DRM Handcuffs

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sadievan

A while back I called Overdrive about the 'open epub' asking what is was. They told me it was DRM free. How that relates to expires though I don't know.

Carol

Thank you!

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Please let us know two things, if the Kindle books that are paired with the "open epub" are encrypted or not and if the open epub and kindle books expire at the end of the term. ... Oh wait that's three things.

Thank you !

The book I got as an open epub did not offer a Kindle/mobi version.

It'll be some time before I know if the open epub expires, as I chose the 21-day lending period.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Catlady

The book I got as an open epub did not offer a Kindle/mobi version.

It'll be some time before I know if the open epub expires, as I chose the 21-day lending period.

Ah, I see. Thanks...if you remember.

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by CRussel

But let's be clear. If it's an Amazon book, and Amazon goes out of business (admittedly, not terribly likely right now), then their archive of your book is suddenly gone.

Which is why you should back up your purchases on your computer. And then back up the computer.

DRM does not stop you from doing this.

Of course, if Amazon went out of business, and your Kindle broke, you couldn't read your books unless you had them on you computer and a copy of K4PC.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Which is why you should back up your purchases on your computer. And then back up the computer.

DRM does not stop you from doing this.

Of course, if Amazon went out of business, and your Kindle broke, you couldn't read your books unless you had them on you computer and a copy of K4PC.

Which is why DRM must go and why you should do what you can to remove it in order to protect your purchase.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Of course, if Amazon went out of business, and your Kindle broke, you couldn't read your books unless you had them on you computer and a copy of K4PC.

And then some part of your computer breaks, and your new installation of Kindle on your computer won't read the books you'd carefully backed up...

The only sensible course of action for ebooks, if you want to retain access to them, is to only buy non-DRM ebooks, or to strip the DRM immediately after buying them.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

As I understand it, the DMCA clearly says that removing DRM is a violation of the law without regard to Fair Use Rights. If I recall correctly, Fair Use is specifically overwritten by this law. So until the Supreme Court overturns those portions of the DMCA, you are in violation of the law.

Title 17 > Chapter 12 > § 1201, Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems

(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.—(1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

Theoretically, fair use is unaffected by the DMCA. In reality, there's no definitive court case, although removal of DRM on video for educational purposes (film classes & such) has been upheld, and the iPhone jailbreak ruling is encouraging.

[BillSmithBooks]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Title 17 > Chapter 12 > § 1201, Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems

(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.—(1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

Theoretically, fair use is unaffected by the DMCA. In reality, there's no definitive court case, although removal of DRM on video for educational purposes (film classes & such) has been upheld, and the iPhone jailbreak ruling is encouraging.

Oh, that's interesting.

Quick question: The courts have already ruled that making a backup copy is legal, correct? (And the ruling that allows VCR's to exist -- the Sony, ruling, right? -- would also make this legal, since in order to view something later you have to make a copy...presumably okay as long as it is for personal use only.)

So am I correct in assuming that the main issue then, is that while it is legal to make a backup copy (for personal use only), the potentially illegal part is making any tools that enable breaking DRM or telling other people how to break DRM?

And so it really does just become an arms race between DRM-makers and DRM-breakers? (And, of course, being restricted from using sites by manufacturers once they've found you've broken the DRM, just as Apple kicks out jailbroken phones, right?)

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

Which is why you should back up your purchases on your computer. And then back up the computer.

DRM does not stop you from doing this.

Yes, it does. A backup must be able to be restored to a different physical machine to be a valid backup. Otherwise, there's no point. If my house burns down, or I'm caught by hurricane, or earthquake or whatever, I need to be able to restore my systems and files and use them. A backup that is only usable on the original device is not useful, and is only giving you a false sense of security.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

And then some part of your computer breaks, and your new installation of Kindle on your computer won't read the books you'd carefully backed up...

The only sensible course of action for ebooks, if you want to retain access to them, is to only buy non-DRM ebooks, or to strip the DRM immediately after buying them.

HERE! HERE!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Yes, it does. A backup must be able to be restored to a different physical machine to be a valid backup. Otherwise, there's no point. If my house burns down, or I'm caught by hurricane, or earthquake or whatever, I need to be able to restore my systems and files and use them. A backup that is only usable on the original device is not useful, and is only giving you a false sense of security.

Truth.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks

Oh, that's interesting.

Quick question: The courts have already ruled that making a backup copy is legal, correct? (And the ruling that allows VCR's to exist -- the Sony, ruling, right? -- would also make this legal, since in order to view something later you have to make a copy...presumably okay as long as it is for personal use only.)

So am I correct in assuming that the main issue then, is that while it is legal to make a backup copy (for personal use only), the potentially illegal part is making any tools that enable breaking DRM or telling other people how to break DRM?

And so it really does just become an arms race between DRM-makers and DRM-breakers? (And, of course, being restricted from using sites by manufacturers once they've found you've broken the DRM, just as Apple kicks out jailbroken phones, right?)

Freedom to make a backup copy, however, doesn't necessarily imply freedom to remove DRM in order to be able to do so. The Courts ruled that Real Networks were violating the DMCA in selling their "RealDVD" tool which allowed people to make backup copies of their DVDs, for example.

[bfisher]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Just the other day, I borrowed a book (The Two, by Irving and Amy Wallace) I'd had on hold from the Free Library of Philadelphia. I had the choice of Adobe epub, Adobe pdf, open epub, and open pdf. First time I've had a choice of download options, so I chose open epub, but I have no idea what that means in terms of the book expiring or not, since I've never before borrowed an open epub book.

I borrowed a few epubs recently from the Ottawa Public Library. They were open epubs.

It looks to be an honor system - you are supposed to delete the files after the loan period. I just checked, the files were still on my hard drive, and readable by Okular. I have deleted them.

They don't show up in "borrowed" in ADE, which is how I access library ebooks.

One side effect I did notice is that I could not return the books before the end of the borrowing period. Since the Ottawa library has a 10-item limit, that limited what I could borrow for 21 days, and prevented their being available to anyone else. I will be careful in future about borrowing open epubs unless I am quite sure that I want to hold the book for a long period.

[stonetools]

I'm a bit worried at those who blithely advise that its totally legally OK to remove DRM from DRMed ebooks and its the only sensible course of action to take.
For one, the provisions of the DCMA actually do bar DRM stripping explicitly. There is a fair use exception , but its not clear that it covers all the uses Mobile Readers say it covers. Backup and archive yes: sharing with others no. Even then, that's just my opinion; a federal court judge might say no.

The DMCA isn't the only applicable law either: there is also the EULA under which you "purchased" the ebook . The Amazon EULA states thusly:

No Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, Disassembly, or Circumvention. You may not modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Kindle or the Software, whether in whole or in part, create any derivative works from or of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat, or tamper with or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Kindle or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software, for example, by augmenting or substituting any digital rights management functionality of the Kindle or Software.

Seems clear to me.

People here pretend that these EULAs don't count,(because nobody reads them) but a federal court may well say that they do, and that maybe folks SHOULD read the fine print before they "buy" stuff. Its even more likely that the federal courts will so find, because there are legit means of backup and archiving ebooks. See HERE
This is in addition to Amazon's free archive service to all consumers.

Now of course all of the digerati are yelling, " What about if the company goes out of business, or switches formats? "
Well, the last time this happened was in 2006- a technological eon ago. Amazon isn't going to go out of business overnight and isn't going to piss off a gazillion customers by switching DRM schemes overnight. Speculating about that makes about as much sense as speculating about a Japanese invasion of the USA because such an invasion occurred in the past.
And if they did, so what? In both cases, the company would have abandoned their right to enforce that particular DRM scheme. From a LEGAL point of view, circumventing an ABANDONED DRM scheme would then be completely OK.
Again, I'm looking at things from a legal POV. The "DRM is morally EVUUL like child molestation" crowd may be OK with advocating winking at the law, but I just wanted to make clear to any lurkers that the statement " the only sensible course of action ... is to strip DRM " is false. You do have options-CLEARLY LEGAL options.
Ok, back to regularly scheduled programming.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by CRussel

Yes, it does. A backup must be able to be restored to a different physical machine to be a valid backup. Otherwise, there's no point. If my house burns down, or I'm caught by hurricane, or earthquake or whatever, I need to be able to restore my systems and files and use them. A backup that is only usable on the original device is not useful, and is only giving you a false sense of security.

No, it doesn't . You can re-download your ebooks from Amazon if your house AND your system burns down. The Kindle Agreement allows you to re-download your ebooks to up to 6 devices.
Its this kind of misinformation that is a constant in such debates. Whatever your feelings about DRM, at least make it clear that there are non-DRM-stripping ways of backing up and restoring your ebook collection.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I borrowed a few epubs recently from the Ottawa Public Library. They were open epubs.

It looks to be an honor system - you are supposed to delete the files after the loan period. I just checked, the files were still on my hard drive, and readable by Okular. I have deleted them.

They don't show up in "borrowed" in ADE, which is how I access library ebooks.

One side effect I did notice is that I could not return the books before the end of the borrowing period. Since the Ottawa library has a 10-item limit, that limited what I could borrow for 21 days, and prevented their being available to anyone else. I will be careful in future about borrowing open epubs unless I am quite sure that I want to hold the book for a long period.

Thank you for that. So I presume these open epubs were past the return/expire date?