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Originally Posted by toddos
Edit: Didn't address fair use. That's only about copying, not access control. Fair Use allows you to maintain a backup copy.
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Fair use also allows you to quote excerpts for reviews, and use up to entire copies for research & educational purposes. You can't hand out chapters of a DRM'd ebook to a classroom without stripping the DRM, and giving a copy of a chapter for study is a common educational use.
Works that are in the public domain are not protected by copyright law--which includes the main body text of works with a copyrighted new intro. If you strip the DRM in order to make a copy of the book text, not the intro, is that a violation of the DMCA? The DMCA doesn't protect works in the public domain; it only applies to copyrighted works. Whether it applies to 1200 unwanted copyrighted words attached to an 80,000 word public domain book, hasn't been established.
The DMCA only affects those uses which are restricted by copyright law. Fair use, and access to public domain works, are not. How that plays out in practice hasn't been tested in court yet.