Could I ask for a book?

[CRizzy141]

I'm actually curious about this. I'm a law student, but I haven't yet taken IP law (I do, however, have a seminar this term and a copyright class next year, both of which I'm pretty excited about). I've lurked here for a while, but never posted as I'm still assembling the materials for my scanner. My question was - if you can prove ownership of the title to be transferred, is there any real issue? I would assume this to be a grey area, as it can be argued either way as to whether it falls within fair use, correct? I ask only because I anticipate getting my cameras this spring, but in the meantime I'm searching for scans of certain supplements I already own a hard copy of, but would like to run OCR on so I could index the contents for ease of access (I have 8 of a certain well-known law outline company, and feel like if I could have them constantly available on my laptop, it could be invaluable particularly for con law issues).

Edit - Just to clarify here, I'm not soliciting anything - I'm just curious as to whether I'm correct in my assumption that while what I'm doing may not be affirmatively sanctioned, it's also not really against the law.

[Tulon]

Create,

While I can't help you get the book, let me assure you I do support what you are doing. In fact, I created Scan Tailor specifically to encourage more people to do the same.

Historically, the copyright was a fair deal between the public and authors. The public would give up their right to copy, which they couldn't exercise anyway, and get more books from authors in return. In fact, the copyright back then didn't have anything to do with the public - it protected authors from the publishers and publishers from each other. Now, the times have changed and we can and want to copy content. What would a democratic government do in this case? It would say: "OK, this deal is no longer beneficial to the public, so it's time to review its terms". Instead, our governments do exactly the opposite - extend copyright terms and impose draconian punishments on us. Does anyone think they will stop and revert without us rebelling against such laws? Of course no one wants legal troubles for himself, but there are still ways to rebel. My way of rebelling was creating Scan Tailor. Another way of rebelling would be supporting people who violate the laws by sharing copyrighted stuff, even if yourself you would never do that. Why do you think people in Russia can get away with pirating books left and right, while many of us are afraid to even talk about it? That's because over there, piracy is socially acceptable. I want that to be the case everywhere.

Disclaimer: the above is my personal opinion which doesn't have anything to do with site administration or other users.

[daniel_reetz]

Disclaimer: the above is my personal opinion which doesn't have anything to do with site administration or other users.

For what it's worth, my mission is to do my part to make scanning accessible to everyone, and to get as many people scanning as possible. Why? Well, it's the spirit of what Tulon has so eloquently said (and the same spirit of tool-making vs tool use). As I wrote in this recent article (sorry for the vanity of quoting myself):

While the big players are heavily engaged in legal engineering, developing rights management systems contrary to the inherently copy-able nature of bits, and ignoring the needs of the disabled, individuals can ensure their own access to materials and the access of others simply by building or buying their own digitizing hardware and using it. The very fact that a variety of open source scanner designs are freely available exerts pressure on these big players to improve, which benefits all of us.

For the second time in history, book technology is undergoing a major change. Movable metal type has given way to malleable digital bits. This sweeping change profoundly affects all of us and so urgently begs for our participation. Leaving the
future of books in the hands of a few corporate interests is irresponsible when a clear means of influencing the outcome of this transformation is at hand. To influence the future of digital books, we must take part in creating them ourselves, starting with the books we already have."

Unfortunately keeping this site alive and keeping this information resource open to everyone means that we can't trade books here, or even talk much about it. Believe me when I say that I find that deeply disturbing and wrong. But there are plenty of places on the Internet where those activities can and do take place.

Lawrence Lessig is a good person to watch, for people unfamiliar with this side of the copyright discussion:



These are my personal views and have nothing to do with my employer, but everything to do with what I do and how I live my life.

[Tulon]

Another relevant thing to watch is this lecture by Richard Stallman, who is the founder of Free Software Foundation. The lecture's topic is "Copyright vs Community".

[Gerard]

i just wont to show you what we see of the video daniel_reetz posted

this says "this video has content of UMG, it is not available in your country"

Bildschirmfoto-2.png (50.62 KiB) Viewed 1983 times

(from Germany)

sony posted once himself commercials on youtube for germay, this was also a big laugh because they was blocked "this video ..."

[StevePoling]

I get this sort of Soviet vibe when I hear Dan say, "we can't even talk about" book sharing. This is a result of the DMCA, a law that was bought and paid for by Hollywood corporate types. These guys were behind the jailing of Dimitry Skylarov for thwarting the aims of Adobe Systems. This is abhorrent.

One of the secrets of American politics is that Democrats are less Socialist and more Crony-Capitalists. Failure to see this is a major GOP failure. It would have been trivial for a GOP president and congress to overturn the DMCA and thereby screw over some Democrat cronies. More importantly, it would have been the right thing to do.

Could the new GOP congress overturn DMCA now? Milton Friedman once said that you don't need the right people in power, but to motivate the wrong people to do the right thing.

[daniel_reetz]

Could the new GOP congress overturn DMCA now?

The power of the DMCA is slowly being eroded.

The EFF is pretty much all we have against the darkness here in the USA.

[Anonymous1]

A lot of touchy material is filtered in other countries. In Russia, some books have been removed from the shelves completely. Many YouTube videos are blocked and Google results are filtered to some extent.

Book scanning does have its pluses in this area, as you can just scan and email somebody a DjVu book which has been off the shelves and completely unavailable for purchase (I doubt this violates any laws. It's not being propagated publicly). It's risky, though, as Russia now has the right to browse through your hard drives in the airport (the US doesn't have a Best Buy devoted solely to pirated software, now does it?), so it's kind of strange.

But with the US's paranoia on security, I wouldn't be amazed that in a few years laws will be made to restrict or ban things like scanning books...

[StevePoling]

It's risky, though, as Russia now has the right to browse through your hard drives in the airport

I will wager that the country that invented the Samizdat and has some of the best mathematicians can come up with something cool and steganographic. I can imagine pornographic videos used to hide political tracts going one way, and political tracts being used to hide pornographic materials going the other way.

But with the US's paranoia on security, I wouldn't be amazed that in a few years laws will be made to restrict or ban things like scanning books...

What really sucks is that I think it is legitimate to shut down the guys who are vying for their 72 virgins through death and mayhem. And the corporate types use this as a pretext to lock us out from our own digital property.

[daniel_reetz]

When I lived in Russia FY 2006, my ISP had plenty of pirate eBooks of all kinds - subversive, normal, technical, pornographic - on what was called the "local network".

Things may be officially unavailable, but nothing is unavailable.