Quote:
Originally Posted by rogue_librarian
I understand that no works will be entering the PD in the US before 2019, so a few years off still. Are you confident you'll be able to read your current set of ebooks in 2021, DRM or no DRM?
|
My ebooks are entirely non-DRMd, and anything I like well enough to re-read, I format-shift enough to be confident I'll be able to keep up with changing software.
There's already issues where a DRM'd ebook is sold in one country, and moved to another (perhaps someone living in London moves to Nova Scotia) where the work is in the public domain--stripping the DRM shouldn't be a problem. (Probably legally isn't; Canada doesn't have the DMCA.) 2019 may look like a while off, but it's not that far.
I don't believe Disney will succeed in another power-grab; too many politicians are aware of the problems with orphan works, and too many other groups, like the EFF, are pushing for more awareness of the problems with extended copyrights.
Quote:
|
I wasn't planning on getting a copy of "My Struggle" anytime soon, in either pbook or ebook form.
|
Me either, but I expect they'd be of interest to scholars and teachers, and being in the public domain would make them much easier to share.
Quote:
|
At this point it certainly isn't the most pressing one. But, again: even though you're free to use the text as you see fit doesn't mean your DRMed ebook has to allow for it. Large numbers of PD works are still sold, and many of these ebook versions have DRM. It's not more sinister than DRM per se, in my opinion.
|
It's my understanding that DRM'd PD works with no additional annotations can be freely stripped and shared; the DMCA only applies to works that are covered by copyright. And as more works start entering the public domain, it may become legal to share DRM-stripping technology for the purpose of removing DRM from books that are legal to share--the logic that worked on the Sony Betamax case: enough non-infringing activities are possible that the technology itself isn't illegal.