Quote:
Originally Posted by induna
In the USA copyright provides civil protections to the copyright holder. In order to successfully sue someone for damages, you have to be able to show that you have been damaged.
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Not true.
Under US copyright law, there are two types of damages that can be awarded by a court for a successful copyright infringement claim:
1. Compensation for actual losses. This does, as you suggest, depend on the plaintiff being able to demonstrate that a loss has occurred.
2. Statutory damages. These do NOT require a plaintiff to show that a loss has occurred, and are an amount of damages "per work infringed", rather than per copy made. Statutory damages are set out in 17 U.S.C. § 504 of the U.S. Code. The basic level of damages is between $750 and $30,000 per work, at the discretion of the court. Plaintiffs who can show willful infringement may be entitled to damages up to $150,000 per work. Defendants who can show that they were "not aware and had no reason to believe" they were infringing copyright may have the damages reduced to $200 per work.
You were, though, I believe, talking about creating ebooks for personal use from paper books that you'd bought? That would be considered "fair use" in most legal jurisdictions, I believe.