Quote:
Originally Posted by ottischwenk
Wrong - it's part of copyright law in EU.
I don't know about other countries - maybe it's legal in Somalia or Tibet or .... .
|
No, you have a distorted view of EU Copyright law.
Also DRM is nothing to do with copyright.
Contracts, terms and conditions may not all be legally enforceable.
People HAVE been sued for "sharing" content. I can't find any example in Europe of someone either being prosecuted for breaking a criminal law or sued for a civil offence relating to format shifting DVD to SD card, CD or LP to cassette, ebook to a different ebook format etc, FOR PERSONAL consumption. It's only giving or selling content to a third party is a problem. Often a civil suit is invoked for any kind of piracy, as the criminal offences have limited fines or prison terms. So for example, card sharing or pirate set boxes for Cable or Satellite TV subscriptions, the CRIMINAL offence is Theft of Service. That's almost NEVER invoked. They bring a CIVIL action of copyright/rights infringement and prove loss of income based on how many other people got the content. This applies to Video subscription, books (paper or ebook), DVD, BD, CDs etc.
So NO-ONE ANYWHERE is going to bring a CIVIL case against someone reading an ebook on a different device, no matter if DRM is involved or not, IF you bought it AND ONLY you are reading it (consuming it). There is NO loss of income at all. So the court case would result in a fine of zero and severe costs for the publisher.
The DMCA is a USA law. In Europe it's dubious that if it's true it's illegal to remove DRM or format convert FOR PERSONAL USE what you bought yourself, and is NOT shared, that ANY EU or UK Prosecutor would waste money on such a case, even if technically illegal. Which is contentious.
Copyright Law. Clue is in the name. It's about rights to make copies and distribute them. No-one is going to prosecute you for making backups or format shifting. Ebooks, CDs, BD, DVD, VHS, Cassette. Even paper. You can even digitize paper that's copyright and in the US that's been agreed in court to be legal if it's not re-published, though that judgement is flawed as the Microsoft and Google did not purchase copies of the works. That's a far more generous ruling than personal format shifting.
The actual form of the content, (audio, text, images, video) and storage medium it's delivered on to you is irrelevant to copyright law. You can't give or sell copies to a third party. You can compost your own copy.