Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I was not speaking about the law, I was speaking about an agreement. Most sites selling DRM ebooks have terms-of-use agreement that you are asked to read and accept - and at least some of of those agreements are explicit about the removal of DRM. Okay so I have not signed the agreement, does that make breaking it any better on my reputation? Am I not as good as my word? I like to think so, but apparently not everyone holds to the same standard.
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Some contracts are unenforceable because they demand terms that aren't legal to demand for a sale.
Many books are printed with a note that says "no part of this may be reproduced in any way without written permission from the publisher"--but that's not true; fair use allows excerpts, quotes, reviews, and so on. If a book is printed with a note that said, "this book may not be read on Tuesdays" or "this book is only for Catholics; persons of other religions are forbidden to read it," those would be thrown out if a publisher tried to sue for breach of contract.
Contract terms have to be understood before purchase (terms-of-use inside a book, with no hint on the outside that such terms exist, aren't enforceable), and have to fit with legal principles. A book might say "this book is only authorized for use on Windows machines," meaning, "attempting to read it on a Mac may not work, and we won't refund your money if you try and fail." It can't mean "if you try to read this on a Mac, we will sue you, because Macs allow wifi copying that we've prevented in Windows."
Many sites, however, do *not* have any terms about DRM. They don't even tell you that DRM exists--they just say, "to read our books, click *here* to download & install this program." And they send you off to Adobe to get ADE, or to Microsoft to get their Lit reader, or whatever. There's no mention on the ebook store site at all that there's any legal expectation that you use that specific program, registered to your device, to read their books.
BooksOnBoard's
help page has options to click on a device or a filetype; there's no hint of "you are legally required to use this software to read the books we sell." It doesn't say "you may not remove the encryption bits from this book before reading."
Sorting out what other software might work to read the books bought from them is left as an exercise for the buyer.