Consumers @#$%$! by DRM Scheme Once Again: HarperCollins eBook Store Close

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Harmon

But it is important for everyone to stop overstating the situation, and stop ceding the high ground to the corporations who are trying to convince us that we don't own what we have paid for.

Good luck with that. Unfortunately, there seems to be a certain segment of sheep (oops, I meant people) out there that will believe anything the corporations tell them, regardless of it's actual validity.

[EricLandes]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Good luck with that. Unfortunately, there seems to be a certain segment of sheep (oops, I meant people) out there that will believe anything the corporations tell them, regardless of it's actual validity.

I believe they're referred to, in most areas of the country, as "politicians."

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by tammycravit

Here's a third reason. The DMCA says (17 USC 1201(a)(1)(B) that the anti-circumvention prohibitions do not apply "to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title". Though, to my knowledge, this provision has not been well tested in court, I think you could argue that circumventing DRM which, because of an action by the publisher, bars you from reading an e-book you purchased, would render you "adversely affected" in your "ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works."

However, until courts start seeing litigation about these issues, about the best that we can say about the DMCA is "this is what it says, and who knows what it means."

Tammy (disclaimer: I am a paralegal, but not an attorney)

You left out an important part of the quote:

...that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).

Subparagraph C refers to the list of six exceptions adopted by the Librarian of Congress, with the most relevant one being:

(6) Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

There's no right to circumvent DRM even if making a copy would qualify as fair use under the copyright statute.

If you break DRM for "private gain or commercial advantage," you've committed a crime. If you do it otherwise, it's a civil offense with statutory damages of $200 to $2,500. (Or someone can sue for actual damages, assuming they could prove them.)

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If you break DRM for "private gain or commercial advantage," you've committed a crime. If you do it otherwise, it's a civil offense with statutory damages of $200 to $2,500. (Or someone can sue for actual damages, assuming they could prove them.)

Here's something I noticed last time I read §1203.

Any person injured by a violation of section 1201 or 1202 may bring a civil action in an appropriate United States district court for such violation.

(My bold) Now it seems to me that to bring a civil there must be some evidence of injury. I can't see that removal of DRM for private use causes any kind of injury, and so a civil action can't be brought.

But perhaps this is some special legal use of the word.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

If you do it otherwise, it's a civil offense with statutory damages of $200 to $2,500. (Or someone can sue for actual damages, assuming they could prove them.)

If you do it for personal use only, then nobody will ever know (and probably wouldn't even care if they did).

[Penforhire]

Well, never say never. It is conceivable that when you travel your hard drive or other electronic files will eventually be examined. If you strip DRM from something that is only available with DRM that seems like obvious evidence of nefarious behavior. Here, let me take off my tin foil hat and show you...

[JSWolf]

But really, I cannot see a judge saying "You removed the DRM and you did not share it or give it out. I'm throwing the book at you. 1 year in jail and $25,000 fine. Now don't ever do it again."

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But really, I cannot see a judge saying "You removed the DRM and you did not share it or give it out. I'm throwing the book at you. 1 year in jail and $25,000 fine. Now don't ever do it again."

Do not attempt to confuse the issue with Earth Logic.

We all know that removing DRM is a vile act, performed only by the kind of uncontrolled degenerates who pay for their books before reading them. Wouldn't want to encourage that kind of people; they might buy more books in the future, and then where would we be?

[thrawn_aj]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

There's no right to circumvent DRM even if making a copy would qualify as fair use under the copyright statute.

If you break DRM for "private gain or commercial advantage," you've committed a crime. If you do it otherwise, it's a civil offense with statutory damages of $200 to $2,500. (Or someone can sue for actual damages, assuming they could prove them.)

If the DMCA is considered on its own as the sole authority in this matter and all precedents to the contrary are ignored, then yes - that is absolutely correct.

However, remember that precedents are extremely powerful in US law. Since I am not a lawyer, I'll refer you to Xenophon's post here - also see the link to his earlier post within that (both of these are very short posts). The essence of the problem is that the law is self-contradictory in the matter of claiming to respect existing fair use rights (in its preamble) but making a necessary step in this direction explicitly illegal (DRM removal).

Therefore, it is a matter for the courts to sort out and is not a cut and dried "this is illegal" kind of issue. It would be like having a law that says you have a right to buy liquor on Sundays while at the same time making leaving your house on Sundays illegal (the DRM thing is about as easy to enforce as this absurdity I made up). Lazy (or corrupt or merely incompetent) legislators who fail to see conflicts between laws cause such contradictions. All it takes is one politico with his snout too deep in the trough to get a law on the books that is incompatible with existing laws. A system that allows for contradictions in its basic legal structure is not a system that should be allowed to remain untested - that's where the courts come in. A law that no DA even attempts to enforce is clearly not one that the legal system takes seriously.

Anyway, I don't think there's any reason for me to go on about the stupidity of these laws when all you were doing was pointing out a very valid factual point about it (which I fully agree with by the way, given the qualifications I made in my first line) - just know that until the contradictions are resolved (presumably by a lawsuit), we really don't know on which side a court of law will come down on - and in the end that case law is the one that takes precedence. These are not laws of nature that they have unambiguous meanings independently of of existing case law.

And we're still waiting for much earlier "violations" of similar laws such as book-scanning, breaking MP3 drm and backing up computer software by breaking copy-protection on CDs (for personal use without distribution) to make it to court. In some cases, the laws were fixed before this ever happened (software) and in other cases (like book-scanning), they were simply left unenforced because enforcing them would be massively silly. With the advent of DRM free mp3s, that issue became a non-issue without ever being legally resolved in any way. Again, without distribution, no prosecutor has been foolish enough (yet) to attempt prosecution for any of these "violations".

I imagine ebook DRM removal will simply join things like book-scanning in the enormous heap of unenforced and/or unenforceable laws that no arm of law enforcement takes seriously - just think of all the silly laws from old times that are still on the books. I don't see anyone exhorting their fellow citizens to follow those laws just because they are laws and they must be followed.

[tammycravit]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

You left out an important part of the quote:

Subparagraph C refers to the list of six exceptions adopted by the Librarian of Congress

This is true, but as others have pointed out, there are indications that the DMCA exemptions adopted by the Librarian of Congress are not exclusive of other provisions of the law, and other provisions of the general scheme of US copyright law. There's a principle of statutory interpretation which states, in a nutshell, that when a court is interpreting a single provision of law, it should view that provision in the context of the whole body of law of which it is a part, with the aim of harmonizing all parts of the law. (Since I'm in California, see the California Supreme Court's comments in Walker v. Superior Court (1988) 47 Cal.3d 112, 131; but the rules of statutory interpretation are pretty uniform from place to place within the US).

Since the DMCA states that "Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title" (17 USC 1201(c)(1)), I don't think you can pick out the anti-circumvention provision, in isolation from the rest of the statute, and say that it makes a clear statement that stripping DRM for personal use is illegal. I think a strong argument could be made that stripping DRM to re-enable access to content which you purchased and to which you lost access due to the actions of the content provider would not be a violation of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA. But I also stand behind my statement that until a court of law actually decides this issue, the real answer is "who the heck knows".