Trouble is, you are bound by the license agreement, not by the text on the buttons, as the Conditions of Use and Sale makes clear, which is linked to on every page of Amazon's site.
Unless a judge decides that due to the manner in which it's sold, that it constitutes a sale under the law, and hence all your normal "I've bought a thing" rights come into play. Anything in the T&Cs that takes away the rights the law gives is hence null and invalid.
Agreed. But, we've yet to establish if indeed they do take away rights that the law provides. I would have thought HN would have uncovered such a law by now.
A cursory glance at the Wikipedia article on DRM suggests the law is favourable torwards DRM and all that that entails.
At least as far as the US is concerned, shrink wrap licenses restricting your fair use rights were not received favorably by courts up until the late 90s. This has changed somewhat in the past decade and change. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of the supreme court on the 'first sale' case, which is a closely related topic.