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Aussies to legalize format-shifting? Boon for e-book users if reality
May 15, 2006 | 6:55 pm
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By David Rothman
“Once the new laws are passed, ‘format shifting’ of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal.” – The Age in Australia, via Techdirt and Engadget. Related: Sydney Morning Herald.
The TeleRead take: Alas, those proposals come with major downsides, such as allowing the police to fine you instantly if they think you’re a pirate. But more positively, the laws might force Adobe or Microsoft to allow format shifting–from, say, Windows machines to other hardware.
As it is, Microsoft LIT format for e-books is a joke; it’s actually a preferred format for many techies since it’s so easy to strip away the DRM with easily available shareware. Sophisticated consumers in large numbers are just saying “No” to America’s DMCA restrictions. The proposed Australian laws just reflects reality.
Ideally the White House won’t use trade-related diplomacy get in the way of the better aspects of the Australian proposals. So far, there are little signs of similar progress in the Hollywood, D.C., where too many politicians can’t tell the difference between fair use and piracy (hyperbole alert).
Publishers, ironically, suffer, whether they realize it or not. The harder it is to use e-books, the fewer will be sold.
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Comments:
Bad Idea! Hardly matters even if a law is passed. Piracy is a crime and no rule or law can make it legal. Better not to try it !
I don’t believe that copyright is a natural right. I am not sure I even believe in the existence of natural rights, let alone that they always trump positive rights. As far as I am concerned, the pre-1978 Americans with their utalitarian view of copyright were on the correct track. Copyright is a man-made monopoly that should be lessened or abandoned as soon as its positive stimulus can no longer be taken for granted.
In the US, fair use principles have degraded pretty dramatically. Back in the days of vinyl (easily scratched) many people played an album once to record it to tape, then played the tape in their car and at home until the tape was worn out, then made another copy…
Today if you buy a CD, music companies think it is their Congressionally given right to force you to buy a digital copy if you want it on your mp3 player.
Congress has sided with business over personal users in the interest of ‘avoiding piracy’. Meanwhile, I can’t transfer my $17 USD Virgin CD to my mp3 player. Virgin, BTW, will never get my money if it can be avoided. That is easy for a CD – and probable for their airline seats, which are a bit more expensive.
There was a very interesting article about the proposed French law being pro consumer. I agree.
Piracy is stealing somebody’s work. Greed is making you pay for it for every device you one.
My two cents – fwiw.
Everyone has its own rights in so called democratic country, then why not the right to pirate.
Piracy is stealing somebody’s work, but that too is an art. Piracy need a tact and so if one is benefitting out of it, why to even think of banning it.
OK, that’s interesting. Loy and Jack share almost the same website; only their subjects differ. Both sites are internet directories, though if my suspicion of spam is founded, both are more likely to be link farms. Half-way intelligent spammers? Stranger things have happened.
[...] But today I saw something at the Teleread blog, where I also blog, that could either be serious comments, or spam, and I’ll be damned if I know which is which. Two guys (or rather: to personas) posting adversarial messages, relevant to the blog entry, and the only thing that connects them is an obvious below-average intelligence, and the fact that in their included URLs they both link to similar looking directories — or are they link farms? [...]