Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
What's this about free as in both speech and in beer? Free beer is gratis; you get the beer and it doesn't cost you anything. Free speech is libre; you can do what you want with it. It's quite possible for an ebook to be gratis but not libre (for example, a $0.00 Kindle book), or for it to be libre but not gratis (buying a DVD collection of public-domain works).
How does a DRM-free but copyrighted book fit into that? Simple: When I buy that book, I'm entering an agreement of honor with the publisher and the author. They're not stopping me from doing things I have a right to do with that book, and in return I'm not doing things I have no right to do with it. In more concrete terms, they're not controlling what I can read it on, and I'm not giving copies to anyone. While it's technically libre, it's not morally libre, and I act accordingly. That's what any civilized human being would do.
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I agree with your sentiment, but you confuse DRM with non-
libre.
A book that is
libre, like software that is
libre, is a book that you and your friends can legally share, copy, revise, make use of, write fan-fiction about, modify, quote, and otherwise use without legal restriction from copyright. A
libre book may well be copyrighted, but, if it is, the owner of the copyright has made it
libre by allowing all of the above.
A book that is not
libre, like software that is not
libre is one in which you cannot do those things.
Calibre is
libre and we are the better for it, because we can all copy it, modify it and use it without restriction (or at least without most restrictions - the minimum necessary to keep it
libre).
DRM is simply a tool used to force you not to do things that you are not allowed to do with a non-
libre book. Even with the DRM removed, the book remains non-
libre due to copyright restrictions. It is not the non-
libre status that most object to. It is the fact that the DRM prevents even those things that we
are allowed to do with the non-
libre book, like read it on all our devices.