Re: Re: Scanning books into electronic format

Steve makes a good point. There is no "buy one, make a copy free" provision in the US Copyright Act even if it is "for personal use." Even the Section 1008 (non-commercial use) provision applies only to certain kinds of works, and was established on the assumption that royalties were being paid on blank media to offset the losses due to generally undetectable reproduction.

That said, I believe Section 107 (fair use) could leave room for a digital reproduction made solely to aid the owner of the paper copy in exploring its contents. However, if ever that second copy can be detected, there is a pretty good chance that the reason it was detected will be a factor weighing against fair use. OCR software has been around for quite some time, and the very basis for its existence is to make digital reproductions -- without regard to copyright -- and try to decipher the text from them. It is one thing for a lawyer to use "scan and OCR" to find the needle in a haystack of evidentiary documents, but quite another if the lawyer then publishes them beyond the confines of the litigation.

John M

On Sep 6, 2006, at 2:05 PM, Steven Jamar wrote:

> Just changing the media of on which something is made without more
> is generally considered to be making a copy, not a derivative
> work. So just scanning a book into an electronic form would
> qualify as making a copy, not making a derivative work. This goes
> back at least to the Batlin case.
>
> Where does US Copyright law permit the owner of a copy to make a
> copy as a backup? It does so in section 117 for software, but I
> don't recall such a right for ordinary hard copies of literary
> works or sound recordings.
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> On Sep 6, 2006, at 11:45 AM, Carl Oppedahl wrote:
>
>> johnmcn[_at_]bellsouth.net wrote on 9/5/2006 4:55 PM:
>>
>>> Conversion from printed form to an electronic form is likely also
>>> a derivative work (not merely just a copy or reproduction) and
>>> the right to create derivative works is also an exclusive right
>>> of the copyright owner.
>>>
>> The US copyright law explicitly permits the owner of a copy of a
>> work to make backups .
>>
>
> --
> Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017
> Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567
> 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:stevenjamar[_at_]gmail.com
> Washington, DC 20008 http://iipsj.com/SDJ/
>
> "No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human
> hopes than a public library."
>
> Samuel Johnson, 1751
>
>
>
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Received on Thu Sep 07 2006 - 00:15:00 GMT