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Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY
Is there yet any case law about removing DRM for personal use (putting a kindle book on a nook, for example?) I know that it is considered a gray area, at least in the US, where DMCA theoretically prevents any circumvention of DRM, but copyright law allows for fair use exceptions and am curious if anyone has argued it in court.
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No legal cases yet. Not likely to be any anytime soon; making noncommercial copies for personal use is likely to be considered fair use--but trafficking in DRM-removing software is criminal, regardless of the purpose. So any legal cases are likely to center around the DRM removal, rather than the actual works that have DRM removed.
Nobody has recently gone to court for DRM-removal, so there's been no official attempts to argue that the DRM removal software had substantial non-infringing effects (like, removing DRM from public domain works).
Synopsis: LEGALLY--nobody knows. Very blurry. Consult lawyers before making statements, then consult some more lawyers, who will tell you the opposite of what the first batch of lawyers said. Copyright law is a mess on its own; laws written to support it are more of a mess, because they don't address any of the loopholes in the original.
PRACTICALLY--nobody cares if someone removes DRM in order to read their Kindle books on a Nook. Not publishers, not Adobe's software lawyers, not anti-piracy fanatics. There's occasionally discussion about how legal it is or isn't, but that's all abstract. Nobody is trying to hunt down individuals whose sole potential copyright infringement involves moving their ebooks from one virtual shelf to another, as long as the same person owns all the shelves.
HOWEVER--since the tools that can make kbooks readable on a Nook, can also make them sharable on the torrents, public help & support are very limited.