B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires • Hacker News Board

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#131

Post by w1ntermute » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 4:50 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #130

w1ntermute wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Photocopying for personal use is legal under fair use provisions. The only reason why it's not legal to do so with DRM-encumbered ebooks is because of the DMCA.

The DMCA forbids circumventing an encryption system. Photocopying the words on an ebood screen would not seem, to me, to be circumvention since the content was decrypted entirely as designed to put those words on the screen. It might be copyright infringement, but would almost certainly be covered by fair use assuming it was not then distributed to others. I've never heard of a DMCA case prosecuted against someone wh…

> I've never heard of a DMCA case prosecuted against someone who photocopied the screen of a ebook reader.

In practical terms, the DMCA doesn't result in prosecutions of people who break DRM for personal use. It results in the prosecution of people who produce/distribute software that breaks DRM to allow consumers to copy media for personal use, because there is no practical way to find people who are breaking DRM for personal purposes.

I can't speak as to photocopying the screen of an ebook reader since that has never happened (to my knowledge), but here's a similar case:

Blu-ray discs are encrypted with AACS[0]. If someone were to make a program that, in real time, takes screencaps of a movie being played back by a legal Blu-ray disc player and records the audio output from the player, then recombines that fully unencrypted data into a video file also without DRM, that person would most definitely get hit with a lawsuit on the basis of the DMCA.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Access_Content_System

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#132

Post by ljf » Sat, Dec 01, 2012, 3:14 PM UTC

boboblong wrote: post #129

Dylan16807 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Unlimited (non-abuse-level) downloads are part of the original understanding. There are services that give you a single copy of a file but they are rare.

I'm sure that maintaining your account is part of the original understanding too. Just for the record, I think that anti-circumvention laws are absurd, and that EULAs aren't worth the RAM they consume. But I also think it's childish to buy a DRM-protected e-book from a company, terminate your account with that company, and then expect them to let you download another copy of the e-book for free.

The issue wasn't account termination - the account was still live, just without a valid CC on file. Which does not equal termination.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#133

Post by yk » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 12:15 AM UTC

pseingatl wrote: post #65

yk wrote: post #25

The problem with ebooks (as with software and other files) is, that they are simpy not physical goods. From the viewpoint of a consumer, a nice advantage of files is the essentially zero costs of replacement, so that I can resonably expect a vendor to replace a copy lost due to an accident. (Unlike with a physical book, where replacement costs actual money.) On the other hand, I have the means of production for an eb…

Are you suggesting that digital goods cannot be sold and can only be licensed? What is your basis for this? It seems to me that this was a sale of goods. The fact that the goods are in digital format is irrelevant. It is unlikely that the courts will treat the sale of a book the same as a software license. Ultimately sales of goods are governed by law, and one party is not permitted to breach their contracts.

This depends on the exact meaning of sale. It is certainly possible to implement a license agreement, that looks very much like a sale of a physical object. However I think that such a license agreement would be unenforceable, essentially because a physical good has a certain uniqueness. It makes sense to talk about 'my car' which is distinct from 'your car.' ( And if someone steals 'my car', I am able to identify this specific car.) By contrast, I can not really talk about 'my mp3 file' because there is simply no difference between my file and any of its copies. This applies also to watermarked files, since given a copy of a watermarked file you can not determine if this specific representation of the file was created by the original licensee or from an intermediate copy.

So the important point of me buying a book, is that a unique physical object becomes mine, by contrast there is no such thing as a unique digital object. [ IANAL, it is entirely possible, that there is some case law which defines a sale of software. But my point is, that this would be kind of a default license.]

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#134

Post by Samuel3407 » Mon, Dec 03, 2012, 3:51 AM UTC

thinkling wrote: post #42

dansingerman wrote: post #40

Having had to get my hands dirty in the murky world of Adobe DRM, I am pretty sure this is actually an implementation problem with how Barnes & Noble have implemented it. As crazy as it may seem, I believe in the B&N case the DRM licence is based on the credit card details. Hence no more credit card, no more licence. One day I may do a longer post how horrifyingly awful Adobe DRM is technically, (never mind the ethic…

I don't doubt that Adobe DRM may be awfl, but when the customer isn't allowed to download the book, how does the DRM implementation enter into it? The DRM (as embedded in the ebook files) isn't in play here.

I discoveried some nice article to help you resolve this problem:

Remove drm from adobe: http://www.epubsoft.com/how-to-remove-drm-from-adobe.html

How to share nook books: http://www.epubsoft.com/how-to-share-nook-books-with-my-frie...