Comment by protocolture

If I buy a book, and use it to prop up the table on which I build a door, I dont owe the author any additional money over what I paid for it.

If I buy a book, and as long as the product the book teaches me to build isnt a competing book, the original author should have no avenue for complaint.

People are really getting hung up on the computer reading the data and computing other data with it. It shouldnt even need to get to fair use. Its so obviously none of the authors business well before fair use.