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Originally Posted by NatCh
Making copies of your paper books for your own use has long been held as "fair use" in the U.S., so I think that scanning my owned paper books would likely fall under that precident. I don't see how it could be a violation of the DMCA since a p-book isn't digital in the first place!
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Yeah, it's not a DMCA violation, but it might not be Fair Use, either. Copying an entire work breaks one of the Fair Use tests. It's a four-pronged thing, if I remember correctly - amount of the work copied, reason for copying (academic uses, etc), type of the work (you can copy the phone book to your heart's content), and effect on the market for the work (if there's no digital copy available to purchase, this would probably work in your favor). Of course, you'd really have to go into court to have a decision on it, I think.
I talked to an attorney involved in the RIAA cases who said that format-shifting is still in a legal gray area. There haven't been any court cases to decide whether ripping your own CD for your own use is legal or not. Books and xerox machines have been around longer, so there may be precedent in that case.