[Air-l] Copyright issues on material transmitted to AIR-L

[Zunt at aol.com]

Here 'tis:

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html

In a message dated 5/23/01 10:45:28 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
ahynes1 at yahoo.com writes:

> My understanding of the disclaimer is
>  that such forwarding of copyrighted material would be
>  permissable.

Not quite--it's not the one who copies who has the authority to make the 
decision.  My desire to distribute someone's work without profiting from the 
action--to someone who wants it--does not make it ok because, for example, I 
might be depriving the author from his right to profit.  (People who receive 
my free copies would have no need to purchase the original from the author's 
distributing agent.)  It's not up to me to rationalize by saying, "this work 
will never turn a profit for the author in a million years, so my action 
cannot harm his/her interests." 

The proposed interpretation would make it ok to scan textbooks and distribute 
the scans freely.

Cheers,

Bob Briggs
Westport, MA