Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
Hmm. Mostly, yes, but I can think of a few examples off the top of my head where that's not true.
1) Educational--teachers are permitted to, for example, make 40 copies of a poem to hand out to the class, instead insisting that each student buy a book for that one poem.
2) Personal use--I'm not required to buy a digital copy of a book I own physically, and have scanned & converted myself in order to avoid buying the DRM'd version. (I don't have any of these. Yet. But I'm considering starting a collection; the used paperback version is often cheaper than the ebook version, and I don't mind scanning, OCR'ing and formatting books. I've done this for a few books that don't have commercial ebook versions available; is that depriving the author of potential profit? Certainly I don't intend to buy an ebook version if one becomes available.)
3) Reviews: Reviews are allowed to copy some of the original, for the purpose of convincing people not to buy the original. That's use of the author's work, for profit, without consent.
All of those are copying without permission for profit or to avoid paying for new copies. None are copyright infringement in the US.
It's semantics, and semantics are important to our laws.
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Actually, all of these could be considered copyright infringement. Education is generally accepted as fair use without much question or fuss, but reviews do have to be careful of what parts of a work they reprint without permission.
A personal copy is by no means automatically 'Fair Use'. The Audio Home Recording Act specifically granted the right to make a copy of an audio recording for personal use but that doesn't apply to printed work. The bottom line with Fair Use is that it's decided on a case by case basis. If a copyright holder believes that your use is infringement, he has the right to sue you. Your defense will be 'fair use' and the judge will determine if it is or not. Obviously, your chances of being sued by a copyright holder if you scan a book and never distribute the digital copy are slim to none. It can still be considered infringement though. As you say, semantics are important.
I recommend taking a look at
the wikipedia article on fair use doctrine, especially the section on common misunderstandings. Several of them are very relevant to your examples.