Dont understand the DRM thing

[Peter Sorotokin]

Originally Posted by Rootman

Places like Amazon (for the Kindle) allow you to have up to 6 devices on one account and any of the devices can download the file and read it, however because the file is encrypted for each specific device it isn't possible to just MOVE the file over to the new device, each device has to "fetch" the file directly from the distributer with the proper encryption using THAT devices ID.

This is not true for Adobe eBook DRM. Unless a book specifically licensed for a single device (Book Info in Digital Editions will tell you if that's the case) or is a library loan, you can just move the file around between PCs and devices activated to your account and it will just work. No need to redownload it. And it will keep working even if the bookstore where you bought it goes out of business.

[meepster]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

On the other hand, see Barnes & Noble DRM for EPUB circumvented. Circumvention of DRM on ebooks you bought and for your own use only is probably legal in the US. The primary problem with B&N for ePubs at present is that you can't be sure you won't get an eReader ebook instead. The DRM on eReader ebooks can also be circumvented, but ignobleepub.pyw is very easy to use and you immediately get a DRM-free ePub.

Beware: circumvention of DRM on anything, at any time, for any purpose is very much illegal in the US. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Even if you are circumventing the DRM for your own personal use, you are still liable under this law. The software mentioned above is illegal to own and to use.

I think this is a misguided and foolish law; I think it stifles free expression and kills e-book sales; but it is the law. If you do not like it, please please please complain to your local government official.

meepster (yes, I am an attorney; no, the above is not legal advice, and should be used for entertainment purposes only)

[meepster]

Originally Posted by Davimee

Hi, I have a question that goes along with this. First of all, is it legal to remove DRM for my own use? There is a book I'm interested in that is only available in ereader, but it is a DRM book, and from what I've seen I can't read ereader DRM on the Astak Pocket Pro. I don't have the ereader yet, but I am looking into buying it next month some time. If I were to buy the book in ereader, is there an easy way to convert it to epub if it is DRM protected? I don't want to do it if there is a question as to the legality, although I will only be using it for myself, and not distributing the book to anyone. And if I did convert it to epub, would that change the format, or the functionality of the book? Hopefully this makes sense. Thanks!

No, it is not legal to break any form of DRM. If you do that, you are potentially liable for copyright infringement. See my earlier post.

I highly recommend that you write to the publisher and tell them exactly why you are not buying the DRM book. It's the only way they'll finally listen to reason and stop using it.

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by meepster

I highly recommend that you write to the publisher and tell them exactly why you are not buying the DRM book. It's the only way they'll finally listen to reason and stop using it.

Tell them ... DRM = Don't Read Me.

[meepster]

Incidentally, one other thing I've been nerving myself up to do is to contact the authors in question and tell them that they are losing sales because of the DRM nonsense. In one particular case, I own pretty much every book the author wrote, in trade paperback. I bought 5 of his e-books, at $5.95 a pop, because I love his books and I wanted to have them in electronic form. Because those DRM'd books are now unreadable, I will not be buying any more of his e-books. His publisher's misguided policies on DRM are causing him to lose sales to a very devoted fan of his work.

Note, incidentally, that at least according to the very cursory legal research I have done on the subject, scanning a paper copy of a book for personal use would most likely be considered fair use, and would not violate the DMCA. So, the way the law is set up, it makes more sense for me to pay nothing for an e-book and make my own by scanning/OCR than to pay $5.95 for an e-book and then break the encryption. In the former situation, I can argue fair use; in the latter situation, I violate the law merely by breaking the encryption, and fair use does not matter at all.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by meepster

Beware: circumvention of DRM on anything, at any time, for any purpose is very much illegal in the US. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Even if you are circumventing the DRM for your own personal use, you are still liable under this law. The software mentioned above is illegal to own and to use.

I think this is a misguided and foolish law; I think it stifles free expression and kills e-book sales; but it is the law. If you do not like it, please please please complain to your local government official.

meepster (yes, I am an attorney; no, the above is not legal advice, and should be used for entertainment purposes only)

Originally Posted by meepster

No, it is not legal to break any form of DRM. If you do that, you are potentially liable for copyright infringement. See my earlier post.

I highly recommend that you write to the publisher and tell them exactly why you are not buying the DRM book. It's the only way they'll finally listen to reason and stop using it.

Meepster:

I believe that your statement is stronger than can be justified at the moment. [In what follows, please remember that I am NOT a lawyer, and this is not legal advice...]

I TA'd a graduate seminar on Intellectual Property issues and Computer Science a few years ago here at Carnegie Mellon. The DMCA and the question of what is (and is not) permitted thereunder was one of the very hot topics in that course. We had quite a few eminent legal scholars giving guest lectures to the course. All of them addressed the question of DRM, DRM removal, and the DMCA... and there was absolutely no agreement on what you can legally do in that regard.

For this discussion, we are considering only removal of DRM from legally acquired content, for personal use. No sharing, uploading, "piracy," or the like; just DRM removal in aid of (for example) format shifting. All royalties paid; all copy-right owners and their assigns appropriately compensated. All squeaky-clean legal in every other way, with only the legality of the DRM removal at issue.

Some experts opined that stripping DRM in such cases was an obvious exercise of fair-use rights, and couldn't possibly be illegal. One of these experts went so far as to provide each lecture attendee with formal written advice of counsel that DRM removal (when everything else is legal) is itself a legal exercise of your pre-existing fair use rights. Others opined that it was a clear violation of the DMCA (and thus a felony). Still others went farther, and effectively said that anyone who strips DRM will rot in Hell for all eternity (or the legal equivalent thereof).

Each of these experts said that the DMCA was self-contradictory on this question. On the one hand, it claims that it does not remove or denigrate any pre-existing fair use rights. On the other hand, it appears to say that such DRM removal is a felony. The experts were disagreeing on how the courts would likely resolve the conflict. (I should point out here that my notes are not good enough to yield a specific citation to the wording in question!)

Each expert agreed that we won't really know the legal status of removing DRM until the courts sort it all out. They also agreed that any prosecutor who chose to prosecute someone whose only (arguable) breach of the law was stripping DRM from legally acquired content for personal use (with no uploading, sharing, "piracy," etc.) would be seriously dope-slapped by the Judge for wasting the court's time and resources. After all, it's really hard to see who is harmed by such action.

Xenophon
(who is most definitely not a lawyer, and is not dispensing legal advice!)

P.S. These scholars did agree on many other points of the DMCA though, including:

• creating or distributing DRM-removal software is almost certainly a felony
• telling someone else where to find DRM removal software is probably a felony
• Helping other users figure out how to use such software might be a felony
• Owning a DRM-removal program is not illegal, but using it may or may-not be illegal (according to that scholar's position)

All of these items under the "creation" and "distribution" clauses as appropriate. My notes do not distinguish the difference between "almost certainly," "probably," and "might be" so as always YMMV.

[meepster]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Meepster:

I believe that your statement is stronger than can be justified at the moment. [In what follows, please remember that I am NOT a lawyer, and this is not legal advice...]

I'm not sure. I've looked into the issue quite a bit - as mentioned, I am an attorney, and I specialize in intellectual property (though most of my practice is in patents at present - I do very little copyright work). [note, however, that the below is not legal advice - I do not dispense legal advice on the Internet]

The plain language of the DMCA says "no circumvention, no way, no how". It is self-contradictory in that it claims to keep fair use rights the way they are, but I think that it is fairly clear that it does, prohibit all circumvention. U.S. v. Elcom Ltd., 203 F. Supp. 2d 1111 (N.D. Cal. 2002), appears to support this interpretation - the court interprets the statute to mean that all circumvention tools are prohibited, not just the tools that facilitate copyright infringement.

Incidentally, see Universal City Studios v. Corley, 273 F. 3d 429 (2d Cir. 2001) for a discussion on the DMCA and fair use as it applies to DVD movies:

"Third, the Appellants have provided no support for their premise that fair use of DVD movies is constitutionally required to be made by copying the original work in its original format.[35] Their examples of the fair uses that they believe others will be prevented from making all involve copying in a digital format those portions of a DVD movie amenable to fair use, a copying that would enable the fair user to manipulate the digitally copied portions. One example is that of a school child who wishes to copy images from a DVD movie to insert into the student's documentary film. We know of no authority for the proposition that fair use, as protected by the Copyright Act, much less the Constitution, guarantees copying by the optimum method or in the identical format of the original. Although the Appellants insisted at oral argument that they should not be relegated to a "horse and buggy" technique in making fair use of DVD movies,[36] the DMCA does not impose even an arguable limitation on the opportunity to make a variety of traditional fair uses of DVD movies, such as commenting on their content, quoting excerpts from their screenplays, and even recording portions of the video images and sounds on film or tape by pointing a camera, a camcorder, or a microphone at a monitor as it displays the DVD movie. The fact that the resulting copy will not be as perfect or as manipulable as a digital copy obtained by having direct access to the DVD movie in its digital form, provides no basis for a claim of unconstitutional limitation of fair use. A film critic making fair use of a movie by quoting selected lines of dialogue has no constitutionally valid claim that the review (in print or on television) would be technologically superior if the reviewer had not been prevented from using a movie camera in the theater, nor has an art student a valid constitutional claim to fair use of a painting by photographing it in a museum. Fair use has never been held to be a guarantee of access to copyrighted material in order to copy it by the fair user's preferred technique or in the format of the original."

Sorry for the lengthy quote, but I think it's a good indication of the way the courts are likely to go on this one.

Again, the above is NOT legal advice - it is just my opinion.

[meepster]

Oh, and for those of you who want to do your own legal research on this one: go to scholar.google.com and search the federal cases yourself. I highly recommend it; it is very important to know the law.

[Davimee]

Xenophon and Meepster, thank you for your comments. It has been very interesting to read! I don't want to deal with any legal issues, so I guess if I can't find a book in the format I need, I just won't get it. I have enjoyed reading your posts, so thank you for them!

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by meepster

Oh, and for those of you who want to do your own legal research on this one: go to scholar.google.com and search the federal cases yourself. I highly recommend it; it is very important to know the law.

I strongly agree with this! Although interpreting the law can be difficult for those of us who are not lawyers.

I note that your response about the DMCA puts you solidly in line with the second camp of experts (the "highly likely to be against the law" crew). Being a non-lawyer, I find it very difficult to directly assess the merits of the various arguments.

Xenophon
(As always, this is not legal advice, YMMV, IANAL, etc.)

[DaleDe]

I think the DMCA itself takes a much stronger position than the copyright office and anything that preceded the DMCA. (except maybe the music industry officials)

Dale

[rmm200]

Since the DMCA is a great example of the best law money can buy, how do we as voting citizens get the law changed?

While organizations with lots of funds can buy politicians and the legislation they want, at least the rest of us make up in numbers what we lack in funding, and can vote the rascals out.

It takes new elected officials at least a few years to lose their moral compass, so there is something to be said of change for change's sake.

Robert

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by meepster

Beware: circumvention of DRM on anything, at any time, for any purpose is very much illegal in the US. See the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Even if you are circumventing the DRM for your own personal use, you are still liable under this law. The software mentioned above is illegal to own and to use.

I think this is a misguided and foolish law; I think it stifles free expression and kills e-book sales; but it is the law. If you do not like it, please please please complain to your local government official.

meepster (yes, I am an attorney; no, the above is not legal advice, and should be used for entertainment purposes only)

Aah, but the one thing you all have not taken into account is that there is a specific exemption to the DMCA in the US relating to eBooks.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

From http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/index.html

Note that, amusingly, it doesn't say that you have to need the read-aloud or screenreader tech, it simply states that it's legal if there are no versions of the ebook that support that tech. (almost all DRM ebooks will disable those features, since it allows a simple accessibility app to grab all the text otherwise).
It also does not state how one determines whether _all_ versions of the book don't support screen readers. I suspect you could credibly argue that since that feature is not listed by the bookseller, and since you cannot check the book before buying it, that it would be an economic hardship to determine if every other version was also restrictive, and since publishers tend to keep the same rules across formats, a single restrictive ebook would indicate a high probability that all editions would be restrictive.

[meepster]

Originally Posted by rmm200

Since the DMCA is a great example of the best law money can buy, how do we as voting citizens get the law changed?

While organizations with lots of funds can buy politicians and the legislation they want, at least the rest of us make up in numbers what we lack in funding, and can vote the rascals out.

It takes new elected officials at least a few years to lose their moral compass, so there is something to be said of change for change's sake.

Robert

Please, write to your local politician and tell him or her of this. The DMCA is bad law, and it needs to be changed.

[meepster]

Originally Posted by bkilian

Aah, but the one thing you all have not taken into account is that there is a specific exemption to the DMCA in the US relating to eBooks.

From http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2006/index.html

Note that, amusingly, it doesn't say that you have to need the read-aloud or screenreader tech, it simply states that it's legal if there are no versions of the ebook that support that tech. (almost all DRM ebooks will disable those features, since it allows a simple accessibility app to grab all the text otherwise).
It also does not state how one determines whether _all_ versions of the book don't support screen readers. I suspect you could credibly argue that since that feature is not listed by the bookseller, and since you cannot check the book before buying it, that it would be an economic hardship to determine if every other version was also restrictive, and since publishers tend to keep the same rules across formats, a single restrictive ebook would indicate a high probability that all editions would be restrictive.

I like this! But note that the exemption in question expired in October of 2009. I'm not sure if it's been renewed.