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Comment by fsckboy

1 month ago

no, it restricts copying, making copies

“Copying” here refers to distribution and derivation, at least in the US. It is entirely legal to create copies of media for personal usage for instance (so long as you aren’t circumventing DRM, thanks DMCA).

  • from the about page:

    Standard Ebooks is organized as a “low-profit L.L.C.,” or “L3C,” a kind of legal entity that blends the charitable focus of a traditional not-for-profit with the ease of organization and maintenance of a regular L.L.C.

    corporations cannot make "personal copies" of copyrighted works, otherwise they'd buy just one copy of microsoft office

    • > corporations cannot make "personal copies" of copyrighted works, otherwise they'd buy just one copy of microsoft office

      That would surely be a license violation, not a copyright violation?

      They absolutely can (and do) make copies of the Microsoft office binary and shuttle it around their network/backups/etc, activating licenses only when they need to assign a copy to a particular user

  • This isn't correct. It is infringement, for example, to write Harry Potter fan fiction in private on a typewriter, even if another soul never sees it. Copyright includes creation, not just distribution

    • What you describe would almost certainly be considered fair use until point of distribution - it’s non commercial, transformative and has no meaningful impact on the market value of Harry Potter.

      Copies for private use are going to be similar, and while I’m not a lawyer it feels like it’d be a hard case to make that work being conducted in private is going to have a meaningful impact on the market for Nancy Drew novels in the next 30 days.

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    • If you think about it, writing “Harry Potter” on the internet could be infringement because those words might be in the book, and most worrisomely you are inducing people to make “copies” of the books in their minds. There’s no way to calculate what you owe Rowling from this post, it could be infinite.

      (Thankfully I’ve never read those books so I can say the name without infringing)