Quote:
Originally Posted by wallcraft
You can give a copy to all your friends if the copyright holder give you the right to do so. This is entirely up to the copyright holder. What isn't up to the copyright holder are "fair use" rights, i.e. things you don't need permission for. The DMCA did change copyright law for ebooks, and my point is that DRM defines (or could be interpreted to define) what the copyright holder allows you to do with the ebook. On the MobiPocket forum, for example, an employee of MobiPocket explicitly said that if you want 20 students to read an ebook then you buy 5 copies of the ebook (4 students, or 4 PCs, per ebook file). The employee was not necessarily following MobiPocket's guidelines, but this is the default assumption - that DRM (Digital Rights Management) means what it says. If it is not managing (defining) digital rights, then it isn't doing its job.
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It is true that with explicit permission of the copyright holder you can do what they allow. But DRM tools do not provide explicit or even implicit permission to do whatever you can get away with. If you look at all of the FAQ in the various sites they talk about eBook devices that you own. It is likely to interpret ownership includes your immediate family but even that is stretching (slightly) the interpretation of the law. What it explicitly says is you can move books to another machine that you own.
Dale