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Originally Posted by speakingtohe
I cannot help but wonder where DRM has stopped anyone from reading. The entitlement to copy and/or redistribute a pbook has never been a hot issue.
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When a book was purchased but not immediately read, and the server closed down before the book was read. Also, when one wants to re-read an ebook bought 8 years ago... but the server is no longer active, and it can't be validated on a new computer.
People whose Amazon accounts are shut off also lose access to whichever of their purchased books they don't currently have loaded on their devices. And when a book is pulled from a store, it often can't be validated on a new device later. DRM limits reading to "as long as we care to allow it, or only on the specific device you authorized & loaded the book to."
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I have never bought a book where the main purpose was to be able to lend it or resell it. I have done both, but I bought it because I wanted to read the book.
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I've bought several. I'm a tabletop RPG player; many gaming groups have a habit of sharing the cost of the reference books throughout the group. I've also bought religious books with the main purpose of being able to lend them around when I'm done reading them.
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Copying an ebook is usually violating the contract under which it was sold. Whining about doing this the hard way is like robbers snivelling that they have to go a bank or convenience store and show them a gun.
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It's only a "contract" if the terms are negotiable. Copying an ebook may be a violation of the sales terms, but that only matters if the sales terms are legally valid. A bookstore that has a clause in its sales that say "we reserve the right to change these terms at any time," and then changes them to say "all previous buyers of ebooks will be charged an extra $20 at the beginning of each month" would quickly discover that they can't, in fact, enforce whatever terms they want.
Setting terms that say "you may not allow your spouse or child to read this book on the household computer" would also be unenforceable, and laughed out of court. However, Fictionwise's terms include that--they don't allow or "distribution" of the work "by any means." Also, they don't indicate which books are in the public domain, and aren't subject to copyright law.
With such kinds of ridiculous statements in their standard terms, it's no wonder people strip the DRM... the TOUs tend to go far beyond what copyright law allows, but claim to be based on copyright.
Cracking DRM for personal use doesn't violate copyright law. Whether it violates a TOU would require a team of IP and contract lawyers to sort out; the fact that stores obviously don't *want* people to evade the restrictions they place on ebooks has no legal bearing.