Ethics and legalities of format shifting

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Quoth

You keep conflating people buying a copy and making personal changes with the behaviour of organised criminals.

And yet anyone who uses more than one license per title, but has only paid for one, acts as license thief.
It is a fact. And I cannot think of them otherwise.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

And yet anyone who uses more than one license per title, but has only paid for one, acts as license thief.
It is a fact. And I cannot think of them otherwise.

You have a very strange view of the world.

I thought Kobo's official insistence that everyone in a household who wants to read an ebook should buy their own copy of a book was weird, but your insistence that a single person should buy an ebook twice is even stranger.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

And yet anyone who uses more than one license per title, but has only paid for one, acts as license thief.
It is a fact. And I cannot think of them otherwise.

A license is not bought for a single device. It's bought for an account. You can legally read it on as many devices as you want. And format shifting, while not legal, means exactly the same in reality - the same person who bought the license to read the file reads it on one of their devices. There is no damage, other than in your imagination.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

You have a very strange view of the world.

I thought Kobo's official insistence that everyone in a household who wants to read an ebook should buy their own copy of a book was weird, but your insistence that a single person should buy an ebook twice is even stranger.

I think his problem is that he cannot understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I think that Amazon make money on every Kindle sold. Where's your evidence that they are selling at below cost?

No, it is impossible to manufacture, package, transport, manage and trade a cheap Amazon Reader at such a price.
Amazon certainly makes a profit with the more expensive devices.
The difference in manufacturing costs is not particularly great.
It's the same with Kobo, Tolino, brands that have bookshops behind them - the cheap devices can only be cross-financed.

[MarjaE]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

What is the damage they cause? Not hypothetical damage, but real damage.

Apparently the authors and publishers would sell more books if we would (a) request refunds on ones we can't read due to incompatibilities, and (b) stop buying ones where we expect incompatibilities.

P.S. Relevant:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=3420801

Note that the current legal exceptions don't yet include individual disabled users fixing individual accessibility problems, only authorized institutions. But we still need to fix accessibility problems, and may not even have access to authorized institutions, such as libraries, due to other interlocking accessibility problems.

[Sirtel]

Here is a hypothetical situation.

There is a fire in the house of my neighbor. Their small child is home alone and cannot get the door open to escape - it's locked. What shall I do?

Variant 1 - I call the firemen. Because the law forbids breaking and entering other people's property without their permission (which the child cannot give, being in shock and not capable of thinking rationally). One must obey the law, always and everywhere. The result is that the child dies before the firemen arrive. But I'm innocent of any legal wrongdoing.

Variant 2 - I break the door down and get the child out. The result is that I'm now a criminal by the letter of the law, but the child is alive.

Yes, it has nothing to do with the current topic, but that's what can result from thinking that one must always obey the letter of the law, no matter what.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I think his problem is that he cannot understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

The spirit of the law is to attempt paper book-like protection for ebooks that can be easily copied and distributed many times over.
If you want a second book, you have to buy a second book.
The content of the law states: a license for a file that is forbidden to modify - display on the devices corresponding to the account
If you want a second license for devices that do not correspond to the first account, you have to buy a second license for the devices corresponding to the other account.

Anyone who modifies the first file in such a way that it can also be displayed by devices without an account is acting against the letters of the law as well as against the spirit.

And also completely irresponsible - what if the reader is lost or even stolen and the files it contains are unprotected!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

I know that hardly anywhere else is so much stolen as from EReader owners, because hardly anyone pays for the file copies actually used.
And I allow myself to consider those who do this consciously as thieves.

Out of curiosity, why do you keep insisting that removing DRM and format shifting is equivalent to downloading pirated copies or "stealing". Are you accusing many of the people you are hectoring in this thread who have paid for the books they backup, format shift and read of also uploading them to pirate sites?

As for hardly anywhere else is so much stolen? I seem to notice much more activity in moves, TV shows and music than in ebooks. If nothing else, a lot more people spend a lot more time watching movies and TV or listening to music than they spend reading ebooks. It may be different in an alternate Austria where more people read books but not in this world.

As for considering them thieves? It must be nice to have such confidence in your smug superiority.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

And yet anyone who uses more than one license per title, but has only paid for one, acts as license thief.
It is a fact. And I cannot think of them otherwise.

It seems strange that Kobo and Amazon allow me to download my purchases from them on multiple devices. Eink ereaders, iOS/iPadOS apps, Android apps, Kobo and Kindle desktop apps on Windows and Mac.

Pull the other one, it has bells.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

And also completely irresponsible - what if the reader is lost or even stolen and the files it contains are unprotected!

Yawn. I'd worry more about my laptops despite their encrypted file systems.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

The spirit of the law is to attempt paper book-like protection for ebooks that can be easily copied and distributed many times over.
If you want a second book, you have to buy a second book.
The content of the law states: a license for a file that is forbidden to modify - display on the devices corresponding to the account
If you want a second license for devices that do not correspond to the first account, you have to buy a second license for the devices corresponding to the other account.

Anyone who modifies the first file in such a way that it can also be displayed by devices without an account is acting against the letters of the law as well as against the spirit.

And also completely irresponsible - what if the reader is lost or even stolen and the files it contains are unprotected!

Nope. The spirit of the law is that only the person who bought the license shall read the book. The device and the modifying part is the letter of the law. For you they're one and the same, that's why I said you can't understand the difference.

As for losing the reader, you can put a password on it. And it doesn't matter whether the files on my lost Kindle/Kobo are DRMed or not, they're readable anyway to anyone who finds the device. And they can be deDRMed by anyone who gets their hands on the device.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ottischwenk

This statement is also wrong - the servers are only needed initially, then no longer.
You are also responsible for the condition of your device with which you view the file.

More than slightly incorrect. As in @JSWolf's comment, the DRM used with Microsoft's .lit format required a connection to the server every time a DRMmed book was opened so once the servers shut down, your books were no longer readable. There are still existing reading applications where every time the book is opened, it needs a connection to the DRM server to allow reading. Other applications do not download the book for offline reading, you need a live internet connection.

As for being responsible for my device, are we to assume that you have never had any issues with electronic components failing on any device you have owned.

[ottischwenk]

I have no problems because I read all the books with the licenses of the corresponding accounts.

Format changes are unnecessary work and require the presence of a computer while I can get and read my books from wherever - without breaking a single law.

And if a device should be stolen from me, the thief can read all the books, but nothing else can do with it.

I don't have to worry about the return of libraries either - DRM does that for me.

DRM gives me only advantages - not a single limitation.

And since all of my devices are configured in this way, it doesn't matter much if a device should fail (apart from the device costs), I have my files in my cloud.

[ottischwenk]

Originally Posted by DNSB

More than slightly incorrect. As in @JSWolf's comment, the DRM used with Microsoft's .lit format required a connection to the server every time a DRMmed book was opened so once the servers shut down, your books were no longer readable. There are still existing reading applications where every time the book is opened, it needs a connection to the DRM server to allow reading. Other applications do not download the book for offline reading, you need a live internet connection.

I don't use that - so it doesn't matter to me.

As for being responsible for my device, are we to assume that you have never had any issues with electronic components failing on any device you have owned.

Yes, devices failed for me too, but I always had the right replacement ready to go.