At 6:55 AM -0800 3/11/01, A. Melon wrote:
Does anyone know the law regarding duplication of out of print books/other works?
"Copyright" is separate from "out of print." A book is "out of print" when the publisher is not selling new copies of the book to distributors and end buyers. At that time. A book can be "out of print" and then a Second or Third Printing, etc., can happen. "Out of print," even for N years, does not mean copyright is relinquished or lost. (I said "selling" above, as opposed to "printing," because a particular book is only being actually "printed" for some number of hours while a print run is actually occurring. This is clearly not what is meant by "in print.")
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?
Copyright laws. The issue of whether you think you would or would not be "costing him a single penny" is irrelevant to copyright law. (As it should be...I'm reading David Friedman's new book, "Law's Order," which helps to clarify much thinking.) (David Friedman came to yesterday's Cypherpunks meeting at the Alpine Inn, near Stanford. He arrived late, but we managed to have dinner and a vigorous discussion afterward. He kindly gave me a copy of "Law's Order." A very nice book, from what I have read of it so far.)
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?
There have been unfortunate court cases where some perp and his shysters attempted to claim that a film (like "Natural Born Killers") or a recording "caused" some criminal action. Until recently, juries did not buy this argument. There are good reasons for society to not let people off the hook because they claim that the Bible made them kill someone, or because a movie about airline hijacking gave them ideas. As for quoting from a book or article in a trial, of course you may. You may introduce the book or article as evidence, quote selective sections, etc. Even reviewers may do this ("fair use"). This has nothing to do with you deciding to "reproduce" the book and distribute it to a wider audience. (There are some niggling issues about whether coprighted works can be entered in toto into court records which are then publically accessible, especially over the Net. The Church of Scientology case, involving their copyrights "NOTS" documents, are a case in point. The Church has convinced some (most? all?) courts not to have the full text of these copyrighted works not accessible over the Web.) Generally, your notion that you have some property right to someone else 's works because you think he is either "holding it back" or that your publication would "not cost him one penny" is strongly contradicted by Copyright law. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns