Comment by hyperman1
4 years ago
It's more subtle than that. You must have legal access. Loaning from a library allows you to make a copy and return the original.
4 years ago
It's more subtle than that. You must have legal access. Loaning from a library allows you to make a copy and return the original.
There are also some other subtleties. E.g. I recently stumbled across the fact that in Germany apparently complete books (as opposed to excerpts) are specifically exempted from the right for private copies unless
- you either transcribe them completely manually, or else
- the book has been out of print for at least two years.
This law probably stems from the widespread introduction of photocopiers, but now that e-books are a thing, too, it has the somewhat absurd consequence that whereas it's perfectly legal to copy music I have purchased across my various devices and their backups, technically I'm not allowed to do the same thing for e-books (i.e. for example keeping an e-book both on my computer and my phone and in their respective backups, too).