DRM poll: How do you deal with it.

[Robotech_Master]

It's interesting this thread has gotten sidetracked into a discussion of whether downloading illicit e-books is legally/morally wrong.

I would remind folks that cracking the DRM on books you purchase (which over half the people responding to the poll say they do) is every bit as legally wrong (at least in the USA and certain other countries) as downloading the books off the Internet.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

It's interesting this thread has gotten sidetracked into a discussion of whether downloading illicit e-books is legally/morally wrong.

Around here, it's neither interesting nor surprising...

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

It's interesting this thread has gotten sidetracked into a discussion of whether downloading illicit e-books is legally/morally wrong.

I would remind folks that cracking the DRM on books you purchase (which over half the people responding to the poll say they do) is every bit as legally wrong (at least in the USA and certain other countries) as downloading the books off the Internet.

The point is that for many of us cracking the DRM is not seen as morally wrong because the book was paid for. I bought 8 ebooks today (I had money and Fictionwise sent me a 20% off coupon which added to my micropay to make a pretty good deal.

Everyone here will agree that the money I spent gives me the right to download and read those books.

However it doesn't give me the right to download and read other books by the same authors.

DRM cracking and format shifting simply enables me to exercise a right I have already paid for. That's why many members of MR do not have a moral problem with it because it doesn't violate the idea of "fair play."

[nekokami]

Two points that usually get brought up at some point in these arguments that I haven't seen in this thread yet, so will include for completeness:

1 - Copyright violation is a civil offense, whereas theft is a criminal offense, at least in the US.

2 - I don't believe it is actually illegal in the US to remove DRM. It is, however, illegal to distribute tools or information allowing someone else to do so. (Again, this is a civil, rather than criminal matter.)

[JeffElkins]

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's pretty easy to steal from your local grocery store, too.

Violation of copyright is not theft. If I take an orange from the grocery store, they no longer have that orange. If I download a book,song,film the original owner still has his copy. No theft has occured. It is a tort. A civil wrong or breach of a duty to another person, as outlined by law.

[JeffElkins]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

I would remind folks that cracking the DRM on books you purchase (which over half the people responding to the poll say they do) is every bit as legally wrong (at least in the USA and certain other countries) as downloading the books off the Internet.

Well said. There's an enormous amount of kettle-meet-pot in these discussions. On one hand, "I would never sully myself with a book from the evil darknet," and on the other, "I only buy .lit because the drm is so easy to circumvent."

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

I would remind folks that cracking the DRM on books you purchase (which over half the people responding to the poll say they do) is every bit as legally wrong (at least in the USA and certain other countries) as downloading the books off the Internet.

In the US, format shifting is a protected "fair use" of copyrighted material but downloading off the Internet is not. So at a minimum there is a difference in the defences available for the two actions.

I have never seen text to speech enabled on a DRMed ebook (it would only be effective for LIT anyway, since the others don't have text to speech). This means that the following current, November 2006, exception from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology in the DMCA (see Wikipedia) probably applies to all ebooks, and they can all be format shifted for personal use by anyone in the US:

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.

The only certain exception to the exception would be when the publisher makes a version available via an 'authorized entity' (a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities). Perhaps all publishers are routinely doing this, but I have not seen any "outreach" e.g. when I buy an ebook there isn't a FAQ saying read aloud disabled but go to this web site to get a free version if you need this capability.

[DDHarriman]

I know most do not see pdf as an eBook format, but Acrobat (pdf) does have text to speech, so protected ones can have text to speech.

[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I have never seen text to speech enabled on a DRMed ebook (it would only be effective for LIT anyway, since the others don't have text to speech). This means that the following current, November 2006, exception from the prohibition against circumvention of access-control technology in the DMCA (see Wikipedia) probably applies to all ebooks

I rather suspect that if it came up in court, the court would find that it applied only for handicapped people who actually needed to use text-to-speech or specialized screen readers. It doesn't make sense that people who have no need for those specialized formats would be expressly permitted to make them anyway.

[Lemurion]

A big part of the issue (IMHO anyway) has to do with the existence of a fundamental disconnect between the law and the beliefs of a sizable portion of the populace. This disconnect includes everything from the boundaries of fair use and the severity of copyright infringement as an infraction.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JeffElkins

Well said. There's an enormous amount of kettle-meet-pot in these discussions. On one hand, "I would never sully myself with a book from the evil darknet," and on the other, "I only buy .lit because the drm is so easy to circumvent."

Many of us don't believe that just because something may be illegal that it is necessarily immoral.

Also, like nekokami pointed out, removing DRM isn't even necessarily illegal depending on where you are.

[Boston]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Many of us don't believe that just because something may be illegal that it is necessarily immoral.

I understand the need for DRM to protect from revenue loss and that is what I use for my moral compass. Maybe its my wishful thinking that the courts and companies will have better things to do than chase people who are copying/modifying for personal use only that to which they are legally entitled and will focus on illegal distribution which is the intent of the laws to begin with.

Perhaps I misunderstood the choices, I voted "I buy books with device specific DRM (like Mobi and Kindle) and stick to the DRM terms" because I feel that is closer to what I am doing than the other choices although not strictly following DRM terms. I will alter the DRM (using igor's script) so that my Kindle can read books from other sources to which I have purchased elsewhere or borrowed from the library.

Likewise, I decrypt DVDs so I can covert them for my PMP. In all cases, I've purchased or rented. Likewise, I rip/convert the CDs I purchase. Otherwise, I wouldn't purchase at all since my listening/watching time is usually on the train.

But I don't do any of this to share/distribute as I believe revenues should go to the authors, artists and their backers.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Boston

I understand the need for DRM to protect from revenue loss and that is what I use for my moral compass. Maybe its my wishful thinking that the courts and companies will have better things to do than chase people who are copying/modifying for personal use only that to which they are legally entitled and will focus on illegal distribution which is the intent of the laws to begin with.

One would like to think that the purpose of DRM is to prevent illegal distribution, but if that were the case, then I should think that the industry would have settled on a standard years ago. The mere fact that Amazon bought Mobipocket and then used it as the basis of Kindle's DRM without allowing the Kindle and Mobipocket devices to inter-operate suggests a different motive.

DRM is about control; content providers want to be able to control your access to the media. By ensuring that Kindle and Mobi DRM don't inter-operate (besides them being essentially identical), Amazon can force you to buy Kindles if you want to read their Kindle Books. Likewise, if you own a Kindle, it makes it harder to read books bought from another source.

And lets not forget, technically, circumventing DRM may be a crime in and of itself. But that being said, the numbers in this poll show that at least half of the people who answered the poll break DRM, some routinely. It is not an effective method of preventing illegal distribution of a book.

Perhaps I misunderstood the choices, I voted "I buy books with device specific DRM (like Mobi and Kindle) and stick to the DRM terms" because I feel that is closer to what I am doing than the other choices although not strictly following DRM terms. I will alter the DRM (using igor's script) so that my Kindle can read books from other sources to which I have purchased elsewhere or borrowed from the library.

Just a point, there is no altering DRM; in the current models you either read it using a proper device or software or you strip the DRM from it. Now, you might be converting non-DRM'd books to read on the Kindle. But if you are reading books with DRM for which the Kindle is not a registered device, you are stripping the DRM.

Likewise, I decrypt DVDs so I can covert them for my PMP. In all cases, I've purchased or rented. Likewise, I rip/convert the CDs I purchase. Otherwise, I wouldn't purchase at all since my listening/watching time is usually on the train.

But I don't do any of this to share/distribute as I believe revenues should go to the authors, artists and their backers.

Boston, with a few possible exceptions, I doubt most of the people who answered this thread are breaking copyright. Most of the people who strip DRM are stripping it so they can archive the book they are reading or so they can read it on a different device than was intended. Morally, I think this is fine; I don't think it is a great idea because it encourages the publishers to continue the practice, but illegal or not, if the book is not being distributed, there is no illegitimate loss to the income of the publishers and the authors. That being said, it might leave you on shaky legal ground.

--
Bill

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Alisa

Many of us don't believe that just because something may be illegal that it is necessarily immoral.

Also, like nekokami pointed out, removing DRM isn't even necessarily illegal depending on where you are.

I agree. There is a huge difference, morally, from downloading or distributing books you never paid for and stripping DRM from a book so you can take advantage of all of your fair use rights. In the first case, the author and publisher is denied income they are legally (and I would say morally) entitled to; in the second no harm is done to that author or the publisher.

--
Bill

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by JeffElkins

Violation of copyright is not theft. If I take an orange from the grocery store, they no longer have that orange. If I download a book,song,film the original owner still has his copy. No theft has occured. It is a tort. A civil wrong or breach of a duty to another person, as outlined by law.

It may not legally be considered theft, but I think morally it might be considered the equivalent.

Consider, each book sold represents money that goes to the publisher and the author. Therefore each book that is not sold because of copyright violation is money that has been effectively taken from the author and the publisher. The final result is exactly the same as if you had taken an equivalent amount of money from them.

--
Bill