[kelnos]

I don't believe that's the case. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, and does not make exceptions for fair use.

There are exemptions granted to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions every three years, but in general, e-books have not been exempted.

If you're just stripping DRM from your own purchased e-books, or are downloading a pirated copy from somewhere, it's unlikely that you'll get in trouble. But it's almost certainly not actually legal to do so.

(Of course, remember that if you're torrenting, you're also uploading, and the chances of you getting in trouble are higher... even if you disable your client's upload functionality.)

[hansvm]

Assume there's no DRM involved. Do books not have the same protections as music (e.g., home archival being a defense against the otherwise legitimate copy)? I.e., is it not true that the download is fine but that what you do with it could be illegal?