Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
No, it's the ACT of making an unauthorised copy that violates copyright law; whether or not you read the book is irrelevant. By giving a copy of a book to a third party, without the permission of the copyright holder, you have created an unauthorised copy.
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If I download the books onto a flash drive after purchase, that's a legitimate, authorized copy. If I then sell the flash drive, I haven't made any unauthorized copies.
If I download *for the purpose* of selling, I may be making an unauthorized copy, but I often download for reading to several places--memory card on my reader, portable flash drive so I can comfortably move books on & off my reader, and hard drive in case the bookstore vanishes overnight.
Selling the physical medium where I've stored a legit copy doesn't create an unauthorized copy. If I don't open the other copies I have access to, I haven't violated any rules. Of course, that's on the honor system--but so's physical bookselling; they're also counting on me not photocopying the book & then selling the original. (With most bound books, a photocopy is much lower quality than the original. With fanzines and micro-press publications, it's often not.)