Re: [tlug] A book to ebook shop?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 10:47 PM, Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com> wrote:
>
> On Thursday, April 26, 2012 08:41 PM, Satoshi Nagayasu wrote:
>> BTW, I don't use any full service provided by third-parties
>> to scan my books, because *I think* those service would
>> not be appropriate to scan publicly published/sold books
>> in terms of the copyrights laws.
>> (Just my thoughts/opinions.)

If such a service is violating copyright, then you are violating
copyright by doing the same thing.

In the U.S., according to the relevant court decisions permitting
activities like backups and time-shifting, you're not violating
copyright as long as only one copy is in use at a time, and you don't
transfer any such copy to another person.  If you have to break copy
protection to do it, then you're violating the DMCA, but not any
author's rights.

IANAL but I'm reasonably well-informed.

> The problem is that it's hard to say how honest a store can be.

It's not your problem if the store steals a copy, unless you traded a
copy for the service or something like that.

Please remember that copyright is exactly that: the right to control
the making of copies.  In the U.S. this control is limited by the
"first sale" doctrine and "fair use", both of which are somewhat
ambiguous because defined by precedent rather than legislation.  Many
other jurisdictions (especially Napoleanic legal systems such as
Japan's) have such provisions written into the law (they have to be,
because courts can't make law the way they can in common law systems).
 The "first sale" doctrine says that you can do what you like with a
particular copy legally obtained: burn it or sell it or give it away
or soak it in a cesspool for a week to indicate what you think of its
content.  (Putting the result on display would be "public
performance", which is restricted by copyright, in particular author's
moral rights. :-)  "Fair use" applies to making new copies.  AFAIK
both of these have parallels in Japanese law, but the equivalent of
fair use is explicitly restricted to a relatively short list of
activities in Japan.

Bottom line: If fair use or a license allows *you* to make a copy and
use it in a particular way, it allows you to *delegate* the
copy-making to a third party, and use the resulting copy in the same
way.