I’ve been looking for a certain book for a few years now. Unfortunately, the book is out of print and has been for about a decade or more. There are no new plans (to my knowledge) to bring the book back into print. Worse, very few libraries seem to carry this book.
I finally managed to find a library (through another library) that has the book and they are sending it to me. I will have it for about two weeks or so before I have to give it back.
I would like to have this book in my library. I would like to know what the legality of copying the book FOR PERSONAL USE is. Unfortunately, I cannot call the author to ask permission, as he is deceased. I don’t know who the actual copyright holder is today. If the book were in print, I would have long since gone out and bought a copy. If it comes back into print again after I read it, I’d probably go out and buy a copy as well.
Is this strictly a no-no? Or would the law allow me to do this?
Whether the book is out or print or not is irrelevant, legally. Copying an entire book for personal use is the only issue.
Technically, there is no fair use allowance or exception for copying an entire work for personal use.
I’m sure this issue will draw multiple opinions about what you should do in this instance. That’s not a debate for GQ. On preview I see someone has already posted an opionion. I’ll alert the mods.
You might be OK if the book is in the public domain. I believe this is more likely if the edition you get was published before 1924. At least I recall that’s one criterion Project Gutenberg uses. I suppose you’ve looked for the title at Project Gutenberg and other online publishers?
Even if it’s in the P. D., you might encounter difficulties if you take the book to a shop to be copied. They tend to be sensitive about that kind of thing. Once I had trouble getting copies of a manual I wrote myself. (Not the kind of book that has an “author.” Fortunately it had a forward for some reason, and the guy who wrote that mentioned me by name.)
As Exapno says, it is a violation of copyright law to make the copy. Some copy shops may even refuse to make the copy (Kinkos got sued a while back for doing so).
First, check out the Copyright Renewal Database to see if the book is under copyright (I’m assuming the book was copyrighted betwenn 1922 and 1977). It may give you an address to ask permission. The copyright office also has a database that might be helpful.
From the point of view of practicality, it’s unlikely in the extreme that the copyright holders would know of your copying or be willing to sue you for it. But it’s still not legal for you to copy the book without permission.
Just because a book is out of print doesn’t necessarily mean it’s impossible to find a copy for sale. I turn to bookfinder.com when I want to find a hard-to-find book for sale. To track down nearby (and not-so-nearby) libraries that own the book, I use WorldCat. Although librarything is not really a book-swapping site, you might get lucky and find somebody there who owns the book and would be willing to part with it.
It may not be legal, but I’ve no doubt that it happens all the time. And now that home printers generally have copying capability (and people can scan the book, if they wish, directly into their system), I expect it to happen more frequently. Nor does it bother me at all. The author isn’t being deprived of monetary compensation when you buy a used book, or borrow it from the library. For everyone;'s sake, it’s better when the book goes back into print, but if it’s out of print for a long time, with little or no probability of being reprinted, I have no problem with someone copying it.
You may be able to get permission from the publisher that’s listed on the book cover. A prof of mine had to do that when a core text he had been using to teach his course for decades when out of print. He contacted the publisher and they allowed him to make photocopies for the class.
Although I don’t know what the final arrangment was (I don’t think we paid for them, but I don’t know if he did or the university did). He told us what the deal was, because we were all wondering about what looked like an illegal copy of our book, but I don’t remember the specifics. And there was some kind of “re-printed with permission” thing on the front cover.
By copying an out of print book, though, you reduce the value of the text in a way that makes it worth less financially to eventually reprint the book. By reducing the value of the copyright holder’s assets, you do actual damage to him.
I still say copy that sucker though. Just be aware of what you are doing when you do so.
This is one of those arguments that seems more theoretical than real. If large quantities of people (relative to the number that actually are likely to buy the book) do such copying, then the value will be lowered. Otherwise, this is hardly a practical argument.
I recall back when I was in grad school there was a particularly useful book that had gone out of print. The publisher wasnt going to republish it, despite the heavy interest. The grad students got together, photocopied the whole book, and they all paid for copies. This was done without the instructor’s guidance or blessing – they just wanted copies of the book. In those pre-internet-used-book markets, there really wasn’t any other way to do it.
I just had this situation. I rarely collect “adult” books or magazines,but nearly forty years ago I bought a socially-redeeming book about sex in music. It’s literally falling apart. I’m mainly interested in the text,plus a couple of photos,to be archived to modern digital format,mainly for my own personal use.
There’s no chance whatsoever this is going to be republished. I scanned some of it in a local copy shop,but now I heard the shop owner is giving me heat about this.There’s no way the copyright owner can be cheated.
Don’t think the shop owner’s heard of Fair Use.
BTW,maybe the USA needs to take Canada’s lead…Wikipedia,under “orphaned works”, talks about their re-licensing system.
Orphan(ed) works legislation has been on the table in Congress since at least 2006. The Copyright Office wants an orphan works law, librarians and archivists want an orphan works law, and Congress would love to enact it, but it has failed to make any headway.
It’s being blocked by photographers, illustrators, textile makers, and furniture makers. These groups are not necessarily very powerful politically, but when it comes to intellectual property law, Congress prefers to wait until industries come to some degree of consensus before they take any major steps.
Even with an orphan works law in place, it’s likely that it would set a very strict definition of what is an orphan works. It would require you to take “reasonable steps” to identify and locate copyright holder and ask for permission.
However, if you are a library or archivist or academic or educator, it’s very likely that you already qualify for an exception for archiving.
Either way, any Kinko’s is still probably going to hesitate to let you do it in the copy shop, because their employees don’t know enough about copyright law to understand whether what you’re doing is legal. They’re likely to just take a CYA position and not let you do it there.
He says you shouldn’t take the nicest umbrella in the pile, but…
“your taking an equivalent one provides a kind of rough justice. Everyone leaves with an umbrella more or less equal to what he arrived with and everyone stays dry. This system works only if people are honest and don’t try to trade up. To be safe, you might want to err on the side of taking a lower quality umbrella, thus letting everyone rest easy when leaving an umbrella at the door.”
Photographers in general are very gun-shy about any legislation that makes copyright protection more work for them and less work for a user.
As to why – photographers tend to create tons of works, far more than most other kinds of creators. Photographers can quickly get into the thousands and thousands of works that they want to protect.
A lot of them are amateurs, freelancers, or part-timers who have little time or money to deal with legal/administrative functions or to hire someone else to handle them. A lot of photographers don’t even bother to register every single one of their works, because it can be very burdensome and expensive for them.
Photographers would just prefer that the person who wants to use the work bears all the burden of tracking down the copyright owner, contacting him, and asking for permission. They see any lightening of that burden as being against their interest.
While i don’t have any real problem with what you’re doing, if the book is still under copyright, then your copying does not sound like Fair Use to me.
One of the key criteria for the Fair Use exception is the amount and substantiality of the work that is copied. While there’s no absolute definition of how much is acceptable, and each case needs to be evaluated separately, if you’re copying all of the text, as well as some of the photos, that probably wouldn’t pass the test.
As a practical matter, isn’t the liability for violation of a US copyright (one that’s not registered with the Library of Congress) limited to the actual losses suffered by the copyright holder?
If the book was brought out by a commercial or academic publisher, then it is almost certain that the copyright is registered. If so, there are statutory penalties that go into effect.
You would be right if the copyright isn’t registered, but that’s unlikely.
