Legality Question

[The Sigil]

It is illegal to download a pdf of a book that you own a paper copy of. You may make a copy of your book but you cannot use a copy of someone elses book.

Disclaimer: IANAL

It MIGHT be legal... depends on what country you're in. In Canada, for example, the law allows you to make copies of anything - even stuff you DON'T own - for personal use only. A recent Canadian court ruling has essentially made filesharing legal in Canada...

The downloader is making a copy for personal use. He's fine per law.

The judge in the case ruled that the uploader placing a file in a "shared directory" is acting no differently than a library placing a photocopier in a room full of copyrighted material. (Since he doesn't have to "Approve" the downloads one by one, he can exercise a "good faith" guess that everyone who is downloading is doing so legally).

Thus, you can't hit either the downloader OR the uploader of the material in Canada... making P2P sharing effectively legal.

In essence... the legality of the act of downloading a PDF copy depends very much upon where you happen to reside.

Ethically/morally... I would venture to say that ethically, it is okay to download a PDF copy of a book you own a physical copy of, provided that copy is for personal use, yadda yadda yadda.

Without waxing too political, there is in fact a BIG difference between something that is legal and something that is ethical/moral... because all too often, the "legal" space does not completely map to the "moral" space, making moral acts illegal and legalizing moral acts.

EDIT: The above paragraph represents the classic paladin's dilemma in choosing lawful or good but not both.

Whether you are more worried about staying in the ethical/moral space or the legal space will determine your actions relative to this.

For me, in most cases, I prefer to be both on the side of both ethics and the law... but if I cannot do both, I will be an ethical breaker of the law rather than using the law as an excuse to violate my code of ethics. That doesn't mean I use my code of ethics to excuse violating the law! It merely means that my first choice is to avoid an arena where ethics and law do not overlap (such as P2P) but if that choice is denied me, I follow ethics. Fortunately for this discussion, I have the choice to not participate in P2P and can sidestep the conflict on this one.

Of course, I happen to think current copyright law is unethical in scope and length and in the burden it puts on a would-be re-user to identify the copyright holder(s) of a piece, but that's political and not entirely relevant to this discussion, as most stuff on P2P networks has a pretty clear copyright holder that can be contacted and in this particular case, the copyright holder (FFG) is known.

Short answer: It's probably not legal, but it MIGHT be. You must decide whether it is ethical. I happen to believe it is.

--The Sigil

 

[Ranger REG]

Well, I still think he should scan his own book himself and use that scanned file for his own personal use. To me, convenience should not override ethics.

 

[dshai527]

First: I am not a lawyer

We deal with issues like this on a daily basis at work (Information Security) and I do believe that precedence states that you may not even make a pdf copy of your own book. (If I can find the cases I will post it later). Here is a link to the copyright website from the US government which gives very good explaination on the law.

http://www.copyright.gov/

and "Fair Use"
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

§ 102. Subject matter of copyright: In general26
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Works of authorship include the following categories:

(1) literary works;

....


which has raised the question a few times about whether or not you can lawfully print out an owned pdf without permission from the copyright owner. (Most business .pdf state that you can print them for personal use on the first page of the .pdf, but if it doesn't state it then what?)

 

[rogueattorney]

Calico,

Just got the re-direct from the other thread.

Caveat: I am a lawyer.
Proviso: I'd give you a lot better advise on getting a divorce or making a will than Intellectual Property issues. Some of the game designers that frequent this board probably have a better understanding than I do.

That said, as you can see from the conflicting answers of the people who've already chimed in, there is no cut and dry answer to the issue right now. In the movie, literary, and music business, there's a lot of questions going around about what people are actually buying when they buy a DVD, book, or CD. The general trend seems to be (at least from the producer's standpoint) that you are strictly buying the physical form of the merchandise and not purchasing any right to the information therein.

Personally, I think that's a bunch of horse-whooey! However, I recently had an IP lawyer tell me with a straight face that it was illegal for someone to take a few CD's purchased themselves and make a mix-tape from the songs on those CD's for their own personal use. She said that you'd be forclosing the right of the owners of that music from making a similar mix-tape and selling it to you. (I'd like to see someone try to argue that in front of a grumpy appellate judge who's a music fan...) Similarly, in your PDF question, hypothetically, you'd be foreclosing from the producer of the book, its ability to sell you a PDF version of the book.

My first couse of action would be to contact the publisher. With e-mail, you'll probably get a fairly quick response. A smart publisher should give you some sort of refund, a new copy of the book, or maybe even some sort of electronic version. Otherwise, return the book to Amazon and get your money back. Amazon will, of course, return the book to the publisher and get their money back and the publisher will be out some dough.

As a last resort, if you can't get satisfaction from either party, I'd copy or scan the book myself for my own personal use. Don't make multiple hard copies and give them out to your friends and don't post an electric copy on the Internet or anything silly like that.

Good luck!

R.A.

 

[billd91]

Disclaimer: IANAL

<snip>

In essence... the legality of the act of downloading a PDF copy depends very much upon where you happen to reside.

<snip>

--The Sigil

Actually, from what I learned from a collection development class in library school, it's the location of the publisher that determines the legality of things done regarding copyright. The issue had come up that some scientific journals were moving to Switzerland where they don't have an equivalent to the US policy on "fair use", and that was making libraries potentially liable to students over-copying materials. Coming with rising journal prices, libraries were feeling the pinch. If the journal gets more expensive, you tend to do a lot more interlibrary loan, which is sometimes accomplished in academia by making a copy of the article and mailing it to the requesting student. This was normally considered OK because educational use is typically understood to be fair use. Copyrights that don't recognize fair use make that much tougher.
So, for works published in the US, US copyright law applies where ever you happen to be interacting with it. But then, I'm not a lawyer either and my understanding of this may be flawed.

 

[The Sigil]

So, for works published in the US, US copyright law applies where ever you happen to be interacting with it. But then, I'm not a lawyer either and my understanding of this may be flawed.

Actually, from what I learned from a collection development class in library school, it's the location of the publisher that determines the legality of things done regarding copyright.

I'm not sure that's correct, unfortunately. It's why different areas of the world have different copyright terms.

IANAL, but my understanding is that the location in which an act is committed determines whether or not the act is a crime and which laws are applicable. For example, let us suppose that the City of Blah has an ordinance which makes it illegal to spit upon the sidewalk. The City of Blah2 has no such ordinance.

If I am standing in the middle of Blah2 and spit on the sidewalk, are the police from the City of Blah entitled to arrest me? No. The action I took was legal in the place where I took it.

Of course, it gets a little stickier if, say, I stand on the border of Blah and Blah2 and spit while standing in Blah2 onto the sidewalk located in Blah. Does my location determine the jurisdiction or does the point where my spit lands determine the jurisdiction?

Similarly, the rights granted by US copyright law simply DO NOT APPLY outside of the United States. It's the reason a work created in Britain cannot be copied inside the US - it's not BRITISH copyright law that protects it, but US copyright law. For examples of the dichotomies this creates, here's a useful, if a bit dated, link. It's actually a pretty nice example... the example of James Barrie's Peter Pan... useful because it's an exceptional case thanks to the British government granting it a special exemption and putting it under perpetual copyright (in Britain).

From that article:

The copyright to Peter Pan and its characters was awarded by the original creator, Sir James M. Barrie, to the hospital in 1929. The play was written in 1904.

A British act of Parliament extended royalty rights there to the hospital in perpetuity; Peter Pan falls within the public domain in Canada.

It's worth noting the following link as well for US residents: http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

The play "Peter Pan" was written in 1904. It must have been published (not written) no later than 1937 (the year of Barrie's death). I presume it was published in 1928 and took the steps to have its US copyright renewed in 1956... which would extend the term to 95 years or to 2023.

RIGHT NOW:
By Canadian law, this is in the public domain (per the article quoted).
By British law, this is protected by copyright.
By US law, this is in the under copyright until 2023 (assuming the copyright was renewed in 1956; if it was not, it is now in the public domain).

IN 2024 (Assuming no change of laws lengthening copyright yet AGAIN):
In Canada, it will be in the public domain.
In Britain, it will be under copyright.
In the US, it will be in the public domain.

In other words, it's illegal to make a copy of the play "Peter Pan" in the US and in Britain or to create derivative works... but it IS legal to do so in Canada! So if I write and publish "Peter Pan II" in the US, I'm in trouble. But if I take a vacation up to Canada and do all my writing and publishing there, I'm not.

Again, copyright is not a "world-wide right" - it varies from country to country and your location determines the law for you.

Of course, where an "act" takes place is a little bit tougher to determine in the internet world... if a person in, say, Japan clicks on a button to download copyrighted material residing on a British server, is the act considered an act "in Britain" or an act "in Japan?" This is the same problem, essentially, as the "spitting across a city border" argument.

Getting too complex and nasty and legal and political to continue, but there you go. Basically, what might be illegal in one area may not be illegal in another. Examples applicable to copyright include the provision that making a copy of something for personal use is NOT considered violating copyright in Canada or that in Norway you are granted the explicit right which CANNOT be waived by contract to reverse-engineer software so any contract or EULA that say "you agree not to do this" cannot see that provision enforced (see: DeCSS and "DVD Jon").

In other words, exactly what you can and cannot do with copyrighted material, patented material, trade secrets, and trademarks VARIES with jurisdiction - and what in fact constitutes copyrighted material et al varies with jurisdiction (e.g., Peter Pan is NOT considered "copyrighted material" in Canada). If you want to know what the laws are that are applicable to you, consult a local lawyer.

It is interesting, BTW, to note, that "copyrighted material" does not "belong" to the discoverer of the material in the usual sense (at least in the US version of copyright). Rather, it is material that belongs to EVERYONE, but the government temporarily loans a monopoly of rights of usage to the discoverer of the material for a fixed period of time (I use the word "discoverer" because "creator" is not really the right word - you don't "create" a book or song when you write it; rather, you discover the right combination of words and/or notes from the finite number of possible combinations that are out there - you didn't create the words or notes, you simply organized pre-existing ones). We don't CREATE houses, we build them. We don't CREATE cars, we build them. We don't CREATE books and music and movies... we "build" them.

--The Sigil

 

[rogueattorney]

It is interesting, BTW, to note, that "copyrighted material" does not "belong" to the discoverer of the material in the usual sense (at least in the US version of copyright). Rather, it is material that belongs to EVERYONE, but the government temporarily loans a monopoly of rights of usage to the discoverer of the material for a fixed period of time (I use the word "discoverer" because "creator" is not really the right word - you don't "create" a book or song when you write it; rather, you discover the right combination of words and/or notes from the finite number of possible combinations that are out there - you didn't create the words or notes, you simply organized pre-existing ones). We don't CREATE houses, we build them. We don't CREATE cars, we build them. We don't CREATE books and music and movies... we "build" them.

Further still, the creator of a product is not necessarily the copyright holder, which is why some famous Blues and Rock artists from the 50's and 60's don't have two dimes to rub together while their agents drive really big cars. Also case in point: Gary Gygax.

R.A.

 

[Dingleberry]

It is interesting, BTW, to note, that "copyrighted material" does not "belong" to the discoverer of the material in the usual sense (at least in the US version of copyright). Rather, it is material that belongs to EVERYONE, but the government temporarily loans a monopoly of rights of usage to the discoverer of the material for a fixed period of time (I use the word "discoverer" because "creator" is not really the right word - you don't "create" a book or song when you write it; rather, you discover the right combination of words and/or notes from the finite number of possible combinations that are out there - you didn't create the words or notes, you simply organized pre-existing ones). We don't CREATE houses, we build them. We don't CREATE cars, we build them. We don't CREATE books and music and movies... we "build" them.

Careful with this, as it could be interpreted to mean that someone who later independently "discovers" the same "combination" may violate the first discoverer's copyright - which isn't the case (at least in the US). To have copyright infringement, you must have copying.

 

[The Sigil]

Careful with this, as it could be interpreted to mean that someone who later independently "discovers" the same "combination" may violate the first discoverer's copyright - which isn't the case (at least in the US). To have copyright infringement, you must have copying.

Hate to be negative, but these days it probably is very much "who publishes first." For instance, Bright Tunes Music Corp v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd. begs to differ with you.

http://www.benedict.com/Audio/harrison/harrison.aspx

Highly recommended reading: Melancholy Elephants.

http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm

Without waxing too political, copyright and its interpretation and enforcement and allowing corporate entities to hold copyrights and especially having copyrights last longer than 1/3 of an average human lifespan are, in my view, the single biggest threat to writers, artists, et al today. Not "pirates." Not "illegal sharers." The game is already starting to collapse inwards on itself (see SCO vs. IBM for starters - SCO's theory of how copyrights work is so viral - much more so than the GPL - it's SCARY).

--The Sigil

 

[Sigma]

Personally, I think that's a bunch of horse-whooey! However, I recently had an IP lawyer tell me with a straight face that it was illegal for someone to take a few CD's purchased themselves and make a mix-tape from the songs on those CD's for their own personal use. She said that you'd be forclosing the right of the owners of that music from making a similar mix-tape and selling it to you. (I'd like to see someone try to argue that in front of a grumpy appellate judge who's a music fan...) Similarly, in your PDF question, hypothetically, you'd be foreclosing from the producer of the book, its ability to sell you a PDF version of the book.

R.A.

Off topic, but check out 17 usc 1008. It reads:

[/quote]

No action may be brought under this title alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.

[/quote]

So, mix tapes are okay. Mix CD's are another matter.

Lawyer-to-be