Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
No, why? If I give a copy of my media files to my family and close acquaintances FOR FREE, as allowed by my proposal for "social DRM", that's not publishing. On the other side, if I ask money for giving you a copy of a file I am doing something (reselling) that I have not bought the right to do, and the publisher can sue me... and it will sue me, considering that a pointer to me is embedded in the file.
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But what you desscibe (bolded) does currently constitute publishing, and would require re-defining all the terminology currently used for such things, or require that the purchaser also be given limited publishing rights. Profit has nothing to do with it.
This points to another issue (since we're not going to reach agreement on Mary culpability for Bill's actions) - defining acceptable limits of copying. Some families have 10 or more people all under the same roof. Others may have only a handful, but spread out across the globe. You can build rights for lending into your system, but how / where should the limits be?
As someone already touched on, ebooks are not the same as paper books. Much of the desire for additional "rights" comes from not understanding the difference. I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about Average Joe who doesn't get why he shouldn't be able to give the book to anyone who might want to read it, just like a paper book. It's not a paper book. Then you have the casual sharers who justify running their little sneakernet of ebooks, movies and music with the justification of "I could do it with books, DVDs and CDs" without acknowledging the issue that they are still enjoying the same materials and have no expectation that the copies will be returned to them when the person is finished with them.
While I agree that we need changes, I think that a lot of people who want changes are moving in the wrong direction because of the attachment to the concepts of physical media. Instead of aiming "with more rights come more responsibilities" at Mary, I think we should start looking at making publishers and content providers more responsible for the rights they already have.
For example, let's look at the Steam game platform. Ages ago a statement was made that, should there be a danger of going bye-bye, they would make sure people could still access their games. This has almost taken on urban legend status, because it's hard to find an original source to link, just references to it with no trackable source. However, this was never added to the ToS. My point is this - we can start by legally requiring that DRM systems have some sort of fallback plan. Games can have patches released to remove the server connection requirement. Ebooks, if not released from DRM, could have the licenses internally transferred to a system requiring local authentication only for a final download. Notices can be issued to let people know to download their content if they haven't yet.
Part of the problem is that the complaints I hear in real life are from people who want the convenience of, say, Amazon's system of storing their ebook purchases online and being able to read / sync on a plethora of devices, but they want to be able to do what they want with their ebooks. You can't have it both ways.
Lending books is important to my mom, so whenever the subject comes up, I tell her to stick with paper. I don't lend... anything, really, so that part isn't an issue for me. My concern is the future health of DRM systems - making sure I have access to my books. Yes, I have changed platforms, but I knew going in that formats / DRM could be a sticking point and acted accordingly. Which brings me to my next point - when someone purchases a Kindle / Nook / whathaveyou device or ebook for the first time, instead of a tiny link to a ToS that no one reads, an explanation of DRM and ecosystems and how they work (the features they add as well as the inherent restrictions thereof) should be presented. It doesn't have to be complicated or lengthy - that's what the ToS is for. My other suggested requirement is that DRM status be clearly listed on the product page of every single ebook.
You want people to be responsible - I get that, but publishers and ebook retailers need to be responsible, too, by making sure people can make educated buying decisions on the front end, and making sure that they are handling their systems in a responsible, forward-looking manner.