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Originally Posted by Harmon
What do you mean by "illegal copy?"
So, do you think that it is against the criminal law to simply make a copy of an undRMed ebook and give it to someone else? Specify the law - cite the statue and section of the law to which you are referring. I don't think you can.
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To be fair, the law would be different depending on location. HarryT and I live in different countries, and are ruled by different copyright laws. And HarryT has no reason, other than an avocation for ebooks, for knowing anything about USAn copyright laws (or any other USAn laws), which are the ones that Amazon is under; there's certainly no reason he should be able to quote sections of them at people arguing on a forum.
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Or perhaps you think that making a copy of an ebook and giving it away is a violation of some civil statue, resulting in a fine? Again, specify the law - give us a citation
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I can't quote criminal law or statute that indicates it's illegal for someone to let the air out of my car's tires at night, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Can't quote the law that says they're not allowed to give my children knives to play with, either, but again... pretty sure there's a law somewhere.
Most of our legal understanding is not based on knowing exact details of the laws. While I disagree with some of HarryT's interpretations of copyright laws, I don't believe he's mistaken about the details of them.
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that we can look at and see if it means what you think it means - namely, that a person can be fined for making a single copy of an unDRMed ebook and giving it to someone else.
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Copyright law is a MESS. A hideous, tangled mish-mash amalgam of author's rights, encouragement of creativity, and corporate greed; most aspects of the law were written before photocopies were possible, much less digital copying, and the laws are poorly adapted to modern circumstances.
It's often impossible for a layman to determine if a particular act is against the law. (Which is, in the US, grounds for challenging the law itself, but nobody has the resources to do that just yet.) But that trouble doesn't mean it's impossible to note what is *probably* or *possibly* illegal, and decide to "play it safe" by following the broadest interpretation of the law, rather than the technical and more limited interpretation.