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Originally Posted by rmm200
I am really getting a little tired of seeing people on this forum calling other people pirates; without identifying who the real pirates are. The real pirates are the publishers who have taken rights to themselves that never existed in copyright law.
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OK, so let me get this straight. John Doe gets a copy of the "Harry Potter" books via bittorrent; the author gets zero compensation for her work; these are the people I refer to as "pirates." Sounds pretty spot-on to me.
As to publishers "taking rights," so far I have yet to see any rulings that require that digital content
must be transferrable, for example. More importantly, the idea that "original copyright law" could be extended to any digital content without major adaptations and changes is absurd; no one in 1709 could have possibly conceived of ebooks, let alone know the ideal laws and limitations for an invention 300 years in the future. Even fair use was not a statutory law until 1976.
I.e. it makes sense that the rights and abilities you have in one medium do not perfectly map onto a radically different medium, and that the nature and structure of copyright laws will change over time. Inflexible laws are of little benefit to anyone.
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Originally Posted by rmm200
If you want to get a real laugh out of an EBook publisher ask about fair use.
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Absolutely nothing about DRM or copyright law prevents fair use -- which is excerpting limited portions of a work for uses like criticism, academic research, parody and the like. Fair use has nothing to do with transfer of ownership and the like.
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Originally Posted by rmm200
When I have the same rights with EBooks as I do with real books, I will buy protected ones.
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Uh huh. I guess you failed to notice that even DRM'ed ebooks (which are "real" by the way, just electronic) grant you a couple of abilities and rights that are effectively impossible with paper books. I can't make an online backup of my paper books, or duplicate it at will for personal use at essentially zero cost; I can't rip out 20 pages of a paper book that's in a store, take them home, read them at my leisure, and then decide later to buy it or not; I can't pop open a paper book and have it read the words to me....
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Originally Posted by rmm200
1) Actually get and be able to use what I pay for. This is frequently NOT the case.
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....? I've been able to use all the ebooks I've bought.
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Originally Posted by rmm200
2) Be able to modify what I pay for
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OK, so if the paper book has a typo, you can rip out the page, have it properly reprinted, and rebind the book? Gotcha.
(Not that this excuses poor typesetting, but this is just not something you can really do with a paper book either.)
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Originally Posted by rmm200
3) Be able to lend my EBook to a friend
4) Be able to sell my EBook as used
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Lending
might become a more common option, I do think this is something technically feasible that should be more widely available. But it's not a deal-breaker.
As to selling, unfortunately there is almost no way to make this technically feasible without extremely intrusive and restrictive methods, including granting the retailer the ability to reach into multiple devices and delete your files -- an act that apparently makes a
lot of people unhappy.
If you prefer not to purchase DRM'ed books, that's your choice. But I don't see much reason to act like Macmillan kicked your dog because they are essentially trying to do their job -- and ensure that the people who worked to produce a work for your reading pleasure gets compensated fairly for that work.