Re: Re: What kind of pirate am I?

On Oct 13, 2010, at 9:52 AM, Kirk McElhearn wrote:

>
> On Oct 13, 2010, at 2:21 PM, Barry wrote:
>
>> If I buy a book in one electronic format and buy a new device and  
>> figure out how to convert the book I paid for to another format you  
>> call it stealing. I don't call it stealing.  In this case the law  
>> would agree with me.  While the law might have things to say about  
>> what I did the law would not call it stealing.
>
> The law would call it a copyright violation. That's a different case  
> than obtaining a work in the first place. You're changing the subject.

Actually, I believe they'd call it fair use. Format shifting is  
allowed just as time shifting is allowed. Personal uses have far more  
leeway than commercial, especially when they are truly personal. Yes,  
I CAN rip my tapes/CDs to MP3s and OCR my books to ebook. I don't  
believe it's been tested in the courts as to whether one can download  
a copy of a song that one already owns in another format, so legally,  
it's a gray area, but one JUST as likely to be decides one way as the  
other.

I have to agree with Barry in some way, shape or form (though perhaps  
not presentation), it is my long experience that authors and  
publishers get VERY emotional over copyright issues and the published  
articles do nothing but feed into that, trying to make law that which  
is not law. And I get the "English is to German as ebooks are to DRM"  
analogy (that's what the point is, it's an analogy) even if Brenna  
doesn't.

It's not theft, it's infringement. Not everything one would like to be  
illegal is. And we need to stop talking about infringement with words  
loaded to make the discussion obvious when it is not, or analogous to  
real property when we're talking about intellectual property which is  
not treated the same way in law or underlying philosophy.

dej

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