Book People Archive

Re: Fair Use and etext

This seems to be the same sort of reasoning that got MP3.Com into trouble.

For those who don't recall the case, MP3.Com got sued by the music
companies for making MP3s of songs available through their site. The way
it worked was that you inserted your CD into your computer and ran a
little program that sent the CD id code to MP3.Com, thus 'proving' that
you owned the CD and should have access to the songs. Their arguement was
the same, that as long as someone owned the CD, it didn't matter where
they got the MP3 version. Turns out the law disagreed, and they paid out
huge settlements.

So, to analogize to the book world (always a dangerous thing...), it would
seem that you could scan in a copy of a book that you own yourself for
your own personal use, but you couldn't distribute that electronic
copy. Nor could you get the copy from someone else. Presumably you would
have to destroy the electronic copy should you sell or otherwise dispose
of the book. Taking the absurdities further, if you wanted to load the
electronic copy to someone, you would have to at the same time loan them
the paper copy.


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David S. Carter                      superman@[redacted] | 304 West Hall
Director, Internet Public Library   http://www.ipl.org/ | 550 E University
Lecturer, School of Information, University of Michigan | Ann Arbor MI 48109
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On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Ryan Henrie wrote:

> Here's a question that I've been pondering about for a little while.
> 
> If you can legally have an mp3 copy of an album (or in any electronic
> format) if you own the album on CD, is there anything similar with a book
> that you own, and therefore it would be legal to also have an etext copy
> of it?
> 
> If so, it really wouldn't matter what the source of the etext was (personal
> scanning, find it on the net, from a friend, etc.).
> 
> If not, what's so different from owning the paper copy on the one hand, but
> not being able to read it on a computer screen on the other?
> 
> Technically, the copyright applies to the words that make up the book, not the> paper that it's printed on. Wouldn't the "Fair use" doctrine let you have
> access to the text of the book in any form, since you "own a copy?"
> 
> If anyone has some insight into this problem, please pass it along ;)