EU forcing DRM interoperability

[Alan]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

But there is no reason why they should be paid twice if I want to switch from one e-reader to another.

I agree with you. And in most cases you don't have to pay again. You can register you new e-reader at the site at which you bought your ebook at and use it with you new device.

On the other hand: When I buy software I usually get a license for one computer (or user in some cases). If I want to use the software on a second computer, I have to buy a new license. I can however, delete the program on the first computer and reinstall it on the second and still would only need one license. It's pretty much the same with ebooks, where you can use them on several devices. If you want to use them on additional e-readers, you have first to delete the book on one of the other devices and register the new one.

Their work is done, they've been paid, I only want the story in another format.

If you bought paperback and now want a hardcover edition you will have to pay again, because you use a new "container". Is there any reasons why this should be different when it comes to ebooks?

Drm is only there, because we (and the book industry) mistake the container for the story, but basically that's not right: you want to pay for the story, not for the container (although you may be willing to spend some extra money if it's a very nice container, like a hard-cover).

The story is pure information. Information always needs a means of transport like a paper book or an ebook or whatever. Information cannot exist without a "container". So it is indeed reasonable to govern the use of that container without which the story would not exist.

Alan

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by Alan

Yes it is a different situation. For a hardcover edition, additional work has been done, at least by the printer/publisher; there is no additional work done for another e-book format. So why should I have to pay for an e-book in another format?

I don't want to sound harsh, but in both cases, the author should only get paid once for each story I buy from him, be it in paperback format or hardcover format or Mobipocket format or MS-reader format or... It is a bit strange that the author gets paid three times for the story if I buy the paperback and the hardcover and the Mobipocket edition.

Johan.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by Alan

At the supermarket? No, perhaps not. But in a shop where they sell cell phone plans? Yes, there I am being told what I can do or not do with my phone. Likewise a car dealer, who sells me a car lease will tell me, what I am allowed to do with my car (how many miles I can drive per year, how I have to service my car and so on). When I buy software, I am being specifically told how and how long I can use the software.

In each of those cases a special contract is drawn up and usually signed. When it comes to software the validity of the "by clicking on this button you agree to..."-licenses are widely disputed.

Originally Posted by Alan

You made an verbal contract (or a written if mail ordered) with the book seller. Furthermore you were told on the first pages of that book, what you are allowed to do with the text in the book.

The contract I made with the book seller was "you give me the book and I give you the money". That's it. (Actually I didn't know that this kind of agreement was called a "contract" in legalese, so maybe this fact has led to some confusion on my behalf in this discussion.)

Originally Posted by Alan

I hope you excuse the incorrect term I used.

Yes, of course. A debate should never be about who is right and who is wrong, but a way to get closer to the truth. (As a consequence I'm always happy of the fact when I'm proven wrong.)

Originally Posted by Alan

If there would be no default law, every book would be preceded by 100 pages of EULA.

Not every book. The fact that some books would is acceptable. People would find them annoying and I'm sure many such EULAs would be unenforcable or voidable. I suspect paranoid authors would realize that the less paranoid authors' books (without EULAs) sell equally well and became a little bit saner.

Originally Posted by Alan

But there is a default law.

Yes, and it's one that is unfair in our current society. (It was a lot more fair when individuals couldn't very easily duplicate things, and is becoming ever more unfair as it gets easier to duplicate more.)
And AFAIK if you violate that default law then you aren't breaching a contract but instead breaking that particular law (e.g. copyright infringement).

Originally Posted by Alan

The publisher or author will notify you about the rights he deserves to his work at the beginning of each book.

The rights he deserves? Hardly any author deserves any of my natural rights. Maybe you mean "reserve". However, he obviously can't reserve anything he doesn't have. If he reserves all "rights"* it just means that he doesn't place any additional restrictions (in addition to the law) on the buyer. In fact, I'm quite sure he couldn't place any additional restrictions in the beginning of the book, and therefore the whole copyright-mumbo-jumbo page is unnecessary if he reserves all his "rights"*. E.g., if I made a book and put on the first page that the buyer would have to send me a cucumber after one year then I'm quite sure it wouldn't hold in the court of law.

(* these are the very rights that were naturally mine, if the government hadn't taken them without my consent)

Originally Posted by Alan

The authors can indeed decide for themselves. Only if they chose to not offer specific terms on the front pages of their books, the default law will apply. In not giving other terms on the front pages, the author has already decided for the default rules - the law.

You're not even trying to understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the government didn't take away some of my natural rights and give them to the authors then the authors would need me to agree on some special contract in addition to the law if they want what they now get without any such contract. Please re-read the previous sentence until you understand it. (It's quite simple. You really should be able to understand it. I don't think I can make it any more clear or easier to understand.)

The end result (i.e., me being with a book but without copying-rights) might be the same, but without copyright it would be much more annoying to get stuff and having to give up one's copying-rights than to get stuff without having to give up those rights.

Originally Posted by Alan

That and: Do not lock cars, for they can be stolen anyway and it will only bother me as the owner of the car if I have to use a key.

No, I did not. I never said that anything would be given away for free with that system, or even that there shouldn't be copyright in it. In fact, I expect there to be a lot less copyright infringement with it.

Maybe you are confusing the book/music/software/etc.-market system I outlined with the discussion about whether governments steal people's natural copying-rights or not.

Originally Posted by Alan

Authors don't have a monopoly.

They most certainly do have a monopoly on copying their works. Copyright is a government-granted monopoly, and authors have it.

Originally Posted by Alan

If you don't like the prices or rules or whatever that one author is offering, go to another.

Except that there are extremely few authors who grant* the buyers copying-rights. I'm 100% sure this number would get many, many orders of magnitude greater if the default law was that people are not stripped of their natural copying-rights when they become citizens.

(* it sounds a bit absurd that an author could grant a right to the one who's right it would be naturally)

Originally Posted by Alan

That might be true for certain markets (energy, water, and very few more) but certainly not for the music or book branch. If you don't like one author or musician, you can buy from another. Eventually the others have to adopt in order to stay in business.

OK. Just point me to the hordes of good sci-fi authors who don't keep my copying-rights for themselves when I buy a book from them. I'd love to buy from them, or even donate money to them, to help them stay in business.

I've been at places/situations that have been like: "This is how much what you're getting costs us. If you can't afford it then you may give what you can afford. If you can afford more then please give more because some can't afford as much." In fact, I have never seen this kind of system fail. That might be because I've seen so few of them, but still, all of them have been about actual physical goods, each of which costs real money. I'm confident it would work even better for goods that cost pretty much nothing per copy, but only have some initial cost.

[NatCh]

"Cucumber"

I'm not sure that I agree with the assertion that we have a "natural right" to copy.

[bingle]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'm not sure that I agree with the assertion that we have a "natural right" to copy.

So when the Constitution was written, the founders recognized that the natural order of things was for ideas to be copied. Copyright was intended as a temporary monopoly to delay copying for a short time, to give the creators incentive to create works without having them instantly duplicated.

Jefferson in particular has a great quote, that I think really highlights the 'natural' right to copy:

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

[NatCh]

Okay, then, I relinquish my reservations. Thanks for the info, bingle.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I'm not sure that I agree with the assertion that we have a "natural right" to copy.

Well, copying is one of the most basic things there is. It's how we learn almost everything we learn.

However, never underestimate the power of language. Immersing everyone in language like "copyright holder" certainly makes people assume the copying-monopoly is a right as opposed to a privilege or a bargain or somesuch. The same goes for newspeak* like "intellectual property" whose purpose is specifically to make immaterial things (such as privileges/bargains like copying-monopoly ("copyright") and idea-monopoly ("patents")) seem like actual property (and that propaganda campaign has been so successful that many people today think it's completely natural for immaterial "property" to be regarded as real property).

(* "newspeak" is from the book "1984" in which the government deliberately named concepts by their opposites for various psychological effects)

[NatCh]

Okay, then, I relinquish my reservations. Again.

[recycledelectron]

Originally Posted by rlauzon

The author has no such right.

When an author releases a book, the only rights he has (regarding the book) are granted by copyright. Copyright only addresses the ability to control copies and nothing more.

Dealing with US Law, copyirghts from from the US Constitution. They must not be retroactive. They must protect the author or inventor's right to have exclusive use of their creative ideas for a limited time.

The concept of exclusive use does (only) limit the copying. The problem is that some (criminals) sell you an item, then disclose that you can not use it without agreeing to an "end user license agreement." The problem is that I was defrauded when I purchaed a product (e.g., MS Office '97) to use (e.g., under Slackware / Wine '95) and then I come across a provision in the EULA that forbids my intended use (e.g., You may only use this product on a licensed Microsoft operating system. Any other use is piracy.) Ass-u-me-ing that a EULA is legal at all, and ignoring the unconstitutional nature of the current system of retroactive copyrights in the USA...US courts have established several criteria that must be met by sellers (and are almost never met by sellers.) 1. The EULA must be easily available to the end user prior to purchase. (The EULAs on microsoft.com have nothing to do with the click-wrap EULAs. Microsoft lies about this.) 2. The EULA must not violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which the Microsoft EULA I mentioned does.)

Anyway, this is irrelevant, given the unconstitutional retroactive extensions of Copyright law in the US.

Andy

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by bingle

Jefferson in particular has a great quote, that I think really highlights the 'natural' right to copy:

Jefferson is talking about "ideas". A book is not an "idea", any more than a house is an "idea". One can indeed have ideas about both the storyline of a book and building a house, but both only come into existance when you give them a physical manifestation - write the book, or build the house. Its the physical manifestation which gets the protection, not the idea.

[msundman]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Jefferson is talking about "ideas". A book is not an "idea", any more than a house is an "idea". One can indeed have ideas about both the storyline of a book and building a house, but both only come into existance when you give them a physical manifestation - write the book, or build the house. Its the physical manifestation which gets the protection, not the idea.

That's not quite correct. The restriction (copyright is about restriction, not about protection) does not apply to the physical object, but to the contents. You can violate the copyright of a book without even coming in contact with the physical object, e.g. by writing down what your friend reads aloud from the book.

Also consider what an e-book is. It can be a certain arrangement of electrons in some computer memory. None of the physical objects involved are under the copying restriction, just the meaning of the (perhaps constantly fluctuating and/or re-established) pattern of electrons.

Now let's get back to the Jefferson quote. What he describes is immaterial copyable entities, which is what the idea of "an idea" is an abstraction of. E.g., "he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine" obviously works with whatever can be copied without modifying the original, especially things that can be copied easily. The same goes for the rest of the quote.