Re: tlug: Re: Electronic Book Readers for Lignux

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

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tlug note from "Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>
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>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Breen <jwb@example.com> writes:

    Jim> There was a discussion a while ago with some people who had
    Jim> bought the rights to the contents of some EBs for R&D
    Jim> purposes, and had written some general-purpose software for
    Jim> undoing them. They were asking me & others about the ethics
    Jim> of releasing or selling this code. My advice, along with that
    Jim> of some others, was that it would be safest not to do
    Jim> that. One would not want to selling dynamite to
    Jim> safe-breakers, and while there may be a good defence if there
    Jim> was ever an action, better to avoid it from the beginning.

I would imagine you could publish the algorithm as long as you don't
say which books it applies to :-)  "Yet another algorithm for
translating escapeless-JIS interspersed with index numbers of doubtful 
provenance" :-) :-)

Seriously, this depends on the license of the EB.  I would imagine
that at least for recent versions, the license is a lot more
restrictive than GPL.  However, I would think that the encoding itself
and the translation algorithm would have to be copyrighted or patented
to cause a problem.  I just cannot imagine that translation for
personal use would be prohibited by copyright.  Copy right limits
one's ability to transmit the content to third parties.  I suppose the
license could limit you to use on specific hardware or something....
In the US that might run afoul of the anti-trust laws, though :-)

Ethically, of course, selling this code would be selling fertilizer in
ton-lots to militia-men.

    Jim> The mesage is that EB contents are wide open to extraction
    Jim> programs; it just takes a bit of effort. For personal use,
    Jim> doing this is safe. Giving the contents to others is probably
    Jim> a breach of copyright.

Unless explicitly permitted, it is, since with respect to content all
rights not explicitly licensed are reserved to the copyright holder.

Look at Brad Templeton's Copyright FAQ in news.announce.newusers (or
some permutation of that) for better advice.

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tel: +81 (298) 53-5091;  Fax: 55-3849              turnbull@example.com
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