On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, A. Melon wrote:
Does anyone know the law regarding duplication of out of print books/other works?
It's the same law as the law regarding duplication of in-print books/other works. There are places and situations in which the enforcement varies depending on whether it's out of print, but in the US anyway, it's the same law.
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?
Yep, you would still be violating copyright, including the DMCA.
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 can quote from it, subject to the rules on fair use - but you can't reproduce the whole of it. However, if the text of the book is submitted as evidence, in a civil or criminal trial, there are some different rules that apply. I recall a circumstance in which a reporter for the Topeka newspaper, while on vacation on his own nickel, researched a story on a local foaming-at-the-mouth minister named Fred Phelps, going to Phelps' hometown and interviewing people who'd known him as a kid etc. He then wrote an article and handed it to his editor at work, at the Topeka Capitol Journal. As it turns out though, when the Journal had changed ownership a year or so earlier, Phelps and his goons had started picketing the owner's house. Loudly and continuously, until they started getting good press. The owner, effectively in Phelps' pocket, quashed the story. The reporter notified them that he intended to publish an article using the research he'd done for the quashed article elsewhere, and the newspaper (acting more or less on orders from Phelps' goons) sued to stop him. The reporter entered the text of the submitted article as Exhibit A in the lawsuit, and the research he'd done as Exhibit B. His case was to show that the article he intended to publish elsewhere used different parts of his research than the article that the Capitol Journal had refused to publish. But when it was submitted as evidence, it became public information and went out on the internet within two hours. I don't remember whether he won or lost the suit. But it seemed kind of moot after that. Bear