Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
Ah. And yet Amazon explicitly disallows this. (Xenophon: format and device shifting, that is)
(Xenophon: snippet from Amazon licensing terms)
Use of Kindle Content. Upon your download or access of Kindle Content and payment of any applicable fees (including applicable taxes), the Content Provider grants you a non-exclusive right to view, use, and display such Kindle Content an unlimited number of times (for Subscription Content, only as long as you remain an active member of the underlying membership or subscription program), solely through a Kindle Application or as otherwise permitted as part of the Service, solely on the number of Supported Devices specified in the Kindle Store, and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider. The Content Provider may include additional terms for use within its Kindle Content. Those terms will also apply, but this Agreement will govern in the event of a conflict. Some Kindle Content, such as interactive or highly formatted content, may not be available to you on all Kindle Applications.
Limitations. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense, or otherwise assign any rights to the Kindle Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove or modify any proprietary notices or labels on the Kindle Content. In addition, you may not attempt to bypass, modify, defeat, or otherwise circumvent any digital rights management system or other content protection or features used as part of the Service.
(Xenophon: end of Amazon licensing terms snippet)
(Xenophon snipped the remainder of the message)
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Issy:
Amazon does indeed have licensing terms that forbid format and or device shifting. That said, it's entirely unclear under US law whether or not that restriction is enforceable. No court rulings on point, that I'm aware of, and plenty of high-powered legal-theory types who argue fairly persuasively on both sides of the issue.
For my part, I have in my possession written advice-of-counsel from an extremely high-powered lawyer who specializes in US copyright law. I even paid for it. That advice tells me that both DRM removal and format shifting of legitimately acquired content for personal (and immediate family/household) use only falls squarely within Fair Use, and that license restrictions claiming otherwise are unenforceable.
In the absence of court rulings to the contrary, the only thing this written advice is good for is to establish that I've at least attempted to discover my legal rights and responsibilities and to stay within them. Should it ever become a legal issue and I were to lose in court, that would likely — but not certainly! — keep me out of the "3x damages for egregious offenders" penalties. Maybe.
The overall point here is that what you can and cannot do with eBooks is both simpler and more complicated than it appears. And that even large companies with lots of lawyers have terms of use and other legal boilerplate that is (or is arguably) inconsistent with the actual law, and may well turn out to be unenforceable. And finally, that we don't
really know what the answers are until & unless the Supremes take a relevant case and rule on it.