4 ms·

Personal backups are at least allowed for software, per 17 USC 117, and I'm not aware that the DMCA altered that, it only added the nonsense about "effective ac

by LocalH 2y ago

Personal backups are at least allowed for software, per 17 USC 117, and I'm not aware that the DMCA altered that, it only added the nonsense about "effective access control" which can legally be as weak as ROT13. Perhaps not for non-software media. Copyright has been broken for decades, however. It's tilted away from the average person and towards big moneyed copyright holders, who vacuum up every IP they can.

otterley 2y ago
Yes, they are allowed for software. But not for e-books--which are the subject of this conversation--or for other copyrighted works.
- zchrykng 2y ago
  Personally, I'd love to see the jury that would convict someone when all they did was remove DRM for their own personal use/backup and never distributed it.
  - otterley 2y ago
    Oh, I don’t think that would actually happen. People violate the law all the time and nothing happens. Regardless, people should be aware of what the law is. It’s a different choice to decide to violate the law and take one’s chances than it is to rest comfortably knowing that something is entirely within their rights.
- nullfield 2y ago
  How are ebooks not “software”, in the sense that they’re bits that instruct a computer to display particular information, when interpreted by something that understands them? If ePub or the Kindle format were defined in hardware-the same way that certain video or audio codecs are-no one could realistically argue that they’re not software, since after all the CPU literally knows how to process them. And-also-yes, the copyright scam is pretty much over. The marginal cost of another copy is zero, “for a limited time” means “forever minus a day”, and our culture is being stolen from us via inability to preserve it, use it later if we did acquire it “legitimately” but someone no longer feels like running their “permission to have that” servers later, and by being dynamically retconned such that “bad things” are dynamically edited out and, if you remember that they existed, you’re wrong (and getting gaslit over it). It was basically a “social contract” that, while not everyone agreed with, they mostly admitted “existed”. Not so much now.
  - otterley 2y ago
    If you actually tried this in court, a judge would go “uh huh...anyway...” and move on. A judge is highly unlikely to create a novel interpretation of an ebook as a software program for exceptional purposes—even if it has instructions in it—because acting as a typical software program is not its primary purpose.

by LocalH 2y ago

otterley 2y ago

Yes, they are allowed for software. But not for e-books--which are the subject of this conversation--or for other copyrighted works.

zchrykng 2y ago
Personally, I'd love to see the jury that would convict someone when all they did was remove DRM for their own personal use/backup and never distributed it.
- otterley 2y ago
  Oh, I don’t think that would actually happen. People violate the law all the time and nothing happens. Regardless, people should be aware of what the law is. It’s a different choice to decide to violate the law and take one’s chances than it is to rest comfortably knowing that something is entirely within their rights.
nullfield 2y ago
How are ebooks not “software”, in the sense that they’re bits that instruct a computer to display particular information, when interpreted by something that understands them? If ePub or the Kindle format were defined in hardware-the same way that certain video or audio codecs are-no one could realistically argue that they’re not software, since after all the CPU literally knows how to process them. And-also-yes, the copyright scam is pretty much over. The marginal cost of another copy is zero, “for a limited time” means “forever minus a day”, and our culture is being stolen from us via inability to preserve it, use it later if we did acquire it “legitimately” but someone no longer feels like running their “permission to have that” servers later, and by being dynamically retconned such that “bad things” are dynamically edited out and, if you remember that they existed, you’re wrong (and getting gaslit over it). It was basically a “social contract” that, while not everyone agreed with, they mostly admitted “existed”. Not so much now.
- otterley 2y ago
  If you actually tried this in court, a judge would go “uh huh...anyway...” and move on. A judge is highly unlikely to create a novel interpretation of an ebook as a software program for exceptional purposes—even if it has instructions in it—because acting as a typical software program is not its primary purpose.