Homemade Hardcovers: Yet Again, Anti-Circumvention Interferes With Fair Use
from the bound-by-law dept
Font blogger Thomas Phinney writes in to tell us about his concerns with the DMCA anti-circumvention clause in relation to creating home-printed versions of digital books. Phinney prints, stitches and binds his own books at home, producing fancy hardcovers for purely personal use from legally-purchased PDF ebooks. This, alone, is a clearly protected case of fair use -- even if it runs afoul of the overreaching copyright notices found in so many ebooks. The problem is that making nice, bound editions takes some extra work, and anti-circumvention laws get in the way:
Making a really high end hardcover from a document such as a PDF involves rearranging the pages (“imposition”) in order to print them in sets on sheets with more than one page per side, so that you can fold them and sew them in groups (“signatures”).
Commercial e-books sold as PDFs are often encrypted with flags on the PDF permit printing, but not modification. Nor do they permit “document assembly” which is exactly what I need: the ability to rearrange, add and delete pages in the PDF. Unfortunately, common approaches to doing imposition involve generating a modified PDF: one in which the pages are at least rearranged and put more than one to a (now larger) page. So far, it looks like many (perhaps all?) imposition apps do it this way and don’t work with PDFs that have restrictions on modification (perhaps on PDFs that have *any* access restrictions?).
Now, I can easily break the encryption on a PDF, if that PDF allows opening but just has restrictions on specific uses like modification. If I do that, I can then use imposition software on a PDF that allows printing but not modification, and make a fancy book.
But (at least as I understand it, and admittedly I’m not a lawyer) the Digital Millenium Copyright Act says that circumventing an access restriction is always illegal, regardless of why I do it. That makes me a criminal if I do that, even if for the sole reason of making a pretty hardcover book. Even when printing the pages out normally and slapping glue on the spine, like a typical softcover “perfect-bound” book, is permitted and legal.
The inherently nonsensical nature of the anti-circumvention clause strikes again: the ends are fair use, but the means are illegal. Of course, since circumvention software itself is illegal too, this raises questions about the applications that are available -- but breaking PDF protection is so trivial that the law seems futile. MacOS even ships with a system tool (ColorSync Utility) that inadvertently removes PDF passwords (an old graphic designer's trick for clients who have lost their source files). This kind of thing is inevitable when you have a law that targets the tools instead of the actual activity, since it's a near-universal truth about tools that they can all be used for both good and bad purposes.
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Filed Under: anti-circumvention, book, dmca, pdf
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E-books with perfect text it would have no issues at all. Setup a macro to do it all while you're fast asleep.
Wake up have some coffee 4-5 cups sit down at your pc and say PDF KISS MY ASS! I just copied you without breaking any laws of messing with your shitty ass encryption methods that a 5 year old could bypass.
Yeah that sounds pretty damn stupid to have to be in the clear. All that just to print a book for personal use?
Da Fuck?
"Waits for post about lawsuit against ABBYY FineReader"
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This is somewhat analogous to ripping your bought and owned DVD/BD for digital device use. With the difference that you can retain full "quality" with text a little easier.
The discussions below about providing a service to others that does this will run into the same thing as DVD ripping services would, though. Industry will probably tolerate individuals doing this on their own behalf, if only because of logistical problems inherent in preventing it, but no way will they allow anyone to profit from "format" shifting of "their" content as a service.
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of course, that probably takes more effort, needing a decent (at least) quality printer and scanner and using at least twice as much paper and ink in the process, but hey, now you've got two copies :P
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If it's a violation of the law to copy when you shouldn't, how is it not a violation of the law to make it impossible to exercise a right guaranteed by the law?
Can you sue a publisher for DRMing your rights away?
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HM
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Big fat double standard.
What about MY rights? What about MY property rights? What about MY rights to use or dispose of MY property in any manner I choose.
That includes the copy of something I bought from some "artiste".
"Artistic Megalomania" is not supposed to be the goal of copyright.
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Re: Big fat double standard.
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Not necessary. You have your lobbyists write a new law criminalizing that behavior, have congress pass the bill, and then you sit back while the government prosecutes the publisher.
Much simpler and more effective.
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if you keep it up long enough eventually one side or the other will manage to make it illegal to have laws passed to subvert other people's rights, previous laws, and/or other people's property, and if you're Really lucky the whole thing will be such a mess the government will spend years gutting the whole unmanageable system down to something far more reasonable... or lock up completely and be ignorable :D
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You say this as if there is any other kind.
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they're just either even MORE dangerous, due to being evil rather than just stupid, or not terribly effective due to the horribly corrupt nature of the system.
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Another Business Killed
Promoting the progress? Not so much.
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in reality... not so much.
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If anybody looks why, monopolies are vilified throughout history look no further than this example, the guy made a work and should benefit from the fruits of his labor that is being applied to others works that was already paid for but he can't, he is now labelled a criminal and that is what that BS IP laws are good for to harm everybody, diminish the pool of opportunities for everyone.
It affects everyone, people who want a job will have to deal with less employers and have to accept raw deals to work.
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Save the pages as TIFFs (grayscale or CMYK, depending on color use) at 300 ppi or better.
(For 150 dpi printing, 300 ppi should be fine)
Use InDesign or Quark to import TIFFs into printing imposition signatures.
Print.
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Not if it's grayscale, and remember, TIFF is a non-loss compression format! ;-)
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Phinney is confused, understandably
Confused? If you aren't, you should be. That part of the law is a total piece of crap.
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This is absolutely not true. Section 1201 permits fair use; the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying is not prohibited.
The inherently nonsensical nature of the anti-circumvention clause strikes again: the ends are fair use, but the means are illegal.
Nope. That's the problem with writing about legal doctrines you don't understand, Leigh--you're bound to get even the basics wrong. The DMCA distinguishes between use and trafficking.
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So no acknowledgement that you and he are misstating the law? Sure, we can talk about the chilling effect of the DMCA, but that's different than the fact that the act of circumventing is actually legal. If you knew that, you'd obviously be celebrating it. Nice try at deflecting, though, I'll give you that. Darth Mike has taught you well.
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So perhaps I do overstate things by saying it is flat-out illegal. What I should say is that it is potentially illegal, and thus effectively illegal in the minds of many.
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Now if you please stop your dumb interpretation of how the law should be understood we all would all be delighted.
IP law is the evil of our times today.
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Re: blowhards and basement dewllers
Even if your characterizations are accurate or true they have no place or purpose in the discussion. Other than to raise ire in your opponents.
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Re: Re: blowhards and basement dewllers
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Have you ever considered the possibility that articles like this are not written from the point of view of an IP expert, or even intended to be, but from the point of view of everyday people and how they're affected by badly written laws that get abused by companies with the help of their asshole lawyers.
Oh wait, you're one of the asshole lawyers aren't you? You sure sound like it.
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But protected by fair use if it's for personal purposes.
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Come on Marcus, even you are smart enough to see it.
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Give me a break.
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> "lend" a copy or two to friends?
What he perhaps might do is irrelevant. In the US, you can only be liable for what you *actually* do.
We're not at the level of Minority Report yet where we're held to answer for future crime.
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I'm not so sure it's an easy slam-dunk to say it's a fair use. I'm assuming the books are creative works of fiction, and that the entire book is being copie. That's two strikes right there (though it's not a simple case of tallying up scores). Is the publisher still selling hardcover copies of the book? He might argue that the person printing out his own copy of an e-book and slapping a cover on it represents a lost sale that negatively impacts his legitimate market for hardcover copies that he already sells himself.
Of course, I understand that this was probably not something the DMCA specifically intended to combat. This is essentialy a corner case - how many people actually have the hobby of creating their own custom hardcover editions? So, while I'd like to see an interpretation of the DMCA that doesn't make this guy feel like he's risking jail time, that doesn't mean the DMCA has failed somehow, merely because someone in a tiny niche hobby can't exercise his skill on every single work he might want.
As for the posters above who commented that it was a shame that the DMCA prevented someone from going into business doing this for others, well, that, to me, would be pretty clearly outside of the fair use doctrine. You're no longer talking about someone doing it for himself. You're talking about setting up a business based on making unauthorized copies of someone else's works.
I do find it funny that the complaint these days is usally about a particular title not being available as an e-book, but in this case, we're hearing the drum beat to turn an e-book back into a dead-tree publication.
HM
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Further, we should be going away from granted monopolies, that never ever produce anything good and the law reflects exactly that, this all is because people thought it was great to grant a monopoly to some schmuck, well lesson learned it is not.
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To you it seems that way, to anybody else is like a guy going to a book store with his book and asking to redo the cover of that book, in that instance that should be perfectly legal, if you bought the crappy PDF and want to turn it into a hard copy why should anybody be forced to beg the publisher to do it when they can find some else to do it for them?
That is the evil of granted monopolies harming everyone.
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Just like many here complain that infringement is not "theft", I have a hard time seeing how anyone is "harmed" because the luxury product they have purchased doesn't have all the conveniences they want.
HM
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So why is it that you consider it offensive that the person who has a legitimately obtained product and is going out of his own way to suit it to his own convenient purposes? Honestly, if the user complained, you'd probably blame him for being entitled and whiny. The original seller isn't losing anything or putting in effort to satisfy customer demands, here.
Also, if a product can't satisfy customer requirements, it's the customer's prerogative to look for alternatives. This guy already paid for his use; it's not like he pirated it or anything. But clearly, for you "pound of flesh" industry shills, that clearly isn't enough.
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PDF printer?
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Fair Use Right Not Affected
(c) Other Rights, Etc., Not Affected.—
(1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
Title 17 includes § 107 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use. It would appear fair use is not affected by the DMCA. Now the question for your lawyer would be is what you are doing fair use?
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Re: Fair Use Right Not Affected
In that sense, copy protection is a completely independent - and prior - hurdle to clear before even getting to the fair use question.
HM
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Seriously, it's like telling someone They can drive inside a certain estate, but that it's 'illegal' to drive through the gate. (I'm sure someone else could come up with a better metaphor.)
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HM
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