Quote:
Originally Posted by edembowski
No, I am quite aware that publishers would rather DRM not be removed, but that is completely irrelevant. I am not held bound by their desires. Are you trying to make a point here, or is this simply argument for argument's sake?
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Perhaps I come at such agreements differently to others because I am a software developer. I am used to dealing with many different licensing arrangements - from formal, sign-in-blood, corporate agreements through to "postcardware" (all the author asks is that you send them a postcard to add to their collection) and more. There's even one specifically called "trustware".
A great many of these arrangements are of doubtful legal precision, and even if they were legally binding, in the vast majority of cases the developers would not have the resources to sue people that violate the agreements - especially people in other countries. Because of this lack of enforcement I imagine there a great many violations of all these agreements - even well known ones like GPL etc.. But since the people using many of the products I am alluding to here are software developers themselves, I suspect that there is a fair amount of adherence because we'd all like to think that others would
respect our wishes if the situation is reversed.
To bring this back to books and publishing. I have no personal beef with any of these publishers and sellers using DRM. The publisher is the author's representative for these publications. So, as far as I am concerned, any agreement being requested for a publication essentially comes from the author. If they wanted to publish without DRM those options exist so, unless the author is explicit otherwise, I must assume the author wants the DRM on their work. I don't look at this as ignoring the big faceless publishing corporation, but ignoring the author's wishes. If I were an author I'd really like to think that readers would respect my wishes - even if they don't agree with them.
In short: No I am not really trying to be argumentative here, I am trying to explain why this feels
personal to me, that people openly breaking agreements they know exist feels very wrong.