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Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
Of course not, they do. But unless you actually do publish something you're not a publisher, and not subject to any applying copyright provisions. Just like owning a printing press doesn't make you a publisher per se. ...
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I can only repeat myself. Computers give you the opportunity, DRM attempts to make it more difficult. That explains DRM. There are even potential legal arguments in favour of using DRM: that an intellectual property owner is legally obliged to take steps to try and protect their property if they ever intend to ask for legal remedy (disclaimer: whether DRM itself can really be considered a requirement I have not the expertise to say, but I can envisage legal advice being given to that effect - witness the useless footers on corporate emails).
I am not saying that every person that buys a book is going to violate the trust of whatever agreement they make. But I am saying that some have blatantly said on these forums that they strip DRM in direct contradiction to the agreements they were aware of at the time they made them. So much for trust, so becomes obvious the reasons for trying to find effective DRM. I find such behaviour ... anomalous; inconsistent with my sense of honour and what is right. No one made them make such agreements in contradiction of their own beliefs, and it's not as if they had no other choice. This is not a
A Man for All Seasons sort of situation, they are in no sense doing anything morally right in choosing to break their agreement, the morally right behaviour is to not make that agreement in the first place.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
That is a very good and valid question. Unfortunately I don't have an anser to it, either. I am not anti-copyright, I just don't think that the ever-increasing terms of protection really serve the authors. Currently copyright protection is life + 70 years before the work reverts to the public domain: how does that serve the original creator? If it were life + 10 years, or 30 years after creation, or something inbetween, wouldn't that be just as good and serve the same purpose, namely to provide an incentive to the creator, possibly (hopefully) allowing him to live off his work?
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Simply playing with the numbers doesn't change the difficulty of protecting copyright in the computer-age. As I tried to explain in my OP I was not really trying to defend DRM, I was more trying to explain its place in the scheme of things. It currently has a place largely because no one has come up with any useful alternatives that offers the same sorts of encouragement to enterprise. Will it still stand in 50 years? Who knows? But DRM bashing without understanding the reasons for it and what it is trying to achieve don't help very much.