On Monday, 21st March 2011 at 22:04:47 (GMT +0100), Walter van Holst wrote:
Thank you, Travis, for debunking that myth that removing DRM from your own e-books is somehow "illegal". I was too infuriated when I originally read that absurd assertion in Marcelo's post, to even bother to reply to it. ;-)
Well, I am sorry to burst your bubble, but for most European jurisdictions Marcelo's assessment is right. Your mileage may vary outside the EU.
Can you please direct me to an authoritative source that confirms what you're saying? The Internet is like the Bible: you can find supportive statements in it for just about any assertion anyone cares to make, even if those assertions should contradict one another. I'm sure our current discussion will end up in Google's search engines, and 2 years from now, someone might pull up your and Marcelo's quote to "prove" that doing XYZ is illegal, while someone else might pull up Travis's or my quote, to "prove" that doing XYZ is legal. So, can you please give us an authoritative source that says that removing DRM from your own e-books solely for your private use is "illegal"? By "authoritative" I don't mean journalistic or blog articles, let alone forum squabbles -- which is the only reference material I came up with when I tried researching the topic using Google. Thanks! PS: When you mention geography, that's another interesting aspect. If you buy an e-book from the US Amazon site, do different laws apply than if you buy it from a European Amazon site? Is it the location of the seller's site that decides these things, or is it the location of the *buyer* of the e-book? Or is it neither, and it's really the *citizenship* of the buyer of the e-book that is decisive, regardless of in which country the buyer may currently be located? I happen to live in a city bordering 3 different countries, and I can just *walk* into a different country within minutes. If I buy an Amazon book using my iPhone while hiking (or biking) in a neighbouring country, do I need to track on the territory of which country I happened to be located while I purchased that e-book? If I happen to carry a laptop with me and remove the DRM while visiting a neighbouring country, have I (supposedly) broken the law of the country that I visited, or of the country where I live, or both countries, or the US law where the US Amazon site that sold me the book for US dollars resides, or the law of all countries, or the law of no country? The questions are endless. At least when it comes to *web hosting*, the legality is clear: the contents on a web server are governed by the geographical location of that web server. It all gets a lot blurrier with "mobile products" such as e-books, doesn't it?! -- Yours, Alex. www.aboq.org [processed by "The Bat!", Version 4.2.10.12]