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Originally Posted by rmeister0
None of this is illegal; this is, in theory, what market forces are supposed to deal with. But it doesn't constitute theft or piracy because doing 1, 2 or 3 in any combination does not deprive you of something you owned before they did 1, 2 or 3.
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That's not
strictly true.
When I purchase an object, I have certain rights. I have the right to re-sell that object, modify that object, etc. I pretty much have the right to do with that object anything I wish short of dropping it into a magic duplication machine and creating another one.
I believe that the problem here is semantics and a bit of ethics bending.
When I "purchase" an eBook (or iTunes song, or something like that), I am not - from a legal point of view -
purchasing that e-object. I am - from a legal point of view -
licensing it.
Of course, when I license something, I have far fewer rights to that something. The problem is that throughout the transaction it's called a "purchase." So I have the expections of a "purchase" (i.e. I can pretty much do whatever I want with it).
Stores that "sell" eBooks with DRM are not "selling" the eBook. They are licensing it. Of course, a big disclaimer that basically says, "You aren't buying this eBook. You are licensing it from us for a limited time to use on a limited device a limited number of times" won't help them sell eBooks. So they hide that in tiny-print, legal-ese under a link called "read license" (which no one clicks on).
IHMO, they are committing fraud by calling the transaction a "purchase" and by not being clear on what the true nature of the transaction is.
How far do you think Ford would get by allowing you to "purchase" a new car and then disabling the car whenever they want, making you pay more money to use the car?
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Originally Posted by rmeister0
France had the right idea - force all DRM systems to inter-op. Then real competition can happen; but that will never fly in this country because DRM is really about customer lock-in and has nothing to do with preventing unauthorized redistribution.
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Actually, France's decision is to remove DRM. Interop DRM is, in effect, open DRM which means that the secret that allows the DRM to protect the content will be known by anyone. Therefore the DRM cannot perform it's function of protecting content.