> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedom (PDF[1] or html[2]).
This is real. There is something wrong with the way Amazon deals with ebooks, and it is sad to see people backing it up.
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This is real. There is something wrong with the way Amazon deals with ebooks, and it is sad to see people backing it up.
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There are many things I don't like about how Amazon deals with ebooks, but there are many things that are good about it as well, and I prefer to not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Publishers are also hesitant to offer their books in DRM-free format because book piracy would otherwise be rampant. (The fact that there's a torrent for every Kindle book ever just goes to show you how effective DRM is. Once again, it's another DRM scheme that only hurts legitimate users and publishers, but the lawyers tell everyone otherwise and so everyone is happy. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.)
There are some publishers that just offer ebooks as PDFs that you download from their website. My book is like that (though it has a PDF password that your reader can just ignore), and some other books I've bought are like that. "Programming in Scala" is just a pure PDF download after you give them your money. It's a nice system and the rest of the industry will catch on soon. For now, publishers seem to enjoy working with middlemen that take a 30% cut of the author's revenue, but people are getting tired of the middlemen and with that, DRM will slowly fade away and open ebook platforms will be the norm. Just give it ten years.
Whatever, I have no reluctance at all to buy an O'Reilly ebook. DRM books make me nervous. What happens to them when I die? The "Rights" in DRM refer to the sellers or publishers rights, not mine.
It should read "herd immunity".
For example, depending on the EULA (and also jurisdiction), if you declare bankruptcy, you have to delete all your local copies of DRM-ed media, because you no longer have the permission to use them, even though you already paid for it.
What? If ever a citation was needed, it's now.
Contrast to sale of a physical good, where the first-sale doctrine means that such restrictions on subsequent sale and use can't exist. (The implication is that the same would apply to DRM-free media, because a lack of DRM means that they can't enforce any such restrictions, either through practical means or through legal channels).
Just link to the EULA that contains language that may indicate you need to delete your ebooks on declaring bankrupcy.
If its 50 pages long, it might be helpful to provide a quote or two. Or link to someone elese who has done that analysis like say groklaw.
>It's possible to write language like that into a license for use
It's possible to write anything into the license. An MP3 license agreement could say that you have to eat a pound of chalk every time you play the song. That doesn't make it legally enforceable.
Your hypothetical "bankruptcy clause" seems like it fits in this same category. Why would a judge ever agree that this is enforceable when it's so pointless and arbitrary?
What license do you use for software that you write?
My point is, you say "when [you] buy something, [you] want to know it's yours", the corollary being that you dislike software licenses entirely. Any software with a license is DRM-protected, including GPL and BSD software or software with a EULA. The operating system that you are currently using is licensed to you. There's probably nothing on your computer that you own aside from things you have created yourself.
You have purchased or downloaded the software, yes, but the author has licensed it to you under specific terms. It is not yours. That is DRM. Anybody who hates DRM and continues to enforce a software license on their work, GPL or not, is experiencing cognitive dissonance (Richard Stallman included). GPL is actually one of the worst of the bunch because it mandates how you can redistribute things you build with "what is yours".
Is this an ideal world? No. Is it the world we live in right now? Yes. I will not assume what your response will be, to your respect.
I don't see the contradiction. Stallman would agree that the GPL isn't ideal; he'd say it's a hack designed to twist our broken legal system into respecting our fundamental freedoms. The GPL is almost an anti-license, since it exists solely to do the exact opposite of what copyright laws and licenses are intended to do (restrict freedoms).
Put another way: yes, it's using the system, but any attempt to change the system from within is, by definition, 'using the system'.
If our laws deemed proprietary software licenses to be non-enforceable, I doubt anybody (Stallman included) would see the need for the GPL.
And yet it restricts my freedom to do what I wish with derivatives. Almost an anti-license, indeed.
I appreciate you side-stepping my point so deftly. Allow me to reiterate it:
- You cannot be an enemy of DRM and support software licenses. They are mutually exclusive positions.
I also hate this pervasive idea that our legal system is "broken". Copyright, just like patents, have been historically important to innovation and we'd be in a much different situation today were it not for both. Every generation always comes along and deems principles of antiquity "broken" because they don't bother to grok the historical context. If you were to say something like "in need of reform," I'm right there with you.
Who said anything about "supporting" software licenses?
Since you keep conveniently missing my point about doing what you can within a system that you recognize needs reform, I'm forced to assume my original assumption was correct as well, since the only point you seem to disagree with me on is the issue of copylefting ('And yet it restricts my freedom to do what I wish with derivatives.').