Yes you can... and the E-Book issues can be adressed in a very specific way.. TO ADOBE! REFUSE TO PURCHASE A PRODUCT WITH SUCH BLATANT SHORTCOMINGS! Feeling that it is OK to make a shoddy product freeware is not the answer. I could care less what the other features of the program are... if you think its main intention is to do anything other than provide free access to ADOBE's material then you are dillusional.
The shoddy Adobe product is actually freeware. Go to their site and you can download it and use it for free. The encryption is on the books you buy, not on the reader.
Dmitry is not re selling Adobe's software, or even the books it protects, the software he is selling is his own copyrighted work, that allows people to decrypt things that have been encrypted.
You seem to have missed the point of the argument (an appeal against this law regarding DVD encryption is currently underway in the sates). The product Dmitry, or his company, was selling, allows you to do something that is not illegal by itself. Decrypting a book you have purchased is not illegal. Using Dmitry's software to decrypt a book you have bought is not illegal. Distributing it after you have decrypted it is illegal. Basically the law targets people that make software that allows decryption, because they get nowhere targeting the people who actually do the redistribution.
Prosecuting every little toerag with a cd writer who copies games for his mates is impossible, so now the law is starting to target people make tools that allow you to do the copying.
Under the digital media copyright laws in the US, it would be possible to prosecute somebody who makes a no cd patch for a game, or someone who finds a way to allow you to copy a protected cd, even though copying the cd for safekeeping is legal. The law is framed so that it makes it a crime to sell tools that allow people to commit legal acts.
In fact, the use of the product Dmitry sold is in no way illegal, though what you do after you have used it may be.
As to boycotting the Adobe ebook format, that is certainly easy at the moment. However, in the future it will be possible for all material to be distributed in ways that allow little freedom to the end user, and anyone who develops a product that allows the user more control will face prosecution.
Will you be so blasé when you can only get dvds that are playable only on 1 dvd player, or cds that can only be used in 1 cd player? What about when all software is tied to the pc you bought it for, and an upgrade means you have to buy all new software?
Think it can't happen? The MPAA testimony in a recent court case involving DVD copy protection claimed
"a person obtains the legal right to view a DVD only after purchasing the DVD and also a DVD-player licensed through DVD-CCA.
The studios have further testified that such person only acquires the right to view the material on selected players and that such persons are not thereby authorized to access the material on the DVD to make a fair use, or any non-infringing use, or such material"
The Digital Millenium Copyright Act changes a whole host of previously upheld consumer rights to access material they have bought in the way they want to. It does it not by changing their rights, but by making it illegal to sell (or give away) software or equipment that allows them to exercise those rights.
Home taping, recording TV programs with VCRs etc have all been ruled acceptable use by courts in America. VCRs are already threatened by technology that allows the signal to be watchable, but un-tapeable. (I believe the system is called macrovision?)
At the moment it doesn't work that well, because it doesn't block all videos and you can buy devices to circumvent it, but such devices are illegal and it's only a matter of time before steps are taken to stop their sale.
A final point. If practices like home taping, and archiving material you have bought are legal, but can be stopped by prosecuting people who sell things to enable you to do them, where does that leave one of America's greatest "freedoms", the right to bear arms? Does the second ammendment grant the right to sell arms? You may be allowed to keep them, but it doesn't mean much if everyone who tries to sell them to you is in prison, does it?
[ 07-23-2001: Message edited by: Nashwan ]
[ 07-23-2001: Message edited by: Nashwan ]
