp3s were "licenses"--and they owed the artists 50% of those sales, not whatever piddly amount they get for sales.
Ditto for authors... while most contracts specify royalties for ebook sales, royalties for "licenses" for use are different. And authors should be looking through their contracts, to establish whether they could be getting payment for "licensed use" instead of "sales" of books--and demanding that their publishers tell them which one ebooks are.