On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, A. Melon wrote:
Does anyone know the law regarding duplication of out of print books/other works?
E.g. Stephen King withdrew his book 'Rage' (support your neighborhood second-hand bookstore) about a schoolkid who holds his class hostage at gunpoint, shortly after the Littleton shootings. King _does not_ want this book to be available to the public until the mess blows over.
If I distributed this book in electronic format for free, I would not be costing him a single penny. Would I still be violating the DCMA and which other laws would I violate?
Also, what if I claimed that books like King's were in some way responsible for the current spate of shootings? Would I be able to reproduce the book (so my quotes can be judged in the context of a whole work) in order to campaign against it? Or can he legally suppress his own works?
You would still be in violation of the law. Censorship by copyight is not new. It has been going on for quite a while. (Everything from the Scientologists trying to prevent leaks of their pay-per-view religion to companies that produced films hyping products that turned out to be a danger to the general public. (Like the paint company that was pushing a paint mixed with DDT in incredibly high doses.)) I expect to see alot more copyright censorship in the coming years. In fact, I expect that with the direction the feds are taking, all forms of censorship will have copyright violations attached for extra jail time added. alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."