Quote:
Originally Posted by stonetools
(Shrug)
I don't know and I don't intend to find out. I also think that NOBODY should be going around urging people to remove DRM unless they are 100 per cent sure that there will be no legal liability. That's just me, though.
|
Ah but you are forgetting about a little thing called 'free will.' I could suggest to my neighbor across the hall that he should rob a bank, but I can't compel him to actually do so. If he did so it would be of his own will. Likewise someone here could suggest that a fellow forum member strip the DRM from books that they have purchased but no one here can walk up to another forum member and say, "you are going to do this because I say so." You can't be legally held responsible for the actual actions of another (as far as I know) unless perhaps you are acting as their legal guardian in some sense. I mean if someone is mentally handicapped in such a way that they are a danger to others and you just let them run wild and do as they wish knowing that they are a danger then you would be liable for whatever they did (assuming you are supposed to be keeping them out of trouble) but generally most people are responsible for their own actions. And I can't see myself what Amazon's beef would be if I were to strip the DRM from books that I have purchased as long as I'm not reloading them to the net and giving them to others. When I go into a store they have security devices that keep you from walking off with things like CD's and DVD's without paying for them, but they are deactivated before you leave the store because ownership has transferred from the store to you the buyer. You can't get the whole of a book from Amazon unless you buy it. Short of buying it all you can get is a sample of the text, so what use is DRM as it stands? I've seen other threads where the idea of DRM being a watermark that identifies a given copy of a book as being owned by a given person has been talked of. If anything DRM should be used that way, not to keep people who have legally purchased a book from using it as they will.