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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
Actually the point in the piracy debate is not whether stealing is right or wrong, but whether copyright infringement is stealing.
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As the law currently stands, breaking the copyright on someone else's material is against the law. So even if it's not "stealing" per se, they're still knowingly doing something they know they shouldn't be doing.
Removing DRM from a purchased ebook to better enable the reading of a book "probably" won't get someone in trouble. But probably's are like being pregnant--you either are or you aren't. So someone "probably" won't get in trouble, until they do, and it usually ties in to how much other stuff they have on their computer or whatever.
I figure there's going to be a big case in the news at some point in the near future. A bunch of people are going to say it wasn't stealing, it was "loaning." And the law makers are going to point out that even if someone doesn't know it's against the law, the law still applies, and there will be fines or possible jail time depending.
Secondhand ebooks are currently not allowed. Why? Because giving a book to a friend might not be a big deal, but what that friend does with the book can come back on the original purchaser. Say I buy a big, I give it to my sister, telling her "Hey, don't pass this around, it's just for you." She agrees, then turns and gives it to her 900 closest friends. She's poor, so when the law cracks down, that book is traced back to me and I go to jail because I can't pay the however much money I'm being fined.
So if someone wants to give an ebook to someone else, whatever. The purchaser is the one taking the risk because they're trusting that whoever they're giving the book to is just as honest and trustworthy as they are. And I've had friends before that simply do not know how to keep their mouths shut about anything. Which means Terry Goodkind or someone could turn around and point at me and say I'm the source of whatever, and I could cry about it and plead innocence, but it is what it is.