You Can Remove DRM From Your Digital Books, but It's Probably Illegal - eviltoast
  • lka1988@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Removing DRM has always been “illegal”.

    However: German concentration camps were legal, while families protecting Jewish citizens from being taken to said concentration camps was strictly illegal.

    What’s legal is not always right (ethically and morally), and what’s right is not always legal. Remember that.

    • Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      6 days ago

      I’d like to clarify that removing DRM does lie in a grey zone in many countries, including in the US due to some court rulings. In some countries the right to make a backup of your e-book might have priority over copyright law for example.

      • lka1988@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Sure, but companies who employ DRM have argued against that grey area since DRM was a thing. Something something IP/copyright/licensing/whatever bullshit… IMO: fuck you, I bought it, I own it, eat shit.

        • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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          6 days ago

          Correct… How are they going to enforce their “property” rights when I do it at home?

          These corpo parasites are delulu hence why I stopped spending money on media.

          Get fucked.

    • cecilkorik@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      Sometimes doing something illegal is anti-social behavior. Sometimes it’s anti-authoritarian behavior. These are not the same thing.

  • Railcar8095@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    From a legal standpoint, is it more illegal to remove DRM or to just download DRM-freed content?

    Meta lawyers think the second is fine, BTW.

    • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club
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      6 days ago

      I’ve never heard of anyone getting arrested for removing DRM. DRM removal tools are actively sold online with no crackdown. However people keep getting busted here and there for piracy, and piracy sites keep getting shut down.

      I think at the end of the day if the copyright holders are getting paid they don’t really care, and the police cares about piracy way less than they do.

      • Christian@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        I remember reading that the most significant impact DRM has is on security research. Individuals don’t care about bypassing DRM, but an organization is not going to fund anything involving it because of the legal concern. So if a researcher wants to look into a file format behind DRM, or the DRM mechanism itself, being used as an attack vector, that’s not going to get funding.

        The defense that companies will make is that they’re happy to grant exceptions in these cases, but in practice the company will make the exceptions as narrow as possible to err on the side of maintaining as much control as possible, while a research organization will want to err on the side of avoiding potential grey areas, meaning the exceptions are inevitability too restrictive to allow much of anything to come of them.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      It’s more legal to share military secrets with journalists. Don’t believe me? Wait and see how long that guy ends up spending in jail.

  • M. Orange@beehaw.org
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    6 days ago

    Just in case anyone didn’t feel like reading the article, here’s the last (and imo most important) paragraph:

    However, without changing the DMCA, we can’t expect to see real, lasting change in this space. Doctorow said as much to me: “What we really need to do is get rid of DMCA 1201, that law that makes it a crime to format shift your media…it’s the same law that stops farmers from fixing their tractors, blocks independent mechanics from fixing your car, stops rivals from setting up alternative app stores for phones and games consoles…this law is a menace!”

    • Chahk@beehaw.org
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      6 days ago

      Good guy Meta. Fighting for us little guys, downloading terabytes of books, defending against lawsuits. Maybe they’ll overturn DMCA?

      /s

  • orcrist@lemm.ee
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    5 days ago

    It’s interesting when people are put to the choice. On the one hand they could purchase a book with DRM that they don’t actually own. On the other hand, they could look for alternative means by which to obtain the book. And the more the publishers f*** with you, the more you might be inclined to never give them a penny.

    • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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      5 days ago

      I will never stop being confused by this law. Just crossing the street cannot possibly be illegal anywhere. I’m fully convinced the entire thing is an elaborate joke by the americans.

      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        Like everything else here in the US, it’s borne out of racism. In the Jim Crow era, most black people couldn’t afford a car. White people driving around didn’t like those pesky walking people getting in their way, so they made it difficult to cross the street. It then gave cops a way to threaten/arrest/persecute them.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    6 days ago

    Fwiw, I’ve never put drm on anything I’ve published digitally, and never will.

    Not that it matters, nobody buys my shit in the first place lol. But, as a matter of principle, even my crappy stories as a form of culture aren’t only for the people with money.

    Mind you, that do? I have no beef with. You make your own choices, and I ain’t mad about it. But it just isn’t something I can do.

    • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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      5 days ago

      I go out of my way to exclusively spend money with the one publisher I’ve found who does not put DRM in their ebooks. I spend lavishly with them because good practices need to be rewarded monetarily in capitalism or they die out.

      The rest I pirate.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      How can they catch people who have produced unlocked epubs? There are plenty of ways if they have your device at some future date.

      I suppose the easiest predictable thing other than having your device seized when you’re entering the country for example or when you get arrested for example is that back doors could be installed on Android or iPhone that look for unapproved media.

      The technology is already good enough for that. It’s only a question of implementation.

      • Taleya@aussie.zone
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        5 days ago

        I’m too fucken old to read a book on a goddamn phone screen and my eco reader is too old to enshittify. Mwahahahahha i am untouchable