Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Where this comes from is in retailers disposing of unsold books. In theory, they are supposed to rip the covers off the book and mail the covers back to the Publisher as proof that the books were destroyed and not sold. The policy is to prevent them from then selling the books anyway, and falsely reporting them as destroyed.
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I think you're right-that's a scenario I overlooked. But I still suspect that the majority of paperbacks 'in circulation' with missing covers are, in fact, ones that were illegally sold. And something I just realized is that we're actually getting away from the issue. Whether the book was originally sold with or without a cover, there's no crime in rebinding & reselling it. The crime, if such exists, is in the original sale-and is committed (IMO) by the seller, not by the buyer. (Or by the thief if it's stolen. And as I said, ruling differ about whether or not it's theft if it's 'stolen' from the trash. So I'd probably prefer to drop that scenario-it's just too unclear how it would be decided.)