Someone on an e-mail list asked for opinions on the legality of a program called “Tunebite,” which allows one to strip the rights management limitations from a number of music file formats. What was interesting about the conversation was the wide variations in interpretations of the law. One poster was satisfied with the fact that Tunebite’s website states that the program’s functionality was legal, while another found that Apple’s licensing agreement (the company referred to by example) must be followed under all circumstances.
My take was that using a program like this is legally questionable, but ultimately amounts to an individual decision about risk/benefit. I’m not aware of decisions explicitly stating whether a license agreement trumps all other copyright arguments like fair use, first sale, etc. (the click-wrap and the DeCSS cases approach these issues, but don’t address them directly).
However, the truly interesting thing in my mind is the wide disparity in ways that the individuals participating in this conversation were constructing the law of copyright–and doing so in ways that impact their actions and compliance with the law. Dialogs such as this (and this one I just came across while reading the news) might be argued to impact on how we all see and understand the law.