Ask HN: What DRM Free really means?

[alanchavez]

I've bought several e-books online, and O'Reilly for example claims that my e-books are 100% mine.

Here's my source:

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do

"They're Your Books

Unlike most other retailers, ebooks from shop.oreilly.com are not restricted. You can freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them."

So does that mean that I can share my e-books on my website for free? or will I be breaking the law?

I know that I should ask a lawyer, but I don't know any lawyer specialized in intellectual property and Digital Rights Management.

I also sent an e-mail to O'Reilly, no response.

[martin-adams]

Their site says the following:

---

They're Your Books. Unlike most other retailers, ebooks from shop.oreilly.com are not restricted. You can freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them.

---

Source: http://shop.oreilly.com/category/ebooks.do

The following link might provide more clarity: http://support.oreilly.com/oreilly/topics/e_books_and_site_l...

It appears that when you purchase a DRM free book, you are purchasing a single entity. Therefore you can only loan, resell or donate it once. It doesn't give you distribution rights, just the rights to loan, resell or donate your since license.

[alanchavez]

That's what I thought, I've actually been thinking to allow the e-book to be downloaded only once a day and since it's a digital file, the person who downloaded the file has 24 hours to delete it from their system.

Obviously there's no way to know that the file has been deleted, just as there's no way to know if a real book has been photocopied.

But I'm just sharing an e-book once per day, just as if I were lending a real book to thousands of people once at a time.

[Yaa101]

I am not going to call you names or tell you that you are wrong or other blah blah.

But think of one thing, you bought something and the owner of that gives you all these freedoms and trust.

Instead of taking responsibility yourself and only lending it once or giving away once, you not only breaking the trust given to you but also place the burden of trust onto other people by telling them that they must erase the item within 24 hours, basicly blaming them by proxy for your untrustworthy behaviour.

[alanchavez]

If I weren't taking responsibility myself, I wouldn't be asking this question, don't you think?

Precisely because I DO NOT want to break the trust (nor the law) is the reason that I'm asking the question.

[Yaa101]

Don't shout at me, I am only answering because you asked the question, and don't think that I am lecturing you, because personaly I don't really care if you break that trust or not. That is your resposibility and not mine, I am telling you only the moral implication of your hypothesis of sharing the work that is trusted to you with n people.

[alanchavez]

I'm not shouting, I'm highlighting the fact that it's not my intention to break anybody's trust.

Morality has little to no place in DRM laws.

[rpicard]

It sounds like you're trying to justify piracy. I'd recommend you just stay away from it.

[alanchavez]

No, I'm not.