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Originally Posted by HarryT
I wouldn't be so sure about that; read the "Fair Use" article I posted a link to previously. Of course, in practical terms, nobody is going to prosecute you for scanning a book that you've bought for your own personal use, but it's not clear at all that this constitutes "fair use". Scanning a small portion of the book would, but the whole thing? That's far from clear.
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The fourth factor measures the effect that the allegedly infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit his original work.
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The pbook was purchased. The ebook is in PDF. The ebook may not be useful at all. No portable readers can handle DRM PDF. So the publisher by format limiting is making it possibly impossible to legally obtain an ebook copy. Now, if it was self converted to an ebook no effect on the author would happen. If it was downloaded from a copy someone else made, no effect on the author since the illegal copy might not be usable anyway. Now, if the legal ebook copy was one that 100% could be used, then downloading would be wrong. But in this case, the tower of ebable has done a disservice. Now, if we were to get ebooks and pbooks released on the same day, this issue of "I bought the pbook because of no ebook edition and then the ebook came out which is what I wanted" would not be an issue. What we need is if an ebook is due to come out of a given title then I think there should be someplace to go look to see if that is true. Maybe on the publisher's website. I know for a fact, I can go to Simon & Schuster's website and look up a newly printed book and I can find out if an ebook is out or going to come out. But do most publishers do this? Not at all. That is part of the problem. People feel cheated. They feel they were not given a choice. That the information that an ebook edition was due to be released after the pbook was was withheld. That's unfair practices. Then the publisher has the audacity to demand you pay for the ebook after you have already paid for the pbook based on the publisher's fauly lack of information. If the information was there from the start, it would give consumers the ability to make an informed decision. But they don't all do that. They just do what they do and the consumer be dammed. Well, in this case, morally, I don't see an issue to find an ebook copy since the publisher withheld information that allows the consumer to make an informed choice.