HarryT,
Let's say that you have over seven score ebooks you've purchased from Mobipocket which you can read on your Palm Zire Z2 (Z22?). Let's say that you've finally gotten so pissed at the poor display quality of the Zire that you rush right out and buy the Sony PRS-500 (taking advantage of the 'sign up for a Sony credit card and get the PRS for $50' deal) and as soon as the Sony arrives, you take your hammer and reduce the Zire to bits and dust.
Now you *still* have all those (140, remember) *LEGALLY PURCHASED* Mobipocket titles. But the Sony can't open or read them.
Should you be forced to buy them all over again in Sony's .lrf format? What if nine of your most favorite titles aren't available in .lrf? Are you just going to deprive yourself of your favorite titles because neither Sony nor Mobipocket are willing to remedy the situation?
Or will you find a means for stripping the content from the Mobipocket titles and run them through BookDesigner to port them over?
That's exactly what I do. I *bought* the content of various ebooks and (I've not found how to strip from Mobipocket, but I've done numerous .lit strips.) now that I've converted to Sony (and soon to Cybook Gen3) I'm converting every single title I can to that format. Mostly I'm doing so because I can't find many of the .lit titles in Sony format and I'm not willing to wait months or years for the retailers to decide to support the Sony format.
However, if a title *is* available in .lrf, I choose to buy it rather than convert.
Derek
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Depends where you live; in the UK it's absolutely illegal. Some people have an interesting theory that in the US, a "disability exemption" in the DCMA law makes it legal to remove the DRM because it disables the "reading aloud" feature of Microsoft Reader. However, since this same exemption also states that the disabling has to apply to all digital formats it's far from clear that this is so if the book is available in formats other than LIT.
Absolutely not. That was produced illegally by criminals and is illegal no matter which way you look at it.
Personally I share your views, David. There are those, however, who find it amusing to use sophistry to try and persuade themselves (I can only think that they are trying to persuade themselves - they certainly aren't persuading anyone else) that they are in some way "taking the moral high ground" in carrying out these acts of dubious (or otherwise) legality.
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