Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Unless they were doing so with the permission of the copyright holder (eg the T&Cs of the Kindle bookstore allow you to read books on any Kindle registered to the same Amazon account), I believe that would indeed be the case, yes. Having your child's Kindle registered to your account and sharing books between the two devices is fine, but buying a book on your device, stripping the DRM, and transferring it to a different device not associated with your account, is not.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think that what you're doing is wrong or unethical; I'm just not sure whether or not it's legal.
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As I said, I am not doing any DRM-stripping - there is no need for that with watermarking. The files are free to be converted (and indeed, shops post instructions on how to do so) and it's perfectly allowed "for personal use".
DRM stripping may not be an issue for Adobe DRM protected books either - leaving Kindles aside, as they operate under their own T&C, for epub books, unless bought straight from the device, a parent generally would have to download a copy and then transfer/copy it to the child's (third person's) device.
I assume the issue is how "for personal use" is interpreted - if making a copy and putting it on another device (technically owned by the purchaser of the book) is okay, which it generally is for ebooks since otherwise it would be rather difficult to read ebooks on e-readers (without Internet/store connection) at all, is it also okay to hand over the device with the copy of the book to another person (in your household) to read?
And if it's okay to put a copy on a device technically owned by you and hand it over to another household member to read, is it also okay to put a copy on a device technically owned by that other household member? (Let's not even get into DRM removal here - it's perfectly possible for several household members' devices all to be authorised on the same Adobe account regardless of who is doing the book purchasing, in which case there is no DRM stripping necessary for several people to have copies of the same book and read it.)
It's actually an interesting issue - taken to the extreme (such as a parent not being allowed to share a kids' book with the kids) it rather shows the law as it currently appears to be is quite ridiculous, surely?
Obviously I cannot imagine anyone actually being found guilty for such a horrible violation, but even so, any shop that sells books under terms that allow "no sharing with anyone else" and yet sell books aimed at minors, who are not actually allowed or able to buy the books themselves is making it quite difficult for even the most law-abiding people to do so?