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Old 11-14-2012, 03:49 PM   #339
CWatkinsNash
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious View Post
Hmmm... interesting. My proposal tried to tackle the problem of responsibility and limits by decentralizing. I.e., by leaving their definition, for each specific case, to the original buyer of the file: the only person who will almost certainly get part of the responsibility (and part of the fine) if the file gets illegally distributed.
It's the buyer who has to decide "how much is too much", i.e., who to share with and possibly what to ask them to do (such as "Please don't give copies of this to anyone" or "Please don't give copies of this to people who live outside our solar system").
But this would be impossible to enforce, because if I can give it to as many people as I want, the only line to be drawn is internet distribution. Sneakernet is alive and well these days, and this would be legalizing it by default. I remember those guys with the unmarked black floppies lurking at the shareware expo...

Please clarify this - what happens if Mary gets that fine because of Bill, but one of Bill's beneficiaries repopulates the internet supply of Mary's book elsewhere. How does Mary prove that this new supply is from the original "offense" and not another slip-up on her part? There could be a hundred people in possession of Mary's ebook just looking for another safe haven to pirate it again.

With only the first misguided copy, Mary is sunk. Every one of those ebooks would be identical in terms of file ID, so there's no way to know if Mary herself is responsible for further violations. She screwed up once, and could be dealing with it for years.

I feel that it's simply too much to place the burden on Mary when there are so many ways that both I and others have pointed out that those files could end up on the internet that she can't control unless she just chooses to share with no one.

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious View Post
How do you prevent me from buying something, then keeping a (DRM-stripped) copy and finally selling my file to someone else?
When did DRM stripping become part of this area of the conversation? How do you prevent someone from stripping DRM and sharing *that* copy under your system?

Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious View Post
Even if the DRM cannot be stripped (a big if), most mass-market media are meant to be played once. What if I buy a DVD, see the movie, then sell it to someone else? These are lost sales for the DVD publisher.
What you're describing falls under first-sale doctrine. It's already common practice with licensed physical items, especially with books, and the publishers have managed just fine. Losses are limited because it's inherently copy-controlled - only the originally existing copies can be sold, no additional ones can legally be made without licensing the content. What I'm proposing is about the closest we can get to doing that with electronic items. I believe the European courts recently decided that it can be done with software.

Last edited by CWatkinsNash; 11-14-2012 at 03:51 PM.
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