Yet if the person who sold you a bicycle decided to take it back, it would still be theft, even if they left in its place the exact cash amount you paid for it.

What other items should corporations be able to confiscate (with a refund!) without your consent? Everything they sold you? If so, what would you have left?

Fraud is a better term than theft but this probably does not constitutes fraud, that would depend on the terms of license and sale. MS is not confiscating physical property just discontinuing a service that was hosting digital books (I presume if they are confiscating them) and unlocking DRM for those licensed books to be readable. I'm not advocating MS's play here I just don't agree the term theft is accurate for this, just as an individual is not stealing by reading/hearing/watching/witnessing copywrighted information no matter anyone's terms.

Of course legally it's not theft - all those lengthy licenses and disclaimers drawn up by legal departments that you have to agree to for an alarmingly large and growing list of goods and services make sure of that.

But legal or not, the effect is the same - they took your stuff. Unless we do something, this, and the violations of other rights you signed away, will become ever more commonplace. Right to a fair trial is already heavily restricted by omnipresent mandatory arbitration agreements. The fact that it's totally legal is of little comfort.

>the effect is the same - they took your stuff.

After I wrote my reply I reflected that in this case MS is actively, directly depriving you of access to the your content, a required component of theft, but IMO if a refund is issued before access is revoked then the requirmemts for theft still seem unmet. I also feel customers should be free to circumvent DRM technologies... which would allow the market to help mitigate this type of decieptful, manipulative licensing of content.

Seems pretty shitty to not refund the device purchases though.

True, but even that detail doesn't stop people from being upset at this. I remember that early on in the Kindle's life Amazon had to buy back pirated books (including a version of 1984) that had been erroneously sold to customers, and even the refund didn't stop people from being angry about it.

Because that bit of information has nothing to do with the point of the story.

Folks don't want refunds, they want the item they paid for.

Usually the decision of selling someting cannot be revoked by the selling party, at least not when we are talking of (physical) property. Licenses are trickier ;)

Yes, because when I buy a book I'm totally okay with reading a handful of dollar bills instead.