Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
If you have permission to use a work in a certain way, and that permission does not include making duplicates and giving them to other people, and you do it anyway then you are infringing on someone's rights.
Need to settle any disagreements on that point first, otherwise talk of lost sales and getting paid is the red herring.
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I second apk's suggestion to discuss the issues layer by layer: copyright laws, DRM, all the T&C-ToS-EULA-PP of parties involved in the consumer reading an ebook. The layers may be inter-linked though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
The part where we run afoul of each other (or maybe not) is that I don't believe the existing laws have the right to extend the same protection to things that were never considered when those laws were enacted.
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Ebooks as digital content have a "higher" degree of copyright protection than pbooks, so I can't see your point. The copyright regulations for the "digital age" (and with all the international conventions and agreements that should be comparable for most countries) have been done in the last 10 to 15 years. In my view it was the clear intention of the legislation to deny "digital files" the status of a physical object. So the selling of an ebook is the granting of the
non-transferable right of (digital) access to the content. The selling of an pbook on the other hand is the distributing of content in form of a physical object which can't be denied - in the sense of a free market for products - from lending/re-selling for instance. In Germany the selling of ebooks is regulated in §19a Urhg (copyright law), termed "right to give digital access for the public" which is an extension of §19 Urhg regulating the right of public broadcasts etc.
The whole
business model for digital content as a "digital service" is build around this copyright situation. One - and I am - can be unhappy with this (to buy an ebook more comparable to listening to a broadcast than to buying a pbook? - and there are some interesting points of theoretical law concerning the property of digital files).
The lending of ebooks needs additional permission from the copyright holders, (I don't know how Amazon's Family Library will work).
Copyright infringement may be a criminal offence (state prosecution), the violating of granted rights may result in civil law suits (compensation etc).
Now for DRM - the "tools" to enforce copyright. The "hard one" restricts the granted right of access further binding it to selected devices/apps. Such kind of DRM wouldn't be possible with the digital file (ebook) seen as a marketable product. The "soft one" puts personalized data into the files which could bring privacy issues.
DRM has found its way into copyright law. In Germany the removal of DRM needs the permission of the copyright holder but - if you do this for private use - there is at least no state prosecution. Put in the aspect of "fair use" (Privatkopie) and you have a grey area of legal/illegal. All converting/editing of DRMed files happens in this grey area.
As I said before the use of DRM is a choice for authors/publishers to make. But if DRM would really be enforced to the fullest - with civil law suits for removal, blocking of ebook accounts, perhaps even with a lower threshold for criminal offences - I can see the ebook market collapsing.
Finally all the T&C, ToS etc. The publisher's copyright note in most cases only reiterates the copyright law. But with your first ebooks you have to read/understand/accept
terms of a good handful of players: vendor of your ebook, DRM service, vendor of your device/app etc. There can be some surprises - ADE4's collecting personalized user/usage data and phoning them home in plaintext comes to mind (and Adobe sees all this as being okay according to their privacy policy).
All in all a complex and from the consumer's pov perhaps not the most favorable situation. My fear is - sadly - that things with ebooks can only get worse.