Quote:
Originally Posted by meepster
Beware: circumvention of DRM on anything, at any time, for any purpose is very much illegal in the US. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Even if you are circumventing the DRM for your own personal use, you are still liable under this law. The software mentioned above is illegal to own and to use.
I think this is a misguided and foolish law; I think it stifles free expression and kills e-book sales; but it is the law. If you do not like it, please please please complain to your local government official.
meepster (yes, I am an attorney; no, the above is not legal advice, and should be used for entertainment purposes only)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by meepster
No, it is not legal to break any form of DRM. If you do that, you are potentially liable for copyright infringement. See my earlier post.
I highly recommend that you write to the publisher and tell them exactly why you are not buying the DRM book. It's the only way they'll finally listen to reason and stop using it.
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Meepster:
I believe that your statement is stronger than can be justified at the moment. [In what follows, please remember that I am NOT a lawyer, and this is not legal advice...]
I TA'd a graduate seminar on Intellectual Property issues and Computer Science a few years ago here at Carnegie Mellon. The DMCA and the question of what is (and is not) permitted thereunder was one of the very hot topics in that course. We had quite a few eminent legal scholars giving guest lectures to the course. All of them addressed the question of DRM, DRM removal, and the DMCA... and there was
absolutely no agreement on what you can legally do in that regard.
For this discussion, we are considering only removal of DRM from legally acquired content, for personal use. No sharing, uploading, "piracy," or the like; just DRM removal in aid of (for example) format shifting. All royalties paid; all copy-right owners and their assigns appropriately compensated. All squeaky-clean legal in every other way, with
only the legality of the DRM removal at issue.
Some experts opined that stripping DRM in such cases was an obvious exercise of fair-use rights, and couldn't possibly be illegal. One of these experts went so far as to provide each lecture attendee with formal written advice of counsel that DRM removal (when
everything else is legal) is itself a legal exercise of your pre-existing fair use rights. Others opined that it was a clear violation of the DMCA (and thus a felony). Still others went farther, and effectively said that anyone who strips DRM will rot in Hell for all eternity (or the legal equivalent thereof).
Each of these experts said that the DMCA was self-contradictory on this question. On the one hand, it claims that it does not remove or denigrate any pre-existing fair use rights. On the other hand, it appears to say that such DRM removal is a felony. The experts were disagreeing on how the courts would likely resolve the conflict. (I should point out here that my notes are not good enough to yield a specific citation to the wording in question!)
Each expert agreed that we won't
really know the legal status of removing DRM until the courts sort it all out. They also agreed that any prosecutor who chose to prosecute someone whose only (arguable) breach of the law was stripping DRM from legally acquired content for personal use (with no uploading, sharing, "piracy," etc.) would be seriously dope-slapped by the Judge for wasting the court's time and resources. After all, it's really hard to see who is harmed by such action.
Xenophon
(who is most definitely not a lawyer, and is not dispensing legal advice!)
P.S. These scholars did agree on many other points of the DMCA though, including:
- creating or distributing DRM-removal software is almost certainly a felony
- telling someone else where to find DRM removal software is probably a felony
- Helping other users figure out how to use such software might be a felony
- Owning a DRM-removal program is not illegal, but using it may or may-not be illegal (according to that scholar's position)
All of these items under the "creation" and "distribution" clauses as appropriate. My notes do not distinguish the difference between "almost certainly," "probably," and "might be" so as always YMMV.