Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
There's certainly that, but the primary reason I consider it unethical is the fact that Kindle books are licensed for your use, not the use of your circle of friends. What can or can't be done with a paper book doesn't really enter into it. Do you regard it as ok to share your ebook library with your friends?
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As I understand it, you are equating breaching a term of the license to being ethically wrong. Yet it seems that you regard removing DRM, a very clear breach of the license agreement, as being ethically sound. Forgive me if I am putting words into your mouth and you actually regard removing DRM as being eithically wrong but are doing it anyway. Otherwise it seems your argument is a case of having your cake and eating it to. There seems to be no rationale advanced for regarding this term of a licence agreement as morally wrong but breaches of other terms as okay.
And yes. I agree with you that physical books are not relevant to a discussion of the legality of a breach of license, which is a matter of law rather than ethics. However, a consideration of physical books is quite relevant to a discussion of ethics. If you are basically emulating with digital books an act which is quite ethically sound with physical books you need to be able to point to some relevant difference to justify one being ethical and the other not. Your argument as it stands would seem to be valid only if you regard any breach of a license agreement as unethical or at least have some reasonable basis why breaching one term should be considered ethical and the other not.
On another basis, you interpret the word "you" and the phrase "personal use" in the terms very narrowly. It is certainly very possible that a Court would agree with you, but by no means is it inevitable. In my view both the word and the phrase are quite capable of being interpreted so as to encompass lending a physical device with a single book on it to a friend. Especially if the court considers other extraneous material to aid its interpretation.