Ridiculous copyright notices: "no part of this text may be downloaded..."

[hildea]

I just finished a book from Harper Collins*), and for some reason actually read the copyright notice at the end:

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

They don't want to allow me to download the book? To store it anywhere? How do they imagine that people who buy their ebooks are able to read them on a screen without downloading and storing them?

It's not as if they're able to enforce this, but this kind of absurdity it does make me less inclined to buy ebooks from Harper Collins in the future. If they don't want me to download their books, I can try to honor their wishes, but in that case there's no point in me buying them either. (I can't promise I'll be completely consistent. If they publish something I really, really want to read, I might burden them with my money in spite of their clearly stated wishes.) I looked at a few other books, and found the same nonsense from Harlequin, so that's another publisher who apparently doesn't actually want customers.

Does anyone have any idea of the thought processes behind this kind of notice? Is it usual, and I just haven't noticed before?


*) "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helene Wecker, strongly recommended, despite the silly publisher!

[eschwartz]

I'm pretty sure it's fairly common. Obviously, you have permission to store it on your ereader, although I would like to know what their rationale behind forbidding download and storage is -- or how they intend to do anything about it.

But yes, it's fairly common, even though no one knows/cares, or so much as looks at that notice in the ordinary way of things.

The reasoning undoubtedly is the typical BPH hatred of ebooks.

[Lynx-lynx]

@hildea I agree with you - absolute and utter goobledegook!

I download and store all my epubs in Sony Reader for PC. That, according to the excerpt, is not allowed.

[theducks]

I think there should be a fraud investigation by the relevant government agencies: for selling unusable items. Any reseller, clearly does not have the right to grant permission, per those terms.

No book I have purchased has ever come with an Express Authorization from the publisher. A sales receipt is not a letter of permission.

Amazon, Barns and Noble, Apple and others, are clearly participating in the distribution of illegal downloads.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by theducks

I think there should be a fraud investigation by the relevant government agencies: for selling unusable items. Any reseller, clearly does not have the right to grant permission, per those terms.

No book I have purchased has ever come with an Express Authorization from the publisher. A sales receipt is not a letter of permission.

Amazon, Barns and Noble, Apple and others, are clearly participating in the distribution of illegal downloads.

If only... the world were a sensible place!

[cromag]

I suspect it was simply retained from the original file created for the paper copy release and turned into an ebook without careful editing. I've had ebooks that claimed they were the "third printing" of the book.

Carelessness, laziness ... whatever it is, it's pretty funny, sometimes.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by cromag

I suspect it was simply retained from the original file created for the paper copy release and turned into an ebook without careful editing. I've had ebooks that claimed they were the "third printing" of the book.

Carelessness, laziness ... whatever it is, it's pretty funny, sometimes.

Well...

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

[QuantumIguana]

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

That's fine, but the right to read it on a device is of no use if you can't copy it to your device. And the notice says that you need express written permission to download it. Technically we don't have express written permission, we only have implicit permission. Our e-book retailer may have express written permission to offer the book, but we don't have any such written permission.

Of course, it's just boilerplate, Harper Collins has no intention of enforcing this text exactly as written, nor could they realistically do so. It reminds me of the boilerplate on football games where they say that any description of the game requires express written permission, but if they tried to stop people describing the game, they would be laughed out of court.

[arjaybe]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Of course, it's just boilerplate, Harper Collins has no intention of enforcing this text exactly as written, nor could they realistically do so. It reminds me of the boilerplate on football games where they say that any description of the game requires express written permission, but if they tried to stop people describing the game, they would be laughed out of court.

Right. SWAT teams taking people down at the water cooler.-)

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by hildea

By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen

Soo, I connected this pico projector to my Galaxy Note to read it off my ceiling. Pleas arrest me, I want to be judged by a jury of my peers.

[crich70]

It could be that the no downloading...etc. notice is in relation to the issue of DRM. i.e. you can't download and store it legally except that it is used on the reader that is approved. So for example downloading an epub (whose DRM you then break) and converting it to read on a kindle would be against the law. How they would be able to enforce that is a very good question. With how many people every day buy ebooks and possibly do convert them for a different reader they'd have no time for anything else but running down potential violators of the notice.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by crich70

It could be that the no downloading...etc. notice is in relation to the issue of DRM. i.e. you can't download and store it legally except that it is used on the reader that is approved.

You can store drm'd versions of books in Calibre. But you're not allowed:

or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system

Besides, you can register multiple readers on one adobe account. So, the reader should be "readers" too...

[gmw]

Nonsense, yes. But not really any worse than what gets stuck at the bottom of many company emails (in fact it's shorter than some email footers I've seen).

[crich70]

Originally Posted by gmw

Nonsense, yes. But not really any worse than what gets stuck at the bottom of many company emails (in fact it's shorter than some email footers I've seen).

And not much different in its meaningless nature from the disclaimer on many films. They claim that any similarity between real people and the characters in the movie is a coincidence but as most people will react in a similar way to a given situation it seems a rather meaningless disclaimer to make.

[PurpleStar]

Originally Posted by crich70

It could be that the no downloading...etc. notice is in relation to the issue of DRM. i.e. you can't download and store it legally except that it is used on the reader that is approved. So for example downloading an epub (whose DRM you then break) and converting it to read on a kindle would be against the law. How they would be able to enforce that is a very good question. With how many people every day buy ebooks and possibly do convert them for a different reader they'd have no time for anything else but running down potential violators of the notice.

I do that all the time. I've bought a lot of ebooks from Amazon, stripped the DRM (if it has DRM) and converted it to read on my Kobo. It's ridiculous that something like this is illegal.