Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
By your interpretation of the copyright law it would not only be unpunishable to download and keep a copy of pirated book, but would also make it 100% legal to do so. Even if brought to court the worst that can happen is the deletion of that ownerless unauthorized copy. Yes? No? I don't think they intentionally left the law that wide open. It is also another reason we might need a real copyright lawyer to explain things to us. No offence Harmon, but you said it yourself that you are not specialized in copyright.
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Yep, that's my reading. The hole is there, I think.
Just start with the understanding that it is not a copyright violation for you to videotape or record a program off the air. Why not? You are making a copy of the program, aren't you? How is copying a book any different? I think it's pretty clear to anyone, lawyer or not, that making a copy of something does not,
all by itself, violate the author's copyright. There has to be an additional element involved for a violation to occur.
The answer seems clear enough - you have to be interfering with the author's right to exploit the economic benefits of his or her creation, and copying a book does not interfere with that right any more than reading the book without permission interferes with the right.
However, using the copy to make money
does interfere with that right. So that's where the law draws the line. You, personally, won't be penalized for making an unauthorized copy, unless you do something with it besides keep it around to read yourself. And it's no different if you make an unauthorized copy of an unauthorized copy.
Where you
will get into trouble is if there's any whiff of economic
exploitation. It's why you shouldn't use bittorrent to download things - because the way bittorrent works (if I understand it correctly) includes redistributing portions of what you download. "Distribution" violates the economic right of the author to distribute the book him or herself. That's economic exploitation.
Remember, the law does not map precisely to morality. I'm not saying it's right, in any moral sense, to just download a copy of any book you want. In some circumstances it might be, in others it clearly isn't. Where to draw the line is open to debate. Personally, I'm comfortable with downloading a copy of a book I already own in print. That's no different than scanning my own copy. I'm also okay with downloading a book which is out of print, mainly because I regard it as having been abandoned by the owner. But I would not download a book which can be purchased from a legitimate source, even though I don't believe that doing so violates the law.
But when I read the copyright act, what I see is the very hole that you think can't be there. Moreover, that hole makes sense to me in light of what a judge would call "the overall import of the law." It also makes sense to me when I take into account the way that law behaves in other areas, and how law develops historically to suit the situation of the times it originates in. So while I'm not a copyright lawyer, I'm pretty confident of the conclusion.