Quote:
Originally Posted by 6charlong
Thanks to all of you. This was helpful.
After reading the Wiki I learned that it's illegal to strip DRM from eBooks where I live and since I believe in the rule of law, I won't be doing it.
[SNIP]
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Actually, it's rather more complicated than that! The current legal status of stripping DRM from eBooks in the US is thoroughly unclear. First, I'll hit a few things that are excrutiatingly clear:
- Providing tools for stripping DRM is clearly a felony under the DMCA. As a corollary, telling someone else where to get such tools or too much about how to use them may also be a felony as it might count as "providing tools."
- Uploading DRM-removed (or DRM-not-removed!) ebooks for others to download is a copyright violation -- unless, of course, you are authorized to do so by the copyright holder.
- Authors and copyright holders should get their proper compensation for their works (translation: don't "steal" content).
What's
not clear is the effect of the concept of "Fair Use" in the context of the DMCA, in part because the DMCA claims that it does not set aside any fair use rights.
It turns out that legal experts disagree as to whether or not removing DRM is legal. I participated in a graduate seminar at CMU that covered this topic (among others). We had eminent legal experts explain to us why (in their opinion) such stripping of DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use only is
obviously perfectly legal. We had other equally eminent legal experts explain to us why it's
obviously against the law.
Because Fair Use is defined only through case law (and not via statute), and because no court has yet ruled on this issue,
we do not yet know whether or not removing DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use only is legal. It just isn't clear. And it will remain unclear until either there's a relevant court case or the Congress decides to address the issue in statute.
Xenophon