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Old 08-23-2012, 01:18 PM   #49
Harmon
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zeb View Post
Right, that same America that has a legislation that makes DRM breaking outlawed (DMCA)? That tried to push the ACTA, SOPA and other inane legislations using coercion to the rest of the world? At least in my country, breaking DRM for personal use is not illegal, and I can watch DVD and Blurays on my Linux system. But thanks to the land of the free, this may not last very long.
It is not illegal in the United States to strip DRM from any ebook you own, so long as you stop there and use the resulting file only for your personal reading.

It is probably not illegal to share the resulting file with your family and possibly not illegal to share it with your friends - but in any event, as a practical matter, you can do it on a person to person basis, like passing around a pbook you have read already (i.e., not using filesharing sites).

Whether you want to do that is more of an ethical issue than a legal one, because - again, as a practical matter - the legalities can't be enforced. (Sort of like allowing your teenager to have wine at the dinner table when the drinking age is 21.)

The reason that the owner of this website does not permit posting of techical information on how to accomplish removal of DRM is probably that he/she/it does not want to argue with the authorities whether doing so violates the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA, which it might under some circumstances. While merely posting the information might be "free speech," hosting a site where people who actually do violate those provisions come together to discuss how to accomplish it would expose the owner to conspiracy charges.
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