151–160 of 173 posts
By the way I got an idea to gather all these illegal values in one repo: https://github.com/cryptonek/illegal-numbers I'm counting on your help!
PS. If someone is able to provide me all Git history of DeDRM repo, drop me an email to address that I used in a commit. I will force-push the repo with original state.
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Just to give you an idea of how dumb this law is, try this for a hypothetical. Alice uses DRM to protect her copyrighted work. Bob uses the exact same DRM to stop you from copying public domain works, for example. You publish some code to break Bob's DRM. Is that illegal? The law shouldn't enable Bob to do that. But if you can have tools to break Bob's DRM, the tools will break Alice's DRM because they're the same, a…
I don't think that a law preventing you from breaking Bob's DRM just because it protects public domain is ridiculous. Public domain just means that nobody owns the rights, it is not an obligation for anyone who owns a copy to make it available to everyone. For example, I can own a copy of Moby Dick and do everything in my power to make sure that you don't get my copy, and if you break into my house to read it, I can…
That's not what's happening. Bob is making it available to everyone, and then trying to reassert a copyright on something that isn't.
Suppose Bob was the copyright owner, last year, before the work entered the public domain. He never distributed any copy without DRM, so no DRM-free copies exist. This is fine? Section 1201 of the DMCA was created to eliminate the public domain?
You're also missing the point. Stop trying to argue about the specifics of the thing Bob is doing and just choose anything you feel would be illegitimate. Preventing the use of third party toner cartridges, preventing farmers from repairing their tractors, take your pick. That's obviously not what the law was intended to do and it shouldn't be doing that.
But when Bob is using the same DRM as Alice, either you can publish tools to break it or you can't. If you can, the law is pointless. If you can't, the law is wrong.
I find it quite disheartening that nobody (or at least very few people in this thread) have looked who the complainant(s) actually are, i.e. the European Digital Reading Lab (EDRL) and (indirectly) the Readium foundation, both of which are community–driven non-profit organisation, operating on very modest budgets. The Readium LCP software system (as distinct from the Readium the reading applications) was created a co…
That’s a non-sequitur. RMS would have something pithy to say about pretty handcuffs or such, but all I have to offer is: the user friendly alternative to DRM is having no DRM.
> The largest consumer publisher (Penguin Random House) is but less than 1/100th the size of Apple or Amazon.
Won’t someone think of the billionaires?
> I have taken fair use into consideration. This is always a fucking lie, and I wish we (as a community) would band together to make it more painful for giant companies to just spam DMCA takedowns as part of their DRM strategy. Ignoring the entire issue with the fact that there probably wasn't any copyrighted material in the repo to begin with and that code is speech, and speech is protected in the US - in other word…
As Italian, I think you should take my words with mistrust, but as far as I understood recently about US is that the speech is protected between the citizen and the government, not between civil entities, as business/corps and citizen That said, I guess it was shortsighted from the founding father but I guess at the time people would be often oppressed by governments not by neighbors and friends and I think this is s…
It depends. For example the 1st amendment protects a great deal of speech that in other countries would be slander, even though in that case the plaintiff is another civil entity and not the government.
Personally I'm actually of the opinion that people should just forget about working around DRM preventing legal access to content and just forget about DRM encumbered content altogether. Having work arounds adds value to otherwise worthless file formats. Dont support it, dont recommend it. dont even talk about it other than to say "meh, DRM'd you couldnt pay me enough to use it". Quite an extreme stance I know, but t…
You remind me of a relative I've lost nearly all connection with because he now has a hard line stance on DRM. We used to watch movies and enjoy talking about them, but he wont watch anything that requires streaming. And worse, we used to enjoy playing the same video games and talking about them, but he wont use Steam, and he wont purchase video game consoles anymore. I share his concerns, but when I weight my choice…
At least with games there's a lot you could play together on GOG, most movies never get an official DRM-free release.
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I don't think that a law preventing you from breaking Bob's DRM just because it protects public domain is ridiculous. Public domain just means that nobody owns the rights, it is not an obligation for anyone who owns a copy to make it available to everyone. For example, I can own a copy of Moby Dick and do everything in my power to make sure that you don't get my copy, and if you break into my house to read it, I can…
> I don't think that a law preventing you from breaking Bob's DRM just because it protects public domain is ridiculous. Public domain just means that nobody owns the rights, it is not an obligation for anyone who owns a copy to make it available to everyone. That's not what's happening. Bob is making it available to everyone, and then trying to reassert a copyright on something that isn't. Suppose Bob was the copyrig…
No law compels Bob to provide people with new copies once the work enters public domain (and remember, Bob's publication might contain separate works with their own copyrights like cover art or an introduction). Once it does, Bob can't stop you from distributing a version you created by buying a print copy and scanning it or taking screenshots of his DRM version and running them through OCR (as long as you don't include the cover art or introduction). If Bob's DRM was unique to this one book, there might be an argument that breaking it was the same (as long as there's no cover art and no introduction). Since Bob's DRM is likely used for other works not in the public domain, it's going to be hard to distinguish your breaking it for this PD work from the fact that you've broken it for lots of other in-copyright things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think that a law preventing you from breaking Bob's DRM just because it protects public domain is ridiculous. Public domain just means that nobody owns the rights, it is not an obligation for anyone who owns a copy to make it available to everyone. That's not what's happening. Bob is making it available to everyone, and then trying to reassert a copyright on something that isn't. Suppose Bob was the copyrig…
> Suppose Bob was the copyright owner, last year, before the work entered the public domain. He never distributed any copy without DRM, so no DRM-free copies exist. This is fine? Section 1201 of the DMCA was created to eliminate the public domain? No law compels Bob to provide people with new copies once the work enters public domain (and remember, Bob's publication might contain separate works with their own copyrig…
The problem is not what the law requires Bob to do. The problem is what the law prohibits you from doing.
> Once it does, Bob can't stop you from distributing a version you created by buying a print copy and scanning it or taking screenshots of his DRM version and running them through OCR
"The law against breaking DRM isn't wrong but only because it is actually useless."
> Since Bob's DRM is likely used for other works not in the public domain, it's going to be hard to distinguish your breaking it for this PD work from the fact that you've broken it for lots of other in-copyright things.
That's the problem. The tools don't discriminate, so banning them goes too far and prohibits more than it is reasonable to.
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Generally I find that recommending individual, uncoordinated action as a solution to a system issue to be generally unsuccessful. Something like this either needs a coordinated response like a boycott, or a political solution.
It depends on the metric for success: if the metric for success is that it ends the practice you oppose, then yes clearly individual, uncoordinated action won't do that. if the metric for success is that it extricates you from having to compromise on your principles, then it's quite easy to achieve success. e.g. Although I'd be happy for to go bankrupt or desist from making the world a better place, I'd also be plent…
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Can you point out the contradicting bits?
The law allows people to circumvent copy protection to access works they are entitled to access. There is also a provision against sharing copy protection breaking methods. I never interpreted them as clashing, merely that I can't knowingly share copy breaking mechanisms with people who are unauthorized to use a work. If they do clash then you have to side with the consumer.
Claiming that such an allowance exists is not the same as actually identifying the statute or ruling that creates the allowance. What is your textual basis for claiming that there's a general permission for circumvention?
> If they do clash then you have to side with the consumer.
This sounds like you're referring to a concept that exists in contract law, but has no applicability to a question of how to handle a conflict between two provisions in law. In such a case, the courts will usually uphold whichever provision actually exists in the text of the law.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Suppose Bob was the copyright owner, last year, before the work entered the public domain. He never distributed any copy without DRM, so no DRM-free copies exist. This is fine? Section 1201 of the DMCA was created to eliminate the public domain? No law compels Bob to provide people with new copies once the work enters public domain (and remember, Bob's publication might contain separate works with their own copyrig…
> No law compels Bob to provide people with new copies once the work enters public domain The problem is not what the law requires Bob to do. The problem is what the law prohibits you from doing. > Once it does, Bob can't stop you from distributing a version you created by buying a print copy and scanning it or taking screenshots of his DRM version and running them through OCR "The law against breaking DRM isn't wron…
No. Your right to distribute a copy doesn't imply your right to get one in the easiest way that you can imagine.
> That's the problem. The tools don't discriminate, so banning them goes too far and prohibits more than it is reasonable to.
Reasonable to whom? Someone else might say it's reasonable to protect the DRM on this PD book because it protects lots of in-copyright books without harming you because there are other ways of getting a copy of this one work without breaking the DRM on all of them. You might disagree but that's what courts are for.
The bigger problem with DRM exist because of concentration in the publishing industry. Licensing books sucks and that's what harms the public domain (and libraries), but there's not enough competition for many publishers to survive by offering to sell you the ebook rather than licensing it to you. Copyright isn't the enemy. It's the monopolies that abuse it.