Secondhand ebooks?

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

As the law currently stands, breaking the copyright on someone else's material is against the law. So even if it's not "stealing" per se, they're still knowingly doing something they know they shouldn't be doing.

Removing DRM from a purchased ebook to better enable the reading of a book "probably" won't get someone in trouble. But probably's are like being pregnant--you either are or you aren't. So someone "probably" won't get in trouble, until they do, and it usually ties in to how much other stuff they have on their computer or whatever.

And both are copyright infringement. In both cases the law gives the copyright holder the right to say: you can't share this and you can only read it on a specific device.

[DarkScribe]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And both are copyright infringement. In both cases the law gives the copyright holder the right to say: you can't share this and you can only read it on a specific device.

Removing DRM is definitely not copyright infringement. To be copyright infringement you would have to remove DRM and then give or sell the resulting file to another person.

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And both are copyright infringement. In both cases the law gives the copyright holder the right to say: you can't share this and you can only read it on a specific device.

Exactly. I personally do not DRM my books because I want people to be able to easily read them on whatever device they possess. That said, it makes me unhappy to see my book on filesharing sites all over the Internet because a lot of the downloaders take my book, read it, and don't even offer a review or any other kind of compensation for what they've received, even if it's not monetary in nature.

A used paperback loses value over time. So if I buy a paperback new for $14.99, my flipping through the pages decreases the value, so I can in good conscience sell it for $5.99 or whatever. It is a singular book. An ebook never decreases in value, it simply changes format. So to buy a book for $3.99, then sell it for $3.99... there's something wrong there. Or even to lower the price to $2.99 or $1.99, well, that devalues the original work, especially if the purchaser then brags all over the place that they got a super low price from Agent X... Also, once that person buys the ebook secondhand, what stops a dishonest person from reselling it and reselling it? Nothing.

[danskmacabre]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

Removing DRM is definitely not copyright infringement. To be copyright infringement you would have to remove DRM and then give or sell the resulting file to another person.

Removing DRM isn't copyright infringement, but I THINK it is illegal to remove DRM in the US (via the Digital millennium act?).

I don't think removing DRM is illegal in the UK, but I think there is a European law that states you're not allowed to strip DRM, but each country doesn't have to enforce that law if they don't want to.

TBH I don't see a problem with stripping DRM if you do it to enable moving it around your own personal devices only and I expect most tech savvy people do it whether they admit it or not.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

If someone busts into your house with a warrant and takes your computer and every other digital device and finds out that you have 40 gigs of ebooks and you make approximately $15,000 a year... some eyebrows are going to be raised considering there is currently no means to buy used ebooks. Therefore, the books are likely stolen.

That's one hell of a leap.

Just how many gigs' worth of e-books is your mythical $15,000-a-year wage slave allowed to have? There's the vast library of books from Project Gutenberg and Manybooks and Munseys and here at MR, dozens of free books every day from Amazon and BN, thousands of indie books that are free or cost only a couple of bucks, vast numbers of non-Agency books in all price ranges with coupon codes, etc.

And a search warrant is not a license to go trolling through every aspect of a person's life.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

A used paperback loses value over time.

http://www.bookscans.com/Articles/Mo...%20Authors.pdf

[plib]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Just because you disagree with her position on this issue doesn't mean her ideas are "stupid". Thoughtful people can and do arrive at different conclusions about the ramifications of reselling, donating, and giving away ebooks.

I think we'll have to disagree here. The comment was made on the idea that if a book is gifted on then it's somehow wrong that the original author isn't compensated when the gift is made. What about paintings or prints - should the artist be paid every time it's gifted, or resold? How about a DVD or CD? If I give my copy of a DVD I no longer want to watch to a friend should I call up the studio and ask how much I owe them? And red herrings such as the easy duplication of digital files don't apply, the original question was framed in terms of deleting all owned copies on gift.

The concept of endless remuneration for a single copy of anything is not only stupid, it's pernicious and dangerous. It attacks the concept of "first sale", affects the property rights of anyone who buys anything and would seriously tilt the balance between consumer and producer that has existed for centuries. It's bad enough that special interests can buy legislation, acceptance of their concepts in mainstream thought is worse.

The more ideas such as this are allowed to be repeated unchallenged the more they become part of the collective consciousness and the more likely they are to affect expectations, legislation and practice. This is also true in the political debate, the religious debate and other debates. The constant repetition of the "no government regulation" mantra and the consequent repeal of Glass-Steagall restrictions is a large part of why the world is in such a mess at the moment.

I'm sure the OP is a nice, bright, genuine person, although some of the logic seems a bit muddled. It's the fact that such a person obviously accepts and can blandly put forth the concept of endless remuneration for a single copy that is so troubling. It reinforces the concerns outlined above.

So, I have no issue calling the idea, not the poster, not only stupid but pernicious and dangerous.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

As the law currently stands, breaking the copyright on someone else's material is against the law. So even if it's not "stealing" per se, they're still knowingly doing something they know they shouldn't be doing.

As the law currently stands, fair use of copyrighted material is allowed. This is what you and some of the other anti-piracy people are ignoring. The question should be, What are the boundaries of fair use for an e-book? Does it really make sense that there should never be any fair-use exception for an e-book?

Saying that everything except one purchase/one reader is piracy is just silly. It's like saying there's no difference between making a copy of an e-book for Great-aunt Matilda to read in the nursing home and uploading the e-book to a file-sharing site for the enjoyment of thousands of strangers.

[Piper_]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that:

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

So if cops busted into your house and confiscated all of your stuff within the the purview of a search warrant, if they wanted to give you a hard time, finding a hard drive full of ebooks and movies that you did not purchase could result in you getting a trip to jail as they use the time you're locked up to find other reasons to ruin your life. As long as I've never done anything else of an illegal nature, I would not worry about having tons of unpaid for ebooks on my computer. But if I wanted to keep "the Man" from finding another reason to put me away, I probably wouldn't keep the evidence of even minor wrong doing on my hard drive.

Originally Posted by Harper Kingsley

So is a $5-10 book worth the possibility of going to jail?

I might steal food for a starving person. I might kill someone to protect myself or my family from imminent harm. I might rise up in protest to unfair treatment after looking over the issues in a given situation. For something serious like that, I might be willing to put my freedom on the line. But for a book that I probably won't even like? No, I won't.

...and several other similar claims about going to jail or having the police charge you for what is a civil/tort offense?

The plaintiffs in these cases are the copyright holders - not the government. The police won't say or do a thing, and neither will courts, unless the copyright holder sues you.

And no one ever goes to jail for a civil offense, even if they lose that civil suit, and even if they cannot pay the fines.

(Not saying it's good to do this, just saying all this talk about jail time and police for illegally downloading books is way off base.)

PS. TMK, No one has even been sued for downloading alone - they've all been sued by copyright holders for distribution/sharing massive quantities of copyrighted material.

[Lynx-lynx]

Originally Posted by plib

So far that makes it Amazon, Kobo, B&N and Smashwords where you can delete a book you've given away.

Yet another definitive statement in need of amendment.

I've checked my Kobo Aus account and that also has a 'Delete' option for books that have been purchased from them.

It seems to me that as there is provision by a number of e book sellers to delete a title, that the on forwarding of that title to another to read is not compromised by the inability to then delete the title from the originator's account - thus eliminating the rationale that the book exists in more than 1 copy by the original purchaser. (I am stating that the person must also delete the book in all and any other soft form.)

This practice would seem to mimic what occurs when a paper book is given to someone else.

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by Catlady

That's one hell of a leap.

Just how many gigs' worth of e-books is your mythical $15,000-a-year wage slave allowed to have? There's the vast library of books from Project Gutenberg and Manybooks and Munseys and here at MR, dozens of free books every day from Amazon and BN, thousands of indie books that are free or cost only a couple of bucks, vast numbers of non-Agency books in all price ranges with coupon codes, etc.

And a search warrant is not a license to go trolling through every aspect of a person's life.

I'm not going to give you his name, since that seems wrong. However, for a time there were several personal collections of ebooks made available on the Internet that had thousands and thousands of copyright books and he downloaded seven of them--each containing about 2000-3000 books from authors such as Terry Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Anne Rice, Laurell K Hamilton, Alan Dean Foster, CJ Cherryh, David Weber, Ursula LeGuin, David Drake, Jim Butcher, etc.

Obviously, none of those books were Public Domain. He paid no money for them and had no record of any purchases. He laughed about it and thought it was funny. He's just lucky someone didn't put a trace on the torrent like the movie studio did when they uploaded the Hurt Locker and tired to sue everybody http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/10/tech...uits/index.htm or even a nasty virus.

He didn't get busted for illegally downloading books or whatever. He tried to avoid paying taxes on casino winnings by drawing a bunch of stupid people into his plan to cash in his chips. In a case like that, it is a pretty serious deal, so someone in the casino cage took five minutes to fill out an SAR form and attached a security photo to it. Those forms go straight to the FBI and Homeland Security, who do, in fact, have the right to rip through every single aspect of a person's life on the suspicion that they may be funding whatever choice group of the moment. And finding a bunch of ebooks on his hard drive probably didn't look too good for him.

Say I'm wrong or whatever, I don't care. I never called for mass executions of anyone or to have peoples' names dragged through the dirt. All I've said is that a person-to-person transfer of an ebook is probably no big deal and you probably won't get in trouble. Then I just pointed out that ebooks maintain whatever form they're in--no wear and tear. Which means there probably won't be a place to resell your used ebooks in the future, especially if people can just buy a used ebook and stick it on some torrent site somewhere and the author or publisher does not receive any form of compensation while the book is downloaded thousands of times.

And again, all I've ever said is that if someone is going to do something they know is illegal or can get them or their friends or family in trouble, it's probably a good idea not to broadcast it all over the place. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the nail that sticks up gets pounded flat. I.E. Terry Goodkind.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Saying that everything except one purchase/one reader is piracy is just silly. It's like saying there's no difference between making a copy of an e-book for Great-aunt Matilda to read in the nursing home and uploading the e-book to a file-sharing site for the enjoyment of thousands of strangers.

It's stealing if, one time in your life, you pocket a stick of gum from a damaged pack found in the back isle of a chain pharmacy. And it's stealing if you are a successful professional burglar who concentrates on unlocked huts in one of India's poorest towns. Both are wrong, even though the degree of wrongness differs greatly.

Just as most people, at some point in their life, have stolen, most people in the future will have, at some point in their life, pirated. This shouldn't prevent us from recognizing stealing and piracy.

[Harper Kingsley]

Originally Posted by plib

So, I have no issue calling the idea, not the poster, not only stupid but pernicious and dangerous.

Thank you for once again calling me stupid (my bad, you're not calling me stupid, you're just calling the things I believe in stupid. So I'm sure that's very different.). I'm just glad that your opinion has no bearing on my views whatsoever.

I would just like to point out, that all I've said is a person-to-person transfer probably won't get anyone in trouble, but you can't resell an ebook as things currently stand. My reasoning? Because while a physical object can transfer from me to you, a license is ephemeral and cannot be transferred. So if I stripped the DRM off of a book so you could load it on your ereader, I would be the one that could get in trouble for whatever you do with that book.

You are free to do whatever you please with your life as I am free to do whatever I wish with mine. So if you feel no remorse whatsoever for taking someone's hard work and not even offering them a "Thank you, I really enjoyed your story" in recompense, then that is entirely up to you. But don't tell me I'm wrong if I don't want to be like you.

[Miss]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

When it comes to pbooks the idea of copyright is a straightforward one: it's the right to make copies. In the digital world it is different and I suspect that that is because those who write the laws are computer illiterate. For example if you have an ebook on your PC and your system does an automatic backup you are making a copy of the book. Technically according to the license agreement you shouldn't have a book on such a PC.

On the bright side, not everything in the license agreement is actually enforceable.

It's disappointing to me that by simply following the normal, accepted method of getting books from computer to ereader I have, in some small way, broken the law. Downloading a purchased book automatically puts it in ADE, then I take it from ADE to Calibre, and from Calibre it goes to my ereader. That's 3 copies already. You say technically I "shouldn't have a book on such a PC"...is there some alternative way of doing things that I completely missed somewhere that wouldn't make any copies whatsoever, besides switching to a Kindle?

I've never stripped or otherwise circumvented a DRM, not from fear of being caught but simply because it goes against my personal principles to break the law without an extremely good reason, e.g. preventing grievous bodily harm. Wanting access to a book doesn't count. So I take pains to follow the law and deny myself access to several books I want that aren't available with DRM suitable to my device (and I'm kept from pbooks for medical reasons, and Kindle too for that matter*) and for all that, I still happen to be infringing on a copyright because the system is set up to automatically make copies.

It's discouraging to work so hard to do what's right and then find out no matter how hard you try you're still accidentally doing something that goes against your own personal values, simply because the law hasn't been updated yet to accommodate ebook realities.

*Edit: still trying to find a way around that, and have hopes I will one of these days...

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

It's stealing if, one time in your life, you pocket a stick of gum from a damaged pack found in the back isle of a chain pharmacy. And it's stealing if you are a successful professional burglar who concentrates on unlocked huts in one of India's poorest towns. Both are wrong, even though the degree of wrongness differs greatly.

Just as most people, at some point in their life, have stolen, most people in the future will have, at some point in their life, pirated. This shouldn't prevent us from recognizing stealing and piracy.

FAIR USE. FAIR USE. FAIR USE.

It is not stealing to copy a book. Period. It is not even necessarily copyright infringement. Copyright law recognizes the concept of fair use, even if you don't. It is not black-and-white.