Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
But the EULA that you don't read and don't have to read and don't even get shown when you buy eBooks also says you don't have the right to strip DRM.
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EULA with Amazon is one topic. My own opinion is that the EULA way oversteps what it actually can bind the buyer to. I don't think that the Amazon EULA is enforceable against an ordinary buyer, and I don't think that it can be used by Amazon to sue buyers for stripping DRM. OTOH, if Amazon decides you violated the EULA and declines to sell you any more ebooks, there's not much you can do about it.
With libraries, it's not quite the same thing. As someone pointed out, the library itself doesn't even own the ebook. It licenses the ebook from Overdrive, and the defects relating to the Amazon/buyer EULA probably don't exist for the library/Overdrive EULA. I have a sense that there might be a DMCA violation if the borrower strips DRM, but the whole situation is rather attenuated. You have Overdrive, which presumably buys the book from a publisher, with or without DRM on it, and then licenses it to the library, probably with another layer of encryption, and then the library "lends" you the ebook under whatever conditions it has. Certainly the borrower can have no more rights than the library has. The practical answer is probably similar as with Amazon - if you get caught, you lose your library card.
But the legal answer might well be that it is a violation to strip DRM from a library book if you keep the stripped copy beyond the lending period. Kind of bizzaro, but that's what happens when you try to string out a legal analysis to deal with situations that the law really doesn't fit.