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Originally Posted by Robotech_Master
I would remind folks that cracking the DRM on books you purchase (which over half the people responding to the poll say they do) is every bit as legally wrong (at least in the USA and certain other countries) as downloading the books off the Internet.
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In the US, format shifting is a protected "fair use" of copyrighted material but downloading off the Internet is not. So at a minimum there is a difference in the defences available for the two actions.
I have never seen text to speech enabled on a DRMed ebook (it would only be effective for LIT anyway, since the others don't have text to speech). This means that the following current, November 2006, exception from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology in the DMCA (see
Wikipedia) probably applies to all ebooks, and they can all be format shifted for personal use by anyone in the US:
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Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.
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The only certain exception to the exception would be when the publisher makes a version available via an 'authorized entity' (a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities). Perhaps all publishers are routinely doing this, but I have not seen any "outreach" e.g. when I buy an ebook there isn't a FAQ saying read aloud disabled but go to this web site to get a free version if you need this capability.