Quote:
Originally Posted by Pizza_Cant_Read
A question I have and I know it must have been discussed on MR before: If a publisher such as TOR releases a book without DRM, am I still forbidden by Amazon from moving it to another format? What about reading it on multiple (non Amazon) devices?
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That specific question was answered above but it closely relates to a broader, more common question:
"What can you do with a legally free, but copyrighted book?"
The answer, as pointed out above, is "only what the terms of service explicitly allow".
I've seen folks who assume that because they got the book for free (either as Creative Commons, on a sale/promo, or for being permafree) they can make and distribute copies freely. Dangerous assumption.
Most of those free books come with strings--free when you sign up for a newsletter--or were only free for a short time, like on KDP where an author-publisher can offer a book for free for a maximum of 5 days a month. As the open source guys say there is a difference between being free (priced at zero) and being free of copyright/restrictions. Even open source products have copyright.
Fair use offers a lot of protection for personal use (so transcoding for your own use *might* be okay, TOS or not--that kind of clause hasn't been tested in the US--but it might not). And once other people are involved it gets very murky real fast. A few universities have discovered that what is fair use for one isn't fair use for many. Or even a few.