Quote:
Originally Posted by jasonfedelem
I'm not an attorney, so don't take this as legal advice, but my understanding is that as long as you own the media in one format, you can get it in whatever other formats you want. So if he owns the book as a paperback, it would not be illegal for him to download the torrent.
Don't take that as the final word though. Do your own research before you take my word for it.
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IANAL, also. However, I did attend (and TA) a graduate seminar on IP law (specifically aimed at computer scientists). What follows is my synthesis of relevant material covered in that class, based on my notes (and as filtered through my non-lawyer's understanding of the discussion):
- All the legal experts* who presented lectures to us agreed that format-shifting is legal, as long as the content was legitimately acquired and the shifting is being done by the consumer for his/her own personal use (which includes family members living in the same household). But note that if you must break encryption to make the format-shifting possible, it may or may not be the case that breaking the encryption (that is, stripping the DRM) violates the DMCA -- no court has yet ruled on this.
- All the experts agreed that outsourcing the format shifting raises more complicated legal issues; they did not agree on the proper resolution of those issues.
- Nearly all the experts agreed that format-shifting done by downloading an 'illicit' copy ('pirate copy'??) of a work is extremely problematic. Most described it as "clearly illegal;" a few were prepared to go as far as "it might be legal, but I'm dubious."
- All the experts agreed that, on a pragmatic basis, those who download illicit copies purely for purposes of format-shifting legitimately acquired works are unlikely to run afoul of law enforcement -- as long as they do no uploading or sharing of such content.
- All the experts agreed that if you sell (give away, whatever...) your original legitimate copy of a work, you must destroy your format-shifted copies as well. Subject to reasonable effort, that is. You don't have to carefully search all your old backups and the like, but you really should delete those ebooks from your hard-drive, your eReader device, and your calibre library (for example).
*Note that many lectures contained no material that is relevant to this topic.
All of the above assumes U.S. law, and U.S. jurisdiction, post-DMCA.
Once again, I am not a lawyer; your mileage may vary; package filled by weight, not by volume.
Xenophon