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I'm not trying to put words in your mouth about sharing copies (hence inherit, not borrow or get a copy of) - my main point was that while:

>> I would just consider having your own drm free backup.

> You bought the book, you own the pdf.

seems perfectly reasonable on the face of it - it implies removing the drm - which I think is still unclear if it is legal or not (per the dmca)?

I believe there was some case around backing up dvds (a notoriously fragile medium) - as well as circumventing drm in order to view legal copies (eg: play dvds on Linux/in vlc) - but I'm not certain if that was tested in supreme court or not - and if it would apply to ebooks.

I do know that with the initial draft of the dmca, circumventing drm was in and of itself illegal.




Oreilly lets you download drm free copies though? You're not "removing" anything if it doesn't exist in the first place. That's the source of my confusion here.

I won't comment on DMCA regulations.


Ok, might be confused by the context. I would think you only need "drm free backups" if what you get originally is "drm-ed files". If there's no drm, there's no drm. I thought the change was that O'reilly was moving towards drm only?




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