Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
If we are talking about legally, it is of course illegal to photocopy your books.
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This is very much
not of course. A commentary to the Austrian law, relating to printed books, says (in my clumsy translation):
Everyone -- including legal entities -- is allowed to make individual copies for their own private or professional use, though not for the purpose of making the work available to the public. Copies may be shared within the "private sphere." The law says "individual" copies, but does not define a maximum number. The often voiced assumption that this maximum number is 7 does not agree with actual judicature, according to which this number has to be decided in each case, taking into consideration the intended use of those copies. It is not a fact that "individual" copies necessarily always means a small number.
(This is from 1996, so details may have changed, but the basic principle still holds. How it applies to digital texts derived from printed books through scanning and OCR I do not know.)