Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
How so? Doesn't "stealing" involve (1) taking something away from someone without their consent and (2) giving to someone who doesn't have the right to possess it? Neither of those applies here. The author got paid; the buyer has a book; there's the potential that a law was broken, but "theft" is not the crime in question.
Stolen it from whom? Himself?
He buys a book. He changes his computer settings and does some file processing so that different programs can open the book. Where's the theft?
|
It would pay to educate yourselves about copyright law. It was established law in the 1980s that making a backup copy of a music cassette you purchased was illegal - in effect, if you wore out the tape you bought, you were legally obligated to buy a second copy of it, and making a "backup" copy for yourself was a violation of copyright. And making a cassette copy of a vinyl album was also against the law, because you changed the format of the copyrighted work - it was no longer on the media type you purchased.
Essentially, copyright law states that the content provider/creator (author/distributor/seller) can set the terms and conditions under which their intellectual property can be used. When you violate those terms and conditions, you have usurped the rights of the content creator. In effect, you are using the copyrighted work in a way other than that intended by the creator. If you check the contract you digitally sign by clicking "I agree to the Terms and Conditions" on a web site, among the things you agree to is to not remove the DRM from the file. Once you do so, you have violated the contract. Perhaps this is not a criminal offense, but it is at least a civil one. Buying licenses to ebooks with the intent to remove the DRM is essentially fraud, and that is actionable in a court of law, even if you have no intent to distribute.
When you buy a book from Amazon or Kobo or Nook, you are not buying the book in the traditional sense. You are purchasing a conditional-use license to the eBook. It is, in essence, not treated as a book but as software. Included in that license is the right for them to remove the copyrighted file from your device if, at some future date, it is determined that they did not have the legal right to sell it to you in the first place. When you remove DRM and read it on a non-approved device, you are taking their ability to do this out of their hands, which is part of why they prohibit it in the first place.
Some ask what I'm doing here. I owned a Kobo Wifi reader for a while, and I now own an Amazon Kindle and a few tablets with various ereading applications installed. But I am not an enthused convert that believes that eBooks are superior to the paper versions in every way, nor am I completely comfortable with what we are giving up when we buy licenses to digital books.