Well considering they're issuing refunds I don't really see the big deal. If you want to own something forever* buy a PDF or a physical copy.
*until you lose it or ruin it
They kind of did the same thing with Groove, I guess people were just not using the service enough.
Which thing in particular?
I'm sure from the legal point of view those books were licensed to you, not sold. Just like Steam games. It's a really generous that Microsoft has decided to refund everything because they are not legally obligated to do so.
they can just rebuy the book elsewhere with their refund money
Microsoft had an ebook program?
No, that's completely ridiculous. If they gave you a refund, then you have un-bought it.
There is absolutely no way in hell that you can expect every single company that sells things to have a license to distribute DRM-free copies of whatever they're selling. The fact that publishers would never agree is one tiny facet of the reason why that's not feasible.
How about reading terms of service before you pay for something? You can always choose a different store.
12. Software Licenses and Use Rights. Software and other digital content made available through the Store is licensed, not sold, to you.
That's sort of the problem. How do you legally define that? They can't "own" the book. From a legal standpoint, ownership belongs to the author/publisher. Which is why licenses exist, which gives you permission to use that book without declaring it as owned. Technically, when you buy physical book, you don't own the book contents either. You own the physical media its printed on, but it doesn't grant you the right to make copies of its content or convert it to a different format. So you own the book, but you are more or less licensed to use the content of the book.
I suppose you can ban the clause the licenses can be revoked at any time once purchased. That's an improvement, but now what happens if the service you bought the license from goes belly up, like what MS did. Now your back at square one. You can't force digital stores to stay open forever. Only solution there is a "universal license" so you can redeem it elsewhere (which sounds messy) or removing DRM (haha fat chance).
If you think the law will ever rule in favor of banning DRM, you are simply delusional. Disney was able to single handedly bump up the time limit on copyright to an unreasonable number. Repeatedly.
And even if it did happen, it would essentially kill digital distribution, or at least severely damage it. The only companies that would be all on board with that idea are already DRM-free. Not all companies are that forward thinking.
Thats a pretty shitty way of justifying megacorps to monopolize entire industries.
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