LendInk fiasco keeps rights management issue burning; Most don’t realize when you buy an e-book that you cannot resell it, and in the majority of cases can’t even lend it to a friend because of copyright, not technical issues
all DRM implementations have some anti-consumer side effects. These side effects may include but are not limited to, geo-locking, tracking, device/format restrictions, interference with second-hand sales and fair use.
Last week a mountain was made out of a molehill which brought back into focus how antagonistic both sides have become. US-based e-book lender matching service LendInk was flooded with cease and desist letters from irate authors claiming that the site was a den of piracy.
The hosting provider Medialayer.com, fearing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), took the site offline.
Meanwhile, the authors involved boasted about shutting down a pirate site on kindleboards.com (a large kindle community site).
In reality, LendInk was acting like a book club and allowing members to discover books that they would like to read and introducing them to readers who already had the book. The match could then utilise the lending service provided by Amazon and Barnes & Noble to temporarily lend the book for 14 days. The lending service is legitimately covered by the terms and conditions of both services.
Are fan fiction and fan art legal? Yes if you follow a few not so simple rules….
Copyright is meant to cover the actual creative work, not abstract ideas. We have patents to cover ideas and copyrights to cover creative expression. However, that protection extends beyond the literal text of a work. Where fan works are concerned, we’re mainly interested in character copyrights. http://bit.ly/SdPXRf