Quote:
Originally Posted by TimW
Sometimes the site has illegitimate content. Three or four years ago, I discovered To Kill a Mockingbird available for download. (It was a working copy, I checked.) This was before an authorized digital copy was being sold by HarperCollins. No doubt it was eventually removed.
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If so, it is back at their OpenLibrary.org site.
However, each borrowed copy is backed by a paper copy not being read. And each borrowed copy is much lower quality than one from Amazon, Kobo, or Overdrive.
If the quality of
To Kill a Mockingbird from OpenLibrary was equal to that available, via Overdrive, from local public libraries, that would be, to me, unfair. I support Overdrive's right to charge far higher prices for eBooks sold to libraries than I am charged for an individual copy. But I also support OpenLibrary when it, directly or indirectly, pays a far lower price for a quite inferior copy.
If HarperCollins, backed by the wealth of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., felt they were being ripped off by an organization with a fixed address and identifiable assets, and could win their case, wouldn't they be issuing, to OpenLibrary, takedown notices, and suing if not honored?
If they did sue, no one would question that
To Kill a Mockingbird is under copyright. Instead it would be a question of fair use and the held copy borrowing model.
In past discussions of the long American copyright terms, I neglected to mention the lesser US protections while under copyright. In additional to expansive fair use, the US has the Chafee Amendment:
http://www.loc.gov/nls/reference/guides/copyright.html
AFAIK, no one complains about that.
The international nature of the internet doesn't fit well with the big differences in national intellectual property protections. It isn't sporting to enjoy US laxities at OpenLibrary and then take advantage of the shorter Canadian copyright term available a few clicks away. But, especially given the tiny bandwidth needed to download a book, there's no practical way to stop it. I don't have a good answer for that.