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Originally Posted by Hughdal
Thanks for the informed answers. Seems like a bit of a con though. if I buy a paper back book I can legally sell it on if I remove the cover. Don't know the law on hard back books.
Hughdal
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If you are selling a used book, you don't need to remove the cover. THe whole issue of removed covers actual comes back into the illegal area. When a book store (or other retailer) can't sell a book, they will commonly rip the front covers off and return them to the distributor who will then credit their account. At this point, the retailer is supposed to throw them away or recycle the books. This is commonly called stripping the books. The main reasoning for this is to save on shipping unsold books back and forth. Some smaller retailers (and some not smaller) will sell them at a super discount or give them away. At this point, they are committing fraud by claiming the books were destroyed and then sold them. Some book publishers do not support the stripping of books and require that the unsold copies be returned to them so they can be resold through other outlets.
When I was a kid, my dad worked for Montgomery Ward and they had a book section. Every week or so, I would get to go look through the boxes of books that stripped and take what I wanted for like 25¢ each. I am very grateful for this since we had very little money when I was growing up, so it let me read more and not have to make trips to the library (which I pretty much lived at).
I know there was a company I worked for the did a similar thing with magazines. They cut the top couple inches off the covers and sent them back for credit. Then the stripped magazines went in the staff lounge.
This is not an issue with ebooks, of course, since there is no physical book to resale ala used books stores. Just one of the concessions you make to purchasing a non-physical item. You don't actually own anything more than a copy of specialized code.
Sorry for the hijack.