Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
... To strip DRM (without the actual and specific justification of site shutdown) is to admit to being a person that signs an agreement with the full intention of breaking it - and that's hardly a reputation I'd like to acquire.
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OK, I was mostly with you until this point. That is absolutely not the case. Stripping DRM not only is not against the law (it doesn't even violate the DMCA) at no point does it break any agreement I've signed digitally or otherwise.
When considering the legality of removing DRM, you need to look at the law. The DMCA is the primary legal tool for protecting digital content, but it does have specific clauses for circumvention for the purpose of interoperability. I would argue that decryption to use the content on an alternate platform is covered, but the fact is that this is not tested. There is no case law regarding individuals who have circumvented DRM for their legally purchased content. I'm not talking about file sharing, that's a different ball game. This is just the decryption part.
Regarding the authors of the tools used to circumvent DRM, there has been only one case that I know of that was brought to trial (United States v. ElcomSoft and Sklyarov) and Sklyarov won the case. Although Dimitry Sklyarov wrote an application for ElcomSoft to remove DRM from legally purchased PDFs, a jury found that there were no violations of the DMCA involved. One part of how the application worked is that it would not decrypt content that was not legally purchased. It used the same decryption keys that the reader application used. This is similar to the tools currently available for eBook decryption. Until there is more case law around this issue it will not be sufficiently proven. I do not believe that content providers are willing to bring suit against individuals who decrypt what they have purchased, it would be a horrible PR nightmare and a very risky legal battle.
Aside from that, I think you do raise several good points. If I buy a book and leave it in my house when it's on fire, then I've lost that book. It doesn't matter that it's an eBook or a paper book. The publisher or reseller is not required to keep a copy for me forever, although many eBook resellers do offer to make it available for as long as they have that service. That's a problem that doesn't have anything to do with DRM, it's all on you. I can make
backups of my electronic media with or without leaving drm in place, just as I can make backups of my print media using a photo copier or a scanner. Publishers may not like that, but there is no law against it.
- Ed