Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
Actually, there's a fairly new issue that's cropped up recently thanks to Tor and John Scalzi. Tor was releasing John Scalzi's book Redshirts as their first DRM free (for sale) eBook and because some eBookstores were not setup correctly for this, they sold it (initially) with DRM. On John Scalzi's blog, he mentioned that if you bought a copy with DRM, you could either contact Tor to get it without DRM from Tor or you could strip the DRM and he linked (I forget if it was a direct link to the tools or to the blog to get the link to get the tools) so you could get the tools to strip the DRM. So the author (John Scalzi) gave permission for people to get the tools and use them to strip the DRM from his eBook. Does that then make the tools and stripping DRM actually legal since it was authorized by a rights holder (author and maybe publisher)?
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Neither Scalzi nor his publisher can make something that is illegal (marketing DRM stripping tools) legal by permitting you to do it on their books.
But the law does not make it illegal to acquire DRM stripping tools, so if you acquire them, what Scalzi & the publisher are doing is telling you that they won't sue you for stripping. They could still actually sue you, but they would lose (1) because it's not illegal for you to strip the DRM from a book you legally acquired from them, and (2) even if that turned out not to be true, you could defend yourself under a legal doctrine called "detrimental reliance," basically meaning that you relied on their promise so they can't take it back.
Technically speaking, Scalzi might be violating the law for linking to the tools, since he's helping to distribute them in a commercial context. Certainly if I were his lawyer, I would tell him not to link. The way this should be handled is for everyone who bought a DRMed ebook to be sent a new, DRM free copy by the publisher.