Is It Ever Legal—or Ethical—to Remove DRM?

Whatever you think astir Digital Rights Management software, it's difficult to reason pinch nan truth that it's annoying. Such exertion exists, successful theory, to protect nan intelligence spot of nan companies that create music, movies, and games, but it tin besides get successful nan measurement of you enjoying books, music, and videos nan measurement you want to.

Say, for example, that you bought a bunch of books connected nan Amazon Kindle level but later decided you wanted to move to a Kobo instrumentality (or vice versa). The DRM systems connected some platforms are designed to forestall you from migrating your books from 1 level to nan other, meaning you mightiness request to salary again conscionable to publication a book connected nan Kobo you already paid for connected nan Kindle.

Software exists that tin region this DRM. It requires doing immoderate investigation and jumping done immoderate method hoops, but it could prevention you from having to bargain nan aforesaid media a 2nd time. But is it legal?

Illegal, but Unlikely to Be Enforced

Let’s rip disconnected nan Band-Aid: The enactment of removing DRM from immoderate benignant of copyrighted activity is broadly forbidden successful nan US nether section 1201 of title 17, United States Code, which was passed pinch nan Digital Millennium Copyright Act successful 1998.

The norm is beautiful intelligibly written: “No personification shall circumvent a technological measurement that efficaciously controls entree to a activity protected nether this title.”

I asked to Derek Bambauer, a rule professor astatine nan University aliases Florida who specializes successful net law, cybersecurity, and intelligence property, whether location are immoderate exceptions to this. Bambauer tells maine location is very small ineligible ambiguity here.

“Exceptions are successful there, but they're really narrow,” he says, emphasizing that First Amendment arguments thin not to activity wherever intelligence spot is concerned.

But will removing DRM from a record you paid for extremity up pinch you going to jailhouse aliases being sued? Maybe not, says Bambauer, arsenic companies typically don't fuss pursing it.

“We each benignant of casually break copyright constantly,” he says, mentioning that nan photocopied comic strips connected his agency doorway are technically a violation. With finite resources, nan owners of intelligence spot elemental can't writer everyone. “Companies thin to only spell aft group who are distributing copyrighted useful pinch others.”

“If nan DRM removal is conscionable for individual consumption, it's difficult to detect,” Bambauer says, “and it's not worthy it for companies spell aft that. One, nan euphony manufacture tried that, and it was a horrible failure. And two, it's conscionable a batch easier to spell aft nan creators and distributors of nan tools.”

And that's what companies do: effort to unopen down aliases artifact nan distribution of package that removes DRM from files. Bambauer says this is nan logic astir of specified package tends to beryllium made by group extracurricular nan US and is distributed connected websites extracurricular US jurisdiction. He besides emphasized that sharing files pinch others aft removing nan DRM is acold much apt to pull lawsuits from companies.