Quote:
Originally Posted by Yapyap
Whether DRM removal is illegal or not in a given jurisdiction, it has very little to do with pirating.
Some people may choose to strip DRM and then share, yes, but it's perfectly possible to strip DRM from one's own legally bought ebooks and not share, ever, with anyone, and not ever engage in anything that is remotely like pirating. Just like it's possible to pirate books (and share, and upload for others to download) without that having anything to do with DRM or the removal of DRM.
And I have no idea what living in Armenia has to do with freeing people's own legally bought books for backup purposes or for reading on another brand of e-reader.
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It is true that DRM stripping and piracy are totally different and have different laws in every jurisdiction. In my jurisdiction just DRM stripping is a crime. In others just piracy is a crime. There are HUNDREDS of jurisdictions on our planet - all have different laws on both issues.
Some jurisdictions only punish use of pirate sites. Others only punish DRM stripping.
Those laws apply to software, eBooks, music, games and movies. I cited the software uses by nations above. That points to the wide variety of practices we have on the planet AND on this Forum.
I play a lot of computer games and the issue is big there as well. Copy protection schemes sometimes ruined entire PC's. One of mine was ruined by that. Now they generally do not use protection other than requiring one to only buy them from particular game distributors and play the games in connection to those servers such as Steam.
The music protection schemes exploded about 12 years ago when downloaders from music pirate sites were targeted by computer generated lawsuits. Apple iTunes used to have very protective DRM on every song. Eventually, that evolved to the present where songs purchased from Amazon have no DRM protection at all but do have 9 digit license numbers installed in the metadata. Maybe eBooks will end up that way as well ending the DRM problems and questions.
So far as I see it, DRM protection of eBooks is useless. Those, who want to strip it, can easily do it with the Alf plugin for Calibre. Thus, why even place DRM protection on eBooks at all? Purchasers of eBooks should be given a standard whereby they could read those eBooks on any reader just as the unprotected MP3 standard enables music lovers to play those songs on any device.
Of course pirate sites could not operate at all if DRM could not be removed. Also, what happens to the rights of authors and / or publishers? Maybe the Steam solution for games is the answer: no DRM at all in the games but those games cannot operate without access to the Steam servers to receive linking enabler files at least once after installation. Is that viable for eBooks?