Permissible Copying of Physical Book

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I fail to see how anyone could possibly imagine that is acceptable.

You hold the right to the work, by virtue of owning the LP.
You have the right to digitize, if only because of fair use (media companies might argue the point, but we ignore them).
You can do whatever you want with your own property -- lock it up forever, burn it in effigy, incorporate it in a shrine to "culture" anything.

However:
If you wish to sell or donate the LP, you are legally and morally obligated to transfer the digital copies as well.
Otherwise you have taken one piece of property and one right-to-own and multiplied it by two.

Does that make it clear?

Which translates to destroying the physical copy if you want to keep ONLY the digital copy.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

But there is a law - the Copyright Act of 1976 - which essentially says "you can't make copies without the permission of the copyright holder". Unless that has a specific exemption for making copies for personal use, doesn't that mean that such an activity is "explicitly banned by law"?

Betamax case came later (1984) and established that personal use copies are fair use.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_...y_Studios,_Inc.

Like I said, US law doesn't work by granting specific permissions but by banning specific cases, (after the fact) In 1976, making copies meant xerography or illegal printings, not scanning and OCR. You can't ban (or regulate) what doesn't exist. Technology outpacing existing laws and regulation is common and beneficial because the lawyers and politicians don't get in the way of the enginers until after the new tech is proven viable. ("Land of the free" isn't just anthem poetry, it is a legal fact. )

That was one reason for the DMCA law, to extend legal coverage to the Digital Domain that until then was only covered by contract law and licenses.

It works the same way with contracts, which is why old publishing contracts don't cover digital rights.

http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Random_H..._Rosetta_Books

[murg]

I can make an argument that if you use a scanning service (like 1dollarscan) to convert a physical book to an ebook, that you would have to retain the physical copy to make the electronic copy legal. Otherwise, you don't have a publisher provided copy of the work. It would also be difficult for the copyright holder to prove damages if there is no commercially available ebook available, or the ebook is not for sale in your geo-location.

As to DMCA, and why no one has really gone after the circumvention software in the US: this may open a can of worms, like your First Amendment rights to both the software, and to be able to read the content wherever you want (even on devices for which there is no app) and to move devices (moving all your Amazon content to epub, for instance). In addition to the 1st amendment right to publish content, you have a 1st amendment right to read content.

As to the UK law, the posts have been concentrating on 28B.1.a.ii, almost completely ignoring the big OR at the end of the above clause, 'an individual's own copy of the work, or'. I can take this as 'The making of a copy of a work, other than a computer program, by an individual does not infringe copyright in the work provided that the copy is a copy of the individual’s own copy of the work'. This would pretty much make the scanning service copy legal (you send them a physical book and they convert) as well as your own scans, but may make 'free' sourced versions not legal. 28B.1.a.ii simply allows you to make a copy of the legal copy you've previously made.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murg

I can make an argument that if you use a scanning service (like 1dollarscan) to convert a physical book to an ebook, that you would have to retain the physical copy to make the electronic copy legal.

That would be a safe assumption.

In the case of a commercial scanning service that destroys the original, keeping a record of the transaction would have to suffice. Some evidence of a unique "license to read" should be retained to be able to claim fair use as a defense. Rather like a key-disk DRM scheme that lets you install and run from a hard disk but every once in a while asks for the original disk to verify licensing.

The first amendment as a source of a right to transcode?
It is an interesting argument.

Not unreasonable:

http://www.ftrf.org/?page=First_Amendment

The First Amendment guarantees all individuals the right to express their ideas without governmental interference, and to read and listen to the ideas of others.

Fair use comes from property rights (fifth and fourteenth amendments), but a First amendment reinforcement can't hurt.

One example of Fifth Amendment support:

The Supreme Court has held that, in certain circumstances, government regulation that deprives a property owner of all economic benefit of his or her property can count as a “taking.” For example, in 1992, the Court held that a state had effectively “taken” certain oceanfront property by prohibiting all development on the property. - See more at: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/bus....xHpwzqPt.dpuf

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Betamax case came later (1984) and established that personal use copies are fair use.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_...y_Studios,_Inc.

The Betamax case established that copying for the specific purpose of time-shifting is fair use; not that copying anything for any purpose is fair use.

I gave a link a few posts back to a whole forum full of lawyers, whose decided opinion was that scanning books is not legal in the US. I suspect that they know more about the matter than we do. (Certainly more than I do, anyway!)

Of course, the question of whether anyone is going to care if you scan a book for personal use is a completely different one to whether or not it's legal. I'm absolutely certain that nobody is going to get into legal trouble for doing so.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I meant that since we have more people our laws have more of an impact.

I understood what you meant, I just wanted to say that you don't have that many more. World population > 7 billion, US population 320 million, that's less than 5 percent. EU population, BTW, > 500 million. The point I want to make is that US law is not "the" law.

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Services like "1dollarscan" in the US allow you to "format shift" a book, but the reason that's legal is because it's a destructive process - it's a genuine format shift, rather than creating a copy. The original is (and has to be, in order for it to be legal) destroyed in the scanning process.

They need to cut off the spine for the scanning, otherwise it would be a much more expensive process. But bookscan.us offers to return the pages of the scanned book, for a fee (not of much practical use, but they only destroy the pages because sending them back costs money). Do they violate US law by this? (That's a genuine question.)

BTW, I think that 1dollarscan originated in Japan, and that their main reason for scanning books was their small apartments, so the idea was to scan books to save space -- so, destroying the printed copy was the purpose of the whole operation?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

They need to cut off the spine for the scanning, otherwise it would be a much more expensive process. But bookscan.us offers to return the pages of the scanned book, for a fee (not of much practical use, but they only destroy the pages because sending them back costs money). Do they violate US law by this? (That's a genuine question.)

The law forum I posted a link to in post #67 above is of the opinion that book scanning is illegal in the US, but I guess that it will remain merely an opinion until a case is brought to court.

[shalym]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The law forum I posted a link to in post #67 above is of the opinion that book scanning is illegal in the US, but I guess that it will remain merely an opinion until a case is brought to court.

I read all of the posts on that thread, and the poster (quincy) who is saying that it is illegal is basing his opinion (in part) on the cases of Authors Guild v HathiTrust and Authors Guild v Google. Unfortunately, in both of those cases, the ultimate ruling was in favor of the defendants, and therefore in favor of scanning books being "fair use". (See https://www.eff.org/document/authors...ppeal-decision and https://www.eff.org/document/opinion...gment-fair-use )

There's also the issue (in my opinion) that neither the HathiTrust case nor the Google case have anything at ALL to do with format shifting by an individual of materials that the individual owns. Both of the cases quincy cites are about companies scanning books and making the scans (or portions of the scans) available to the public in some way. So...even if those cases had been won by the Author's Guild, and the scanning was ruled to be infringement, they would still have no bearing on a case of an individual scanning books that he or she owns.

Shari

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by shalym

There's also the issue (in my opinion) that neither the HathiTrust case nor the Google case have anything at ALL to do with format shifting by an individual of materials that the individual owns. Both of the cases quincy cites are about companies scanning books and making the scans (or portions of the scans) available to the public in some way. So...even if those cases had been won by the Author's Guild, and the scanning was ruled to be infringement, they would still have no bearing on a case of an individual scanning books that he or she owns.

Shari

Exactly.
Those cases are really about distribution, not about *using* one's property, which is what fair use is primarily about.

Betamax was decided on the basis that timeshifting was a fair use of legally acquired content and that devices that enable fair use are legal. It established that modifying content and storing the modified derivative for personal use is legal. (Sling boxes are likewise legal although their purpose is place-shifting, which is a form of distribution but on a one to one basis.) The RIAA vs Diamond multimedia lawsuit then established that transcoding and format shifting of digital music/content was legal. The key point? Personal use.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news...MP3+Player.htm

Personal use is about enjoying the benefit of what one personally owns, which is derived from the constitutional rights to property in the US. Which means no law is required to grant them.

Now, property rights are not universally recognized outside the US. For example, outside the US mineral rights most commonly belong to the state rather than the nominal deed holder (a holdover from medieval times and the territorial state, when everybody was a tenant on the king's personal property--the state.) Whereas in the US, the owner of a plot owns it all the way to the center of the earth and can exploit those rights at will. Or at least, that is the default. It is then up to the goverment to justify why drilling for oil in manhattan should not be permitted. But it is up to the govetnment to prove why not, not the citizen to prove why.

No law was needed to explicitly permit timeshifting, place shifting, or format shifting. What *was* needed was a legal justification for prohibiting it and the failure to do so allowed the status quo to prevail; legal unless expressly forbidden.

[murg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I gave a link a few posts back to a whole forum full of lawyers, whose decided opinion was that scanning books is not legal in the US. I suspect that they know more about the matter than we do. (Certainly more than I do, anyway!)

Remember, when it comes to court cases, half of the lawyers are wrong.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Which translates to destroying the physical copy if you want to keep ONLY the digital copy.

Yes, you do indeed have that option.

I assume you mean by that, that you believe in doing so you are destroying a cultural artifact -- as you argued in the other thread.

Well, yes -- you, Catlady, have committed an abomination against this mysterious "culture" thing. That much I am willing to accept from you on faith.

What I don't comprehend is why that should be anyone else's problem.
Or why that gives you the right to gift said LPs to any entity other than a cultural archive. Or sell it to any entity (even a cultural archive).

Gifting/selling it to a friend -- that I regard as a thinly-disguised excuse.


If you are so concerned about culture, you have several options, all legal. For example, you can donate them to the Library of Congress. (Perhaps they already have a copy. )

Also consider -- you own a digital copy, which should be more than adequate to tether said work to reality and thus preserve its cultural value. Why exactly is the LP more cultural than the digital file? For that matter, why are you so sure you own the only extant copy?
The file can be lost/destroyed. But the LP can be as well.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by RobertDDL

I understood what you meant, I just wanted to say that you don't have that many more. World population > 7 billion, US population 320 million, that's less than 5 percent. EU population, BTW, > 500 million. The point I want to make is that US law is not "the" law.

Ah, but that is inconceivable -- after all the US is everything, and therefore we are all that matter.
Everyone else is supposed to follow our lead.

Please stop shattering our delusion, you heartless beast!

*fingersinears no it isn't true no no no no nonononononononono*

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Please stop shattering our delusion, you heartless beast!

I'm so sorry ... I hadn't meant to ... actually, I hadn't thought anyone paid attention to anything I said, anyway -- now I know they do, I'll be more careful in the future!

[RobertDDL]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Why exactly is the LP more cultural than the digital file?

The cover. I really regret the loss of cover art. Like printed books, they just take up too much space, sadly