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Originally Posted by Nathanael
Well, there is this:
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"This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher."
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Every pbook I own contains a statement similar to that, generally on the copyright page.
And fair use under US copyright law generally allows one to copy only a portion of the work (generally understood as up to ten percent or one thousand words, whichever is less). Courts, I believe, generally allow a bit more for educational purposes, a bit less for commercial.
So, yes, slapping a book on your scanner and scanning it in its entirety is illegal. |
Copying an entire TV program in order to watch it at a different time was ruled fair use. Copying an entire book, in order to read it on a different device, should follow the same guideline. (I believe music format-shifting has been ruled legal; there just haven't been lawsuits about ebooks yet.)
Fair use, in the US, has no specific limit. It's not 10%; it's not a page count. In one case, using four notes of a song was ruled *not* fair use; in another, printing 39 words of a book was not fair use. (The book was unpublished, and an advance review leaked critical details.) However, use of an entire tune was considered not infringing in several cases;
However, copyright law specifically allows for "multiple copies for classroom use"--which implies entire works, not fragments. (There's been a case that indicates otherwise, but it involved several works at once--and profit for the copiers; the case wasn't against a teacher.) Deciding whether use is fair requires consideration of four factors, including the type of intended use, the nature of the original (fiction, nonfic, published or not, etc.), how much is used, and the effect on the market. No one of these overrides the others and creates a binary is/is not infringement condition.
Noncommercial use is a big matter... making copies for personal use (or even group use) is much less likely to be infringing if nobody's making money from it.