Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
From the Fictionwise "Terms of Service" page:
All eBooks at Fictionwise.com are the exclusive property of the publisher or its licensors and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. The download of these product(s) is intended for the Fictionwise Member's personal and noncommercial use. Any other use of eBooks downloaded from Fictionwise.com is strictly prohibited. Users may not modify, transmit, publish, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display, or in any way exploit, any of the content of these product(s), in whole or in part. By downloading Fictionwise eBooks, the User hereby acknowledges and agrees to these terms.
Emphasis mine. As you see, you don't own books that you download from fictionwise (they remain the "exclusive property of the publisher or its licensors") and you can't "transfer or sell" them.
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DRM is irrelavent - you never OWN a book even if you buy a hardcopy at the book store - you're still basically licensing that copy of it because the copyright holder still OWNs the book - it's easier to transfer the copy but you still can't make copies of it and distribute them freely to others or anything else that breaches the copyright
DRMed material is typically locked to a device for enforcement of the DRM but DMCA doesn't supercede the fundamental right of copyrighted materials licensees to use the material for themselves in manners that do not breach the copyright
DMCA's intent is to keep you from putting DRMed material on sharing sites and distributing in breach of the copyright, not to prevent you from using a copy you paid for
I can transfer Kindle books from my PC to my wife's iPod touch without issue - so they DO understand the importance of being able to move the copyrighted material around
And even if someone wants to be anal about interpretation - who's going to know or care as long as you're just moving the book from your Kindle to your Sony? Now start posting copies of the books - that's a different matter.
The methods used to transform a Kindle book to a format compatible with the Sony don't actually crack the DRM or encryption - they let the DRM software unlock the content and then transform it.
And yes - you CAN buy Kindle books without actually owning a Kindle - I use Kindle for PC on my touchscreen Windows tablet and can very easily buy and download ebooks from Amazon.