5 ms·
> Books do the same thing Huh? If I have a book, I can lend it to a friend, sell it on eBay, or even put it in a library where thousands of people can read it
by NobodyNada 6y ago
> Books do the same thing
Huh? If I have a book, I can lend it to a friend, sell it on eBay, or even put it in a library where thousands of people can read it for free. If I "own" a book on a Kindle, I can do none of those things -- and if our corporate overlords decide they don't want me to read that book anymore, then they can remotely remove it from my device, even if I paid for it [0]. The abuse is that DRM is being weaponized to criminalize fair use and other consumer rights that copyright law otherwise would not give corporations authority over -- and because of DMCA 1201, it is illegal to work around DRM even for fair-use purposes.
In fact, DRM does next to nothing to prevent piracy, as evidenced by the thriving piracy "industry" today. Every DRM system can eventually be bypassed, somehow -- there has to be some way to decrypt the content, otherwise I wouldn't be able to watch it. It's akin to putting up a "no stealing" sign outside my house -- sure, it means that thieves are technically trespassing now -- but they were already breaking the law to begin with and no flimsy little sign is going to stop them. It could be argued that DRM only makes piracy more enticing, because consumers can use pirated content in completely normal, fair-use ways that are blocked by DRM.
As Doctorow explains in the article, DRM was never about protecting copyright, it's about protecting monopolies. DRM means I can only watch a movie with an approved web browser on an approved operating system on an approved computer using an approved cable to connect to an approved monitor, and that I can only repair a tractor at an approved tractor dealership.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
- onethought 6y agoIn your book example... I don’t think you can (legally) redistribute your book. It’s just publishers don’t really care if you do, because cost of enforcement is too high. That’s why they like kindles. Software used to be like this too, back when it was distributed as a physical thing (disks). DRM was about protecting copyright, your book/kindle example was a perfect illustrator of that. But I agree, it has been weaponised and misused.
- namibj 6y agoYou can't distribute copies of the book (outside of limited exceptions). First Sale doctrine says you can pretty much do whatever you want with the physical item.
- onethought 6y agoHuh, I wasn’t familiar with that (again another US nuance to Copyright). This isn’t globally accepted.
- fabianhjr 6y agoIt is globally accepted. There are many community libraries throughout the world that consist on a small shelf on a sidewalk where people leave books for others and take the ones they are interested in. https://littlefreelibrary.org/ https://littlefreelibrary.org/
- dmurray 6y agoAnd plenty of used bookstores, who do the same thing commercially and generally don't even get nasty letters from publishers.
- onethought 6y agoNo it isn’t. As law. It might be accepted as practice. They are different.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoExamples of where it is not?
- paragraft 6y agoCan't speak to other countries but I know in NZ you're not allowed legally to rip DVDs or blurays you own (even just for private use, no distribution intended). The copyright act is structured with a whitelist of permissible format shifts, and while CDs made it onto that list, movie discs didn't.
- Qwertious 6y agoFun fact: the Kindle Store doesn't sell the actual ability to access the books, as piracy does that just fine. They don't sell the ability to pay the author, as you can mail the author $20 just fine (and perfectly legally). So what do they sell you? Well, legal legitimacy and possibly convenience.
- shadowprofile77 6y agoThis entire notion of respecting DRM to such an extent is absurd. If you buy a kindle book from Amazon, regardless of legal details, it's fairly "yours" and just as is the case with a physical book, you should have the right and inclination to strip off its DRM and then use it across devices as you please, even send a copy or two to friends. The right because you bought it, just like you'd have once bought a paper book, and the inclination because as we've seen with many cases of sealed digital content "ownership" platforms in the past, buyers have a funny way of suddenly losing everything they supposedly own. Stripping DRM removes both problems completely and, yes, it's usually very easy to do using perfectly legal software like Calibre, for example.