Re: book piracy, law, morality and copyright history (was What kinds of Books are pirated and made into EBooks?)

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 7:37 PM, Erica Frank <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 4:52 AM, joseph harris <[email protected]<smilepoet%40vfemail.net>>
> wrote:
> > First - and I was disappointed to find myself disagreeing violently with
> Erica - many
> > comments are entirely America-centric. This means the understanding of
> copyright law is
> > deficient. Consequenly the understanding of its history and nature is
> also deficient.
>
>
>
Since many of the countries we're dealing with are Berne countries, all
authors should be aware they write in a global market and that we must be
aware of the copyright laws of ALL countries that are linked to us that way.
But, since US law is comprehensive, the usual problem comes with someone
outside the US abusing US law, when it should be protected by Berne, IMO.
Others can feel free to disagree with me.


>
> And yet Xerox copies abound. Cooks copy recipes to
> avoid risking getting the book splashed while cooking.
>
In the case of the cook, I would say the law is wrong...not the cook. Making
a backup copy to avoid destroying the original is simply a way to protect
investment in something legally purchased. If the cook made multiple copies
and gave it to friends, the law is right, IMO.

In the same way, I support breaking DRM for access to content that was
legally purchased. If someone purchases a secured copy, because that's the
only way to get the book, but needs the machine to read to them (vision
impaired), I fully support breaking DRM to have that access. If someone
breaks DRM to read a secured book on machine of choice he/she personally
owns (not for the purposes of sharing the book), I believe they should have
that right. Author's Guild sees this as a threat. I see it as accessing
something legally bought, and until the law catches up and recognizes that
readers want SOME control over what they purchased, respect for that law
will be lacking.

>
> Until fair use laws are clear and
> reasonable, copyright protection will continue to erode. When people
> don't understand the law, they're more prone to break it... and right
> now, *nobody* understands the limits of copyright law.
>

Unfortunately, one thing Rowena Cherry noted is that there are different
rules for fair use in the classroom vs. out of it. I don't have a problem
with that exception, per se. But the teachers are not teaching the students
that it IS an exception, which only adds to the confusion over what they are
legally allowed to do, when it's not an educational use.

>
>
> Right now, there's no legal difference
> between someone who places 500 currently-being-sold ebooks into the
> torrent network, someone who does the same with scans of out-of-print
> comics from a bankrupt company, and someone who copies a dozen
> publisher-released freebie ebooks from her hard drive to her friend's
> hard drive.
>

I disagree on the last one. I don't know about anyone else's free reads, but
mine have permission to pass, as long as the books are not altered and as
long as they are never used for commercial gain. IOW, feel free to pass as
many copies of my offered free reads as you wish, as far and wide as
possible. But don't sell them and don't alter them or plagiarize them.

>
> I have a Sony Reader, three computers (two desktops & a laptop), a
> Clie PDA, and a Rocketbook. I also have a couple of portable drives
> used for backups. Can I legally copy the same ebook to each of them?
> Can I then loan one of them out to a family member? A friend? Can I
> log into the computer from another location, and read that
> way--without downloading anything? Can I let someone else log into it?
>

These are not untried, as I see it.

Yes, you can put a book you own on all of them. The problem comes when you
sell the Clie to someone else. If you sell it with content on it, it must
not exist on the other machines...or you must wipe it from the Clie. Why?
Because not doing so means two people have copies of it. Common sense. The
courts may decide I'm wrong, but legal opinion I've seen so far is
consistent to everything I'm saying here, and it has been debated in the law
schools and general consensus fell this way.

Can you loan one of your machines to a friend? Sure. If the content is on
the Clie when you loan it, it is. It's still your machine. But if your
friend copies the content off the Clie, he/she is wrong, because there are
now copies in two separate hands. In the same way, someone can sit at my
laptop and read a book, because it never left my hands, per se.

Can you access your own content elsewhere and read? Sure. Why not? If the
file is in gmail, I can access it anywhere. It's still my own content, and I
am not permanently transferring a copy to someone else.

Letting someone else log into it is the sticky legal point, and I cant'
answer that one. Technically speaking, it's someone reading your copy. If no
copy is made, it might fly...but it might not, in that case. I'm less
comfortable with this one than the others, and I've never seen legal
discussion on that particular possibility.

It's all common sense, though.

>
> Computers have *broken* the basic premises on which copyright law is
> founded: the concept that copying takes valuable resources, that
> making a copy is an act of effort. Copies are never going to be harder
> to make; that's not the direction technology goes.
>

This is so true and is also why copyright law needs to be tweaked to address
it.

>   Copyright law supports the right to put DRM on
> digital content, but many corporations are unwilling to release
> content without the DRM, even if the authors request it--proving that
> the purpose of DRM is not "to prevent unuathorized copies," but to
> limit the end-user's rights and expectation of rights to manage their
> purchases.
>
>
Actually, the reason it's put on is to prevent unauthorized copies
(primarily), as decided by the same idiot industry members that believe DRM
works and that having only print books will prevent pirated copies, AND to
curtail access that Author's Guild has convinced publishers are dangerous,
like printing and text-to-voice. Rolling eyes. But, don't get me started on
THAT subject. That's another entire class of notes.

Brenna
-- 
http://www.brennalyons.com    http://www.facebook.com/brenna.lyons
2-time EPIC's e-Book Award WINNER! "Powers or no, the Kielan are their own
worst enemies, caught up in systematic, stagnated tradition, lost to the
hypocrisy of classism, and defenseless despite their psi powers. Time
Currents is a tale that I won’t soon forget." Patrice F. for Joyfully
Reviewed


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