# Legality of Copying an Out Of Print Book For Personal Use **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 7, 2008, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390 "2008-04-07T22:35:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/21 "2011-09-16T02:10:12Z")
What’s the ethical consensus on copying a movie on to a DVD if it was never released in DVD format? ---
**Author:** ![Bearflag70](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Bearflag70](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bearflag70)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/22 "2011-09-16T02:33:52Z")
Can you buy it from the library? ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/23 "2011-09-16T02:43:17Z")
> [@zev\_steinhardt](#): > > 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? > > Zev Steinhardt It depends on if the book is copyrighted. Is it? What is the book? hh ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/24 "2011-09-16T03:20:12Z")
> [@](#): > > 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. I’ve had a great deal of success by simply Googling the book’s title and author. Quite frequently, I’m able to find used copies for sale, not just on Amazon or similar book selling sites, but on odd little sites, like someone’s home page where they list some things that they’re selling off. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/25 "2011-09-16T03:29:51Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > It depends on if the book is copyrighted. Is it? > What is the book? > > hh Note that the OP, which you quoted, was originally posted back in 2008. **ronald33** , who revived the thread today, has a slightly different situation: he’s talking about scanning a book he already owns a copy of. This seems to me to be the same kind of thing as digitizing a vinyl LP or cassette, copying a CD or LP onto cassette, or ripping a CD onto a computer or MP3 player, for one’s own personal use: it’s format shifting, which is explicitly legal in at least some situations in some areas. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/26 "2011-09-16T04:32:15Z")
It’s an utterly amoral and reprehensible idea to intentionally “lose” a library’s book in order to add it to your personal collection, but that is certainly an option for the OP once they have a copy of this book in their hands. I’ll leave it to their conscience and budget if they can afford the financial penalties that the library will charge them with, as well as their own level of ethical pain related to depriving everyone else the opportunity to read this book. I remember back in the days when you could rent 12" laserdiscs at Blockbuster, the store near me carried quite a few unusual and rare out-of-print titles, but they’d regularly become “lost” or “destroyed” by the customers. Even though they would be charged full retail for the disc, they were wiling to pay as it enabled them to own something that was otherwise impossible to buy. Everyone else, though, was faced with seeing an ever-growing number of titles being stricken from the catalog. ETA: Looks like we’re talking about zombie books in more than one sense of the term. Will we ever know what the OP wound up doing? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/27 "2011-09-16T07:14:10Z")
> [@mwbrooks](#): > > You might be OK if the book is in the public domain. Emphasis on “might”. In some jurisdictions is possible for a copyright on the typesetting to exist independently of the copyright on the content. If the content is in the public domain but the typesetting is not, then the only way of legally making a copy of the book would be to transcribe it manually. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/28 "2011-09-16T12:29:51Z")
If you never shared and never passed it on, who would know? Technically _making_ a personal copy is illegal, sharing is illegal, but AFAIK possessing a personal copy from some unknown source is not illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/29 "2011-09-16T12:45:12Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > Emphasis on “might”. In some jurisdictions is possible for a copyright on the typesetting to exist independently of the copyright on the content. If the content is in the public domain but the typesetting is not, then the only way of legally making a copy of the book would be to transcribe it manually. How about scanning, then OCR-ing it? The typesetting would then no longer be an issue, and no one could argue that the particular font or layout was a factor of any kind contributing to the final text. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/30 "2011-09-16T13:01:02Z")
One point about so-called intellectual property is that it is not property at all because one of the main characteristics of property is that if you transfer you don’t have it any more. That is the wrong metaphor. Do you realize how painful it is that, in order to get published, an author must generally transfer all rights to the publisher and forgo the ability to copy it even for his own work. The whole copyright law is out of control. Once I found a book that I wanted to use for a course. It had been written in the late 1920s and reprinted in the 1950s by a well-known reprint house (Dover). I started by writing to them (this was pre-email days). No they had no intention of reprinting it again and, in any case, the copyright was owned by the author’s widow who had since died and they had no idea who were the heirs. End of idea. One reasonable compromise would be to require copyright holders to re-register when the work became unavailable and regularly thereafter. If it is not worth their effort, then it goes into the public domain. Which wouldn’t stop another publisher from reprinting it and copyrighting that version. It is not generally understood that the original purpose of the copyright law was to encourage creative people to eventually have their works go into the public domain. The current laws have turned this upside down and appear designed to prevent works from going public. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/31 "2011-09-16T13:07:27Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > How about scanning, then OCR-ing it? Depending on the law (or how the courts have interpreted it), scanning could be viewed as copying, and therefore prohibited, even as an intermediate step to producing a non-infringing copy. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/32 "2011-09-16T13:29:22Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > … If it is not worth their effort, then it goes into the public domain. Which wouldn’t stop another publisher from reprinting it and copyrighting that version. Really? To what extent would a reprint of a public domain work become copyright? (Other that the typeface mentined above)? Isn’t that already case law, that you would have to substantially alter (“transformative”?) to establish this was something more than just a copy of public domain? ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/33 "2011-09-16T14:04:01Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Really? To what extent would a reprint of a public domain work become copyright? (Other that the typeface mentined above)? A reprint of a public domain work would in theory never come under copyright again. Only the novel elements added to the reprint might be subject to copyright. The typesetting (not the typeface—typesetting refers to the physical arrangement of text on the page) is one thing which might be copyrightable. Similarly, if the original medium was a printed book, and your new edition is an audio book, then copyright would subsist in the recording you made. Another thing to consider is the aggregation of a public domain work with other works; in some jurisdictions a compilation may be copyrightable even if the individual members of it are not. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/34 "2011-09-16T14:07:58Z")
> [@handsomeharry](#): > > It depends on if the book is copyrighted. Is it? > What is the book? The question of whether a book is “copyrighted” is rarely an important question. Unless it’s a very old book, it’s likely protected by copyright law. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/35 "2011-09-16T15:50:45Z")
> [@zev\_steinhardt](#): > > 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? > > Zev Steinhardt Have you spent over a decade trying to find it? I ask, because I almost did what you’re thinking of, and instead decided that I’d love the thrill of the hunt. And finally after…hmmm…has it been eighteen years?.. found it in a used bookstore. One whose inventory was decidedly not online. ---
**Author:** ![Lasciel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e79b87/32.png) [@Lasciel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lasciel)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/36 "2011-09-16T17:37:21Z")
> **[Academic and Educational Permissions](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/academic-and-educational-permissions/)** > > This section focuses on getting permission to use copyrighted works for academic purposes. It provides information on assembling academic coursepacks and using copyrighted material in the ... From the text box on the bottom: > [@](#): > > In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended the period of copyright protection for an additional 20 years. As part of the Act, \*\*Congress provided that during the last 20 years of any term of copyright of a published work, a library or archives may reproduce a copy of the work for purposes of preservation, scholarship, or research \*\*provided that: the work was not being distributed commercially; the work cannot be obtained at a reasonable price; or the copyright owner or its agent provides notice that either of the above conditions applies. Bolding mine. Both of the querents were concerned with preservation of their items, and perhaps for personal research. Find a copy of the Act, take it with you to a library or a preservation room (along with the item in question if you own it) and copy away. If you have a copy of the statute with you, I imagine you could act to copy it yourself, but that is bending the rule as cited. Although, in this day and age, I’d say if you can get an Archive to do it for you, scanning it to a personal storage device would be a vastly preferable option than producing a paper copy. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/37 "2011-09-16T17:52:53Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > 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. ^ This. I’ve been refused at Kinko’s for copying my very own work, even when I can prove I’m the copyright holder. I think after that lawsuit they just don’t want to get burned again. If you do this - and, as noted, it’s not fair use or legal - use a home scanner and, if you want hardcopy, your own printer. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/38 "2011-09-16T17:57:05Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > If you do this - and, as noted, it’s not fair use or legal - use a home scanner and, if you want hardcopy, your own printer. Or a university library. Many universities allow non-students to use the library, and also provide facilities for copying. You can usually purchase a copycard from a machine, and do all the copying you like. A lot of universities now also have photocopiers with scanning capability, that allow you to scan directly to a USB key. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/39 "2011-09-16T18:34:31Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > Find a copy of the Act, take it with you to a library or a preservation room (along with the item in question if you own it) and copy away. If you have a copy of the statute with you, I imagine you could act to copy it yourself, but that is bending the rule as cited. Although, in this day and age, I’d say if you can get an Archive to do it for you, scanning it to a personal storage device would be a vastly preferable option than producing a paper copy. Note that the exemption applies, as I said before, to a _library_ or _archives_, not just to a guy who wants to have a copy of something. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2011, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390/40 "2011-09-16T18:43:29Z")
> [@Lasciel](#): > > [Find a copy of the Act, take it with you to a library or a preservation room (along with the item in question if you own it) and copy away. If you have a copy of the statute with you, I imagine you could act to copy it yourself, but that is bending the rule as cited. Although, in this day and age, I’d say if you can get an Archive to do it for you, scanning it to a personal storage device would be a vastly preferable option than producing a paper copy. I’m hoping this is some kind of bizarre whoosh, because I can’t believe anyone is suggesting it seriously. The law is perfectly clear that libraries and archives can make copies **for their own collections**. They cannot make copies for anyone who walks in off the street and wants it for their own purposes. I mean, seriously? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/legality-of-copying-an-out-of-print-book-for-personal-use/444390.md?page=3)