Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
It is a bit of a gray law. But to say removing DRM is "definitely not a crime" under the DMCA is a bit suspect. Considering the whole point OF the DMCA is specifically to criminalize creating or using tools to circumvent DRM.
BOb
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It's definitely not a crime. It's only a crime if you strip the DRM for commercial advantage or financial gain.
Here's the provision of the DMCA which says what constitutes a crime under the law:
‘‘§1204. Criminal offenses and penalties
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Any person who violates section 1201 or
1202 willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private
financial gain—
‘‘(1) shall be fined not more than $500,000 or imprisoned
for not more than 5 years, or both, for the first offense; and
‘‘(2) shall be fined not more than $1,000,000 or imprisoned
for not more than 10 years, or both, for any subsequent offense.
Now, unless you've got some other provision of the DMCA under which someone can be convicted of a crime, it's not a crime.
What I think you are doing, and what most everyone seems to be doing, is confusing civil lawsuits with criminal prosecutions. So, the question is, if you strip your DRM for personal use, can you be sued? Assuming, of course, that anyone ever finds out about that.
The answer to that question is sure, you can be sued, but it appears to me that you would win the lawsuit. I'm not quite as certain about that as I am about the crime part, because the crime part is a slam dunk, while the part about being successfully sued is based on my reading of the entire statue and trying to figure out what is covered and what is not.
I'm a tax lawyer, not a copyright lawyer, but in reading the entire statue, it appears to me that it very carefully avoids addressing private users, even for civil lawsuits, if they are acting within the boundaries of "fair use," which of course includes reading your own book, bought & paid for.
I don't expect anyone who isn't a lawyer to understand how to read this statue and come to the conclusion I have, and I will gladly defer to an intellectual property lawyer who says I am wrong on this point, but my conclusion is based on the way that the exclusions in the law are phrased. Rather than try to educate everyone in how to read like a lawyer, I will refer to something that is analogous to what I mean, and which most everyone here, being readers, will understand: What we have here is an instance of the dog in the night:
Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
In other words, it is what is omitted in the exclusions that tells me that private stripping of DRM is not forbidden by the DMCA.
But of course, it is in the interests of Big Publishing that everyone assume that you can never, ever, under any circumstance, not even to save a drowning baby, strip their precious DRM from the book they graciously let you read on the ereader that you have to buy from them. So they are happy to let you continue to think that to strip the DRM on a book you have bought is a crime under all circumstances.
It ain't.
Do NOT conclude from this, however, that you can take your newly stripped ebook and upload it to the forum, freely, and without desiring commercial advantage or financial gain. You can't do that legally, but the reason is not the DMCA, at least not on your end. It's the general copyright law. I am not going to take the time to check the copyright statutes about criminal penalties, so you can take your chances on going to prison, but I know you can be sued, and you will lose.