An issue that I often see pop up on various Palm web sites deals with the legality of copying electronic media from one format to another. For example, it appears to be the opinion of many that making a copy of an copyrighted ebook, that an individual has purchased, into another format is illegal. In fact, this line of thinking has been pushed by certain industry groups in the U.S., but it is not completetly true. Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent any copy-protection scheme. This is in direct contrast with existing U.S copyright laws. The right to create copies of the media that you have purchased, for personal use, has long been accepted part of the “fair use” doctrine in U.S. copyright laws. (Fair use is generally defined as allowing individuals to duplicate copyrighted materials for criticism, education, research, etc. without compensation to the copyright holder. ) Fair use, generally speaking, falls under time-shifting (home taping of television programs), space-shifting (ripping a purchased CD into a MP3), and personal backups .

There have been conflicting rulings in the court system on both sides of the issue. I suspect that as the cases wind their way through the court system and evenntually to the Supreme Court that fair use will eventually be established as the consumers right. This has happened to other technologies in the last 25 years or so (see VCRs). Basically, an individual is well within their rights to make copies of legally purchased work for their own entertainment in another format.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15th, 2005 at 10:40 am and is filed under Palm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.