|
In the prelims of many books there is some wording about this. In the first book to hand the relevant terms are:
"All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of [the publisher], or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights organization."
This clause implicitly invokes the original agreement between the copyright holder and the publisher. I'm no lawyer either, but I assume my rights as a buyer of the paper book go no further than being able to read it or to copy pages "as expressly permitted by law", meaning for private study, I suppose, or "under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographic rights organization", which means I'd have to buy a licence to photocopy a substantial chunk of the text and give it to others. Some of the proceeds of these licences find their way to the copyright holder. (I am a member of such an organization and receive small sums every year in respect of photocopies made by various bodies in Britain and in certain foreign countries.)
But this is all hopelessly old-fashioned, and takes little account of the fact that a perfect copy of a book-length manuscript can now be made with ease, infinitely duplicated and transmitted round the world in a few seconds. We can surely expect to hear of test cases coming to court, dealing with just the dilemmas already raised in this thread.
|