alt Hacker NewsScanning books is literally reproducing them. Copying books from Anna's Archive is also literally reproducing them. The idea that it is only copyright infringement if you engage in further reproduction is just wrong.
As a consumer you are unlikely to be targeted for such "end-user" infringement, but that doesn't mean it's not infringement.
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amanaplanacanal • yesterday at 4:40 PM
It seems like they pretty much don't care unless you distribute the copy. There is certainly precedent for it, going back to the Betamax case in the 1980s.
Ferret7446 • yesterday at 4:31 PM
Private reproductions are allowed (e.g. backups). Distributing them non-privately is not.
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https://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca2/13-482...
This is the conclusion of the saga between the author's guild v. google. It goes through a lot of factors, but in the end the conclusion is this:
> In sum, we conclude that: (1) Google’s unauthorized digitizing of copyright-protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals. Google’s commercial nature and profit motivation do not justify denial of fair use. (2) Google’s provision of digitized copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright law, also does not constitute infringement. Nor, on this record, is Google a contributory infringer.