[Iphinome]

Originally Posted by afa

As a matter of fact, I do, as much as possible, drive within the limit. And I would certainly advise everyone else to do the same. And jaywalking is not the same thing because that doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights (unlike illegally acquiring an author's book(s)).


I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that perhaps your 'protest' isn't quite up there with the likes of Parks, Ghandi or MLK. Fifty years from now, people aren't exactly going to be reading in the history books about Iphinome's fight against the evil of DRMed ebooks. I dare say stripping DRM, or arguing that books/music/movies/whatever else are overpriced, isn't quite as significant to humanity as fighting racism, fascism, oppression or tyranny. But, hey, maybe that's just me.

And who decides what these so called 'just' causes are? You? Me? The guy next door? Everyone has their own rules which irk them. If we were all to go out and start breaking rules of our selfish choosing then that would, as I said before, just lead to chaos. Fighting oppression is one thing. Anarchy is another, entirely.

Not even in the same stratosphere, no.


As a matter of fact, I do not. I absolutely agree that DRM does nothing beyond irritating legitimate (i.e. paying) customers. But your arguments aren't merely about stripping DRM and/or allowing consumers to read their books how and where they want; your argument is advocating the consumption of pirated books, thereby denying the authors of those works from realising their right to earn a living from their creations.

I absolutely agree that DRM (at least in its current form) should be eradicated. I would, however, support publishers if they were ever able to come up with a method to respect the consumers' rights while reducing piracy. (And no, I have no idea how. I'll leave that to people smarter than myself.) But I absolutely disagree with the methods that you seem to support.


First of all, this notion that you're 'sticking it to the man'. My response to these 'other people' is: Seriously, stop kidding yourself. You're not some modern day Robin Hood. Don't try to convince me you're just doing this for some greater good. You're doing it for yourselves. Your motivation is self gain, and you're going to have an awfully hard time convincing me otherwise. Besides, what you consider sticking it to the man, in fact does more damage to the artists/authors who created the work. The fact that a particular author loses potential sales hurts him, not the industry. They'll just move on to the next one, and the next one, and...

Secondly, I really don't understand your objection to the copyright thing. (I thought it was life+25?). If you were an entrepeneur who started a private business, wouldn't you feel that your kids should be able to enjoy the fruits of your labour after you were dead? Or do you think it's okay for someone to come along the day after and say, "Sorry, this is now public property." Personally, I don't have a strong opinion on the Life+X issue either way. I'm just trying to understand why you find it so offensive..?


And I agree with that. You want to strip DRM for personal use, because you have multiple devices or whatever? Go ahead. You want to be able to lend it to a family member or a couple of your friends? That's fine by me.

But uploading it on the darknet so millions of people can get it for free, and deny the author his right to earn a living? Sorry, but that's not something I will ever, ever agree with.

Yes it is just you, you don't get to say what matters to me or how much. Stripping DRM is against the law where I live, that law is unjust, that law takes away the people's liberty and gives nothing at all in return and what you think of that has nothing to do with what I think of it and what I feel I need to do. Who decides? I do. I decide for myself what's just and what is not and I decide if and how I choose to deal with the injustice in the world. Don't you dare trivialize my feelings on the matter and since you're so gods damned sure you know what I've personally been doing, I had set out to break laws against consensual sodomy alas I only managed to do it in a few of the many states that had them on the books before Lawrence vs Texas.

Second You are not qualified to speak to my motivation, you don't know it you don't know me all you know is I made one statement in a long thread that pissed you off, that I'll happily break bad laws for the sake of breaking bad laws. Be it stripping DRM or freeing slaves what's it to you, I'm the one taking the risk to fight the good fight. What are you doing other than picking on me? And what methods against DRM have you decided I support because I don't recall ever getting very specific about it so why don't I. There's no excuse for anything that prevents me from making backups if and when or as often as I see fit the media I put something on can degrade just as the original can. There's no excuse for preventing me from format shifting or editing or playing it backwards or baking it into a pie when I pay for it its mine.

Copyright, in the US its life+70, there is no need to register or pay any fees copyright is automatic. DMCA protection is automatic, the ability to take infringement cases to court is automatic (registration is required to ask for damages). Copyright laws outside the united States are a bit out of my area in theory there's no reason why they should affect me except at times I'm outside the country so I'll leave that out for now. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Lifetime+ copyrights fail both tests, They do not promote progress they retard it by keeping things form entering the public domain. You see the point of US copyright was not to make sure people make money off of their creations, it was the offer of a chance to do that in exchange for the creations. You may not see the difference, think of copyrights like patents when a patent runs out everyone gains the chance to build the patented thing like say aspirin, you pick up a bottle of the stuff for a dollar and that's the beauty of the system cheap abundant aspirin has no doubt saved lives. The goal is to get movies music books paintings everything out there where people can use it for whatever they want. A copyright isn't your father's watch or your grandmother's wedding ring. its a contract with society and the longer that contract is for the less chances there are for others to make progress. The second issue is life+ anything hardly qualifies as a limited time to a rational person. If someone born today can't expect to make public domain use of something copyrighted today because they'll be dead by the time they'd have the chance then the copyright is effectively unlimited. The person born today would have no reason at all to ever respect copyright because they will never reap the rewards that come at the end of the copyright term.

On the next point authors do not have a right to earn a living from books they have the right to try. If no one buys their books too bad, if the whole buisness model used by publishers fails too bad, we all run the same risks of losing our jobs having the whole industry we work in disappear. People say its okay to just not buy a product if we don't like the industry or don't like the price tell me not in the moral sense not in the legal sense but in the monetary sense, what's the difference between refusing to buy and pirating? They were never going to get paid? Actually forget that let's talk instead about people who would pay. DRM, or no ebook being sold, people who would pay for what they want but its not being offered or being offered at an excessive price who are you to pick on them, they're getting screwed.

Long post, let me sum up, you try not to speed but you do it so don't pretend you're somehow superior, I argue against unneeded unreasonable restrictions on liberty and laws that violate the Constitution of my home you argue for the interests of the people who caused the problem. You attack me before having any idea what it is I really do.