The 'ebooks are not transferable' issue...

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

In the case of e-books, you know what you are buying, and you are told the stipulations of that sale. No court would overturn that unless the stipulations were intentionally concealed in order to convince you to buy.

Actually, courts have overturned stipulations exactly like those of eBooks before. As pilotbob said, first-sale doctrine trumps any contract/license at the time of sale, whether it is concealed or not. Companies can not take your rights away as a stipulation of a sale. They can make any claim along those lines that they want to, but it won't hold up.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by dragonbone

I don't understand. Who owns 5 Sony PRS Readers? Or who owns 5 iPods and uses them all together at the same time. Meaning: it is possible and legal to share content up to 5 devices. Well, that's my take on it anyway.....

5 devices, not 5 iPods or PRS's.
Options include:

1) Computer
2) Laptop
3) Spouse's computer
4) Main iPod
5) IPod mini/nano

1) Computer
2) Laptop
3) Sony PRS-505
4) Work computer (iffy, but depends on job)
5) Spouse's Sony PRS-700

And then, hey... you decide to upgrade the laptop, or your computer crashes & needs a Windows reinstall--and you get to hope the unregister/reregister software all works correctly.

[phenomshel]

And what about this scenario? I want a book in ebook format. The book is not available in electronic format, anywhere. So, I buy a physical copy of the book, scan it (destroying it in the process), OCR it, and make my own ebook. I bought one copy of the book, I now own one copy of the book. Legal? Probably not. But the author and publisher got their money for one copy of the book, which is what I now own, albeit in a different format than the one I purchased.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

5 devices, not 5 iPods or PRS's.
Options include:

1) Computer
2) Laptop
3) Spouse's computer
4) Main iPod
5) IPod mini/nano

1) Computer
2) Laptop
3) Sony PRS-505
4) Work computer (iffy, but depends on job)
5) Spouse's Sony PRS-700

And then, hey... you decide to upgrade the laptop, or your computer crashes & needs a Windows reinstall--and you get to hope the unregister/reregister software all works correctly.

We have run into this with my husband's Adobe DRM formatted textbooks for school. He's a computer tech. He changes hardware all the time (which to Adobe means he's got to register a different machine to his account). He blew through the six activations in about six months. Calling Adobe and explaining the situation to get them to reset the activations on the textbook turned out to be an exercise in frustration. Hours long hold times, people who don't speak English as a first language, and one person flat out called him a liar. There IS no unregister/re register with these, either.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

In the case of e-books, you know what you are buying, and you are told the stipulations of that sale. No court would overturn that unless the stipulations were intentionally concealed in order to convince you to buy.

In some cases, you believe you are buying a PDF, and you are instead buying an ePub. Or vice versa. Not all ebook sellers are at all clear about (1) what they sell or (2) your terms of use. DRM is mentioned as existing, but often not explained.

And aside from that--the terms of sale can't be illegal. A seller cannot say, "you may only read this book on Thursdays," nor "this book may only be read by natural-born US citizens," and sue you for violating those terms. The seller may attempt to put restrictions on the product that enforce those terms--software that checks your computer clock for the date, or can't be downloaded from non-US ISPs--but they can't require you to follow such terms if you find a way around them.

Anyway, I don't want to argue the present legalities. I merely state that the laws as they stand should be amended to more accurately reflect the product in question, instead of being taken in whole cloth from another product type which is in fact not the same. The fact that there is so much legal ambiguity is a direct consequence of improperly applying laws from one product onto another inherently different product.

THAT, I agree with 100%.

The laws regarding digital content of all sorts range from incoherent to psychotic, and come from trying to treat it all as physical objects.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

And what about this scenario? I want a book in ebook format. The book is not available in electronic format, anywhere. So, I buy a physical copy of the book, scan it (destroying it in the process), OCR it, and make my own ebook. I bought one copy of the book, I now own one copy of the book. Legal? Probably not. But the author and publisher got their money for one copy of the book, which is what I now own, albeit in a different format than the one I purchased.

Legal in the US. Making a copy for someone else is probably not legal. (It's iffy. Non-commercial outright copying hasn't yet found its way through the US courts; the RIAA has tried and not yet been successful.)

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Legal in the US.

Yep, it's called "format shifting" or "space shifting". In the US you can scan a pBook just like you can rip a CD, as long as it's for your own use.

[JSWolf]

Is it legal to call a format of an eBook Digital Editions without saying if it's PDF or ePub and then after you buy it and find out it's not the format you want/need they won't let you have the one you intended to purchase? I think that should be illegal (IMHO).

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Is it legal to call a format of an eBook Digital Editions without saying if it's PDF or ePub and then after you buy it and find out it's not the format you want/need they won't let you have the one you intended to purchase? I think that should be illegal (IMHO).

It's bad business, since they'll lose customers when they do that, but I doubt there's a law against it. Now, if they said it's an ePub but they really sell you a PDF, you could claim that it was false advertising. However, just saying DE and not being specific enough to narrow it down is probably legal.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by dragonbone

I don't understand. Who owns 5 Sony PRS Readers? Or who owns 5 iPods and uses them all together at the same time. Meaning: it is possible and legal to share content up to 5 devices. Well, that's my take on it anyway.....

I own 2 Bookeen Cybook Gen3s, 1 Netronix EB-100, 1 Sony PRS-500, 1 HP iPaq 110 (pda) and 1 Dell Axim x51v (pda) - along with a desktop PC, a netbook and a laptop. I tend to use the Cybooks most of the time, swapping out as I let one recharge, but as I use an SD card to hold my ebooks, I've been known to shift to any of the other devices 'on the fly'. By my count, that's NINE devices I use to read my ebooks - and Mobipocket only allows FOUR to be registered. Oops! Guess I'll continue to strip out the DRM. And the situation is only going to get more complex when I add a BeBook or Kindle 2 to the mix, or if I get a TXTR ebook reader when they become available.

Derek

[dragonbone]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

I own 2 Bookeen Cybook Gen3s, 1 Netronix EB-100, 1 Sony PRS-500, 1 HP iPaq 110 (pda) and 1 Dell Axim x51v (pda) - along with a desktop PC, a netbook and a laptop. I tend to use the Cybooks most of the time, swapping out as I let one recharge, but as I use an SD card to hold my ebooks, I've been known to shift to any of the other devices 'on the fly'. By my count, that's NINE devices I use to read my ebooks - and Mobipocket only allows FOUR to be registered. Oops! Guess I'll continue to strip out the DRM. And the situation is only going to get more complex when I add a BeBook or Kindle 2 to the mix, or if I get a TXTR ebook reader when they become available.

Derek

OK, well if you want to include every single device in your house. I can add a few more too.
Let me see... mmmm well there is my home PC my "17 laptop and my mini "7 laptop (for traveling), iPod, all the other iPods in my household, my PDA and my cell phones.
I may have forgotten some other devices that I could possible READ on.... the electronic message panel on my fridge door springs to mind.

For some strange reason I have never felt the urge to read on any of those devices, I guess that is why I got a dedicated reader.

[ficbot]

I think the issue is not so much which devices you own *now* but rather which you might in the future. For example if my current computer dies, how easy will it be to get my content onto the new one? If doing so is reliant on me using a web server somewhere, can I be assured that web server will still be there? Or that I will happen to have internet connectivity when I need to do it? For example I often use some of my ebooks at work, and I use my own personal computer at times. I cannot connect it to the internet at work. So if I needed to access my files and had to reauthorize a new computer while I was at work, I couldn't do it.

It's not so much whether I have three or five or whatever devices *now* it's if I get a new device and want to transfer over my stuff.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

Yep, it's called "format shifting" or "space shifting". In the US you can scan a pBook just like you can rip a CD, as long as it's for your own use.

But definitely not legal in the UK and many other countries.

[Daithi]

I just try to live by the Golden Rule and do the right thing. I'd say my own actions are similar to TallMomof2. I don't have a problem sharing with my household/immediate family. On the other hand, I wouldn't give a file (music/book/movie/etc) to a friend as I think they should buy their own, and my giving it to them would deprive an artist of fair compensation.

Digital contracts are another matter. I pretty much ignore all those digital contracts that Microsoft (or whoever) throws up at you when you install some software. Additionally, when I am shown a contract after I've paid my money then I really don't have a problem ignoring that contract. As far as I am concerned any contract that deviates from traditional business practices should be explicit and both parties should be fully aware of those differences before any money changes hands.

From a legal standpoint I may be in the wrong, but from a moral standpoint I don't have a problem living with myself. If this makes me a pirate then I really truely don't give a flip.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Additionally, when I am shown a contract after I've paid my money then I really don't have a problem ignoring that contract. As far as I am concerned any contract that deviates from traditional business practices should be explicit and both parties should be fully aware of those differences before any money changes hands.

Those type of contracts are usually invalid, for exactly that reason.