Imagine, for a moment, that you want to buy The Complete Works of Primo Levi edited by talented translator Ann Goldstein. If you were to buy a new version of the hardcover collection on Amazon, the price is $58.40. If, however, you decided that rather than adorning your shelves with Levi, you wanted to download it to your e-reader, saving yourself paper and time, you would need to pay $59.49. It would cost you more not to physically own the books.

Of course, it’s just a difference of $1.09. But spend some time on Amazon and a trend becomes clear: Many (though certainly not all) digital versions cost more than their physical counterparts. The Blu-ray Disc of the Christmas classic Love, Actually costs a very reasonable $8.68, but to download and buy the HD version on Amazon Video costs $14.99. (To download and rent it costs $3.99, while a used version is only $2.37). Download Beyoncé’s Lemonade from Apple to your iPhone for $17.99, but get the CD on Amazon for just $15.76.

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We may be paying a premium for the convenience of digital objects—but there’s another cost beyond the extra couple of bucks you’re shelling out up-front. Mark Lemley, professor of law and director of the Program in Law, Science and Technology at Stanford Law School, said in an email, “customers get fewer rights in a digital copy than they do in a physical copy. I can loan, resell, or tear into pieces my physical book or CD. But the law won’t let me do the same thing with the digital copy I ‘buy.’ ” We’re paying more to be legally able to do less. Or, as Aaron Fellmeth has put it in Future Tense, “You bought it, but you don’t own it.”