Permissible Copying of Physical Book

[GERGE]

Also, whether you make the copy yourself or not has nothing to do with the law of intellectual property. The act in question might state that the copy is "a personal copy of the work made by the individual", but this is very much meaningless. Under the law of obligations you can transfer your rights to someone else. There are also contracts of works which allow someone else to exercise your rights.

There are very few rights you cannot transfer (things like getting married), and "work made by the individual" does not necessarily mean that you cannot transfer the right to copy your book. You can hire someone to scan, OCR and correct a 1000 pages long novel for you, and that someone would be using your right you transferred to him. Take individual meaning as legal real person, and the woman doing your work for you as an extension of you which is the individual, the legal real person.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by GERGE

Also, whether you make the copy yourself or not has nothing to do with the law of intellectual property. The act in question might state that the copy is "a personal copy of the work made by the individual", but this is very much meaningless. Under the law of obligations you can transfer your rights to someone else. There are also contracts of works which allow someone else to exercise your rights.

I'm not convinced you're right when it comes to copyright, Gerge, because the issue of what you personally are allowed to do with works that you've bought is central to the whole concept of it.

[GERGE]

Interpreting "a personal copy of the work made by the individual" phrase requires some deeper understanding. You need to interpret the letter of the law while taking other parts of the legal system and the intellectual property problems into consideration. I will try to simplify what I understood:

There are two basic parts to what you are doing when you copy your book: (1) an act of intellectual law: you are creating a copy of a protected work under legal borders defined within the code; (2) the physical act: the act of copying.

The phrase "a personal copy of the work made by the individual" means that it should be a copy made by you. The problem emerges when you try to interpret you literally. The first part I talked about is all about this. You are creating a copy. To be more precise: your legal person is making a copy (an unrelated question to a native speaker: should I use is or are here?). This should be understood as you are not downloading a copy from, let's say #bookz; but making it yourself. This is the spirit of the letter. Therefore, "a personal copy of the work made by the individual" means that a copy either made by you or commissioned by you. Without "a personal copy of the work made by the individual", there is a risk of someone going to #bookz and acquiring a copy.

Now, the second part: the physical act. "A personal copy of the work made by the individual" does not mean that you have to do the act yourself. The broad meaning of "made by the individual" is relevant here. It means that the copy is made by an act of you. The copy is directly created by your actions; you can scan and OCR yourself, or hire a student. Both of them creates a copy by the direct results of your actions. "Copy [...] made by the individual" means that the copy must originate from the original work and must be made by your actions.

I hope this is clear.

[pdurrant]

I suggest that there hasn't been much time for such a firm to set up since the law was changed?

[HarryT]

OK, now we seem to have established that section 28B of the UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act makes it legal for someone to create a scanned copy of a book, shall we consider the situation in the US? Can one of our American friends tell us what the equivalent law is in the US that would make scanning legal there?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can one of our American friends tell us what the equivalent law is in the US that would make scanning legal there?

Does the exact law matter? By your own argument (the existence of scanning companies) it's clearly legal.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Does the exact law matter? By your own argument (the existence of scanning companies) it's clearly legal.

Yes, it matters because there's a clear difference between a destructive scan (which is what 1dollarscan do) and the act of scanning and retaining the original. The latter action is creating an additional copy of the work; the former is not.

We have established that creating additional copies for personal use is legal in the UK, but is it legal in the US? This site appears to be of the opinion that it's not legal, even for personal use.

[GERGE]

That a destructive scan is legal while a non-destructive one is not is impossible to understand. It is probably marketing, I won't even be able to consider such a thing before seeing the law right in front of me. Even then I would check whether or not I am dreaming.

From a legal point of view, it is non-sense. There could be no law that dictates that you have to destroy your property, it goes against all the basic tenets of property law. You don't need to know any national law to say this, some parts of the property law are universal since Rome.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by GERGE

That a destructive scan is legal while a non-destructive one is not is impossible to understand. It is probably marketing, I won't even be able to consider such a thing before seeing the law right in front of me. Even then I would check whether or not I am dreaming.

From a legal point of view, it is non-sense. There could be no law that dictates that you have to destroy your property, it goes against all the basic tenets of property law. You don't need to know any national law to say this, some parts of the property law are universal since Rome.

And if you want to keep only the digital version? If you're not supposed to sell or donate the physical version, what option do you have, then, but to destroy it?

At least that's what the opinions seemed to be when I brought up digitizing LPs in another thread.

[GERGE]

You can destroy it or keep it, whatever you want. But there could be no law saying that you have to destroy it.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, it matters because there's a clear difference between a destructive scan (which is what 1dollarscan do) and the act of scanning and retaining the original. The latter action is creating an additional copy of the work; the former is not.

We have established that creating additional copies for personal use is legal in the UK, but is it legal in the US? This site appears to be of the opinion that it's not legal, even for personal use.

I have already explained -- 1dollarscan is doing a destructive scan simply because it is the most convenient way to do it (mailing back a stack of papers, possibly stitched back together, is not an economic fit with a $1 price tag for conversion, and they certainly cannot keep your book for themselves) -- don't read anything into it...

That forum appears to be devoted to discussing the technicality of legality, hardly appropriate here on a forum where most members will happily tell you to "break the law" by exercising your fair use rights to DeDRM your books.

I did say in post #2 that it is technically illegal to photocopy your book by hand.
I also expect this is merely a matter of waiting until someone actually gets nailed for doing so, followed by as the EFF champions the fight in court.

It is already legal by any reasonable reading of Fair Use (but the only people who have spoken in public on it so far, consider Fair Use to be a cheap tactic by busybodies trying to prevent media producers from getting their "deserved" money out of journalists/reviewers/teachers/etc).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

That forum appears to be devoted to discussing the technicality of legality...

Sorry, I was under the impression that that was the question we were discussing here: whether or not scanning books was legal. Can you quote the relevant section of the US copyright law which permits scanning books, as we've done above in the case of UK law?

[fjtorres]

Well, US law works on the principle of default legality so things are considered to be legal unless explicitly banned by law. Absent a law criminalizing personal use scanning of books it will be legal until somebody makes a case in court against it.

Often, in gray areas, all you get is a lot of fist waving and threats and handwringing but no legal action because a loss in court is worse than looking the other way. For example, under the DMCA it is supposed to be illegal to distribute DVD ripping software yet it is readily available both online and at retail. None of the companies are sued because the guiding precedent from the Betamax case is that as long as there are non-infringing uses, the product will be legal. And with the growing popularity of home streaming boxes lots of people are ripping their DVD collections for personal use streaming. Sueing users risks a fair use finding so the software remains available.

In truth, scanning books for personal use is rare and not worth going after in the US. Given the size of legal purchases any losses from the practice is insignificant. Now, other countries are different: in some south american countries the publishing sector is small enough and piracy prevalent enough that legal action can impact the bottom line.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Catlady

And if you want to keep only the digital version? If you're not supposed to sell or donate the physical version, what option do you have, then, but to destroy it?

At least that's what the opinions seemed to be when I brought up digitizing LPs in another thread.

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?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Well, US law works on the principle of default legality so things are considered to be legal unless explicitly banned by law. Absent a law criminalizing personal use scanning of books it will be legal until somebody makes a case in court against it.

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"?