Is it legal to create a copy of a book for personal use and then gift the original to others, so they could repeat this process indefinitely? There's this comment thread under a post about student textbooks and a few other threads in the same post about the same legal loophole: Commenters are saying that while it is illegal to distribute copies of an original book, it's okay to make a copy for personal use, keep it, and then give away or sell the original book as used, and then others can repeat this until everybody has a personal copy, and there's only one original in the wild. Is this right?
The commentators are just making stuff up when they say that you can freely infringe on copyright as long as it is for personal use. It is true that "personal infringers" are less likely to suffer the legal consequences of any infringement (partly because it's easier to avoid detection and partly because the hassle to award ratio involved in suing a personal infringer is too high). It's a misunderstanding of "fair use", based on the legally erroneous assumption that anything is okay until you make a business out of it.
No These are derivative works and making them is copyright breach. Doing this as a hobby or even for the entertainment of friends in private is likely fair use. Distribution or performance in public (monitored or not) is likely not fair use and you would need a licence. Here is a summary of the relevant law in australia.
Under 17 USC 106 (3) one of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner is: to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; Distributing an entire book cannot plausibly be considered to be fair use. Nor does the library exception apply. The exception in sec 109 (first sale doctrine) applies only to: the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner... 17 USC 501 (a) says: (a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), or who imports copies or phonorecords into the United States in violation of section 602, is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be. Therefore both Bob and Sue have infringed the copyright, and could in theory be sued for doing so. However I cannot see anything in 17USC which makes receiving an unlawful copy an infringement, or any other crime or tort. It seems to me that Alice has no legal liability, whatever her moral position may be, unless perhaps she could be charged with conspiracy to infringe the copyright, which seems unlikely to me in practice, and perhaps not possible even in theory. If Bob has in fact done this only once, for one book, the chancre of the copyright owner learning of it, or filing suit even if the owner does learn, is perhaps not large. But that would be no defense if the owner chose to sue. Some copyright owners choose to explicitly permit actions similar to that of Bob (where e-books are involved), provided that Bob does not charge a fee, regarding it as good advertising. But that is the copyright owner's choice to make, and most commercial publishers do not take that position. Bob could have legally loaned his copy to Sue, and Sue could have legally passed it on to Alice, without anyone infringing the copyright. Making the copy without permission was infringing, and passing on the unlawful copy was also an act of infringement. Receiving one copy or many does not seem to be a violation, unless it is part of a plan to later distribute unlawful copies. Sue did not make a copy. She distributed an unlawful copy, which is also infringement, as the quoted part of Sec 106 says. While in theory the publisher could have authorized Bob to make the copy, this is not plausible and no reasonable person would believe this to be an authorized copy. So Sue has good reason to believe that the copy is unauthorized. So the distribution is infringement.
As long as you own the copyright to the works, you can even publish the source code itself under two different licenses, which can be radically different. For example, MySQL is licensed under both a commercial and an open-source license. Given that you can publish a single piece of work as multiple licenses, it is your choice which one you wish to grant to the book or the code, as long as you own the copyright.
A document can be distributed under more than one license. Just because it has been made available under a CC license for free, doesn't mean that IEEE can't negotiate a different license with different terms that allow them to sell the content. (This is similar to the way that a software library can be available for free under a license that permits non-commercial use, but also be made available for a fee for commercial use.) If you want to know whether IEEE is legally selling Aaron Swartz's manuscript, you can contact Morgan &amp; Claypool, the publisher that owns the copyright, and ask them whether this use by IEEE has been authorized by them. For the other documents you mention, contact MIT Press. Etc.
Presumably by &quot;is illegal&quot; you mean &quot;violates copyright law&quot;. Copyright infringement is simply &quot;copying / distributing without authorization&quot;, which refers to the original work and not some other work. The act of originally writing a book is not &quot;copying&quot; (likewise &quot;taking a picture&quot;, etc), so the act of writing a book using pirated software is also not copying and not infringement. Nevertheless, the scope of remedies for the original infringement is not limited to just the cost of the infringed work. Under 17 USC 504(b), The copyright owner is entitled to recover the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the infringement, and any profits of the infringer that are attributable to the infringement and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages. This is sufficiently open-ended that profits from the sale of an original work created using infringed software could be attributable to the infringement.
No, bare possession is not illegal under US law Nothing in Tile 17 of the US code (which is the copyright law) makes it illegal or even actionable to simply posses a single physical object (such as a game or a book) which constitutes a copyright infringement. Criminal copyright infringement is defined in 17 USC 506 and is limited to people who: Infringe for &quot;purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain&quot;; and Create infringing copies &quot;which have a total retail value of more than $1,000&quot; in a six-month period; or Infringe &quot;by the distribution of a work being prepared for commercial distribution, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial distribution.&quot; However, in practice, the US Department of Justice only brings criminal copyright cases when infringement is carried on as a business, on a bulk or mass basis, and only when infringing copies are in fact distributed to the public. In practice the vast majority of copyright enforcement (both in the US and in other countries) is done by private suits by copyright owners or rights-holders. In the US such suits are generally to enforce the rights guaranteed in 17 USC 106. This protects six core rights (summarized): To make copies or phonorecords; To prepare derivative works; To distribute copies or phonorecords; To perform the copyrighted work publicly; To display the copyrighted work publicly; To perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission. The copyright owner can do any of these or authorize other to do them. Anyone doing any of these without such permission is an infringer unless one of the exceptions or limitations in sections 107 thru 122 applies. There are also the &quot;moral rights&quot; specified in section 106A. These apply only to works of visual art in the US, and grant the artist the right to: Claim authorship of the work; Prevent the use of the person's name on any work s/he did not create; Prevent the use of the author's name on any work that has been changed so as to possibly harm the author's reputation; Prevent any &quot;intentional distortion, mutilation, or other modification of that work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation&quot;; and Prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature. Note that none of the six rights from sec 106 or the five moral rights from sec 106A covers possession of an infringing copy. One caution: so-called &quot;first-sale rights&quot; (from 17 USC 109) do not apply to an infringing copy, and it is infringement to knowingly sell, lend, rent or otherwise distribute an infringing copy. But the purchaser is not an infringer. Also, to play an infringing copy of a game might be a violation of the right to &quot;publicly perform&quot; the work, but not if done in private. However, in running a game it is likely that one or more temporary copies would be made. This is lawful if done from a lawful copy, but not if the person does not posses a lawfully-made copy. So playing an infringing copy of a game might well constitute an act of infringement, although a suit over a private act is unlikely.
As Polygnome points out in the comments, the first step is to determine who owns the original copyright on your mother's work now. This will be her heirs. If you are the sole heir then no problem. If the copyright was explicitly left to you in her will, also no problem. If there are multiple heirs and no explicit assignment of the copyright, then problem. The copyright will probably be considered part of the chattels of the estate (i.e. everything except real estate). If those are allocated fractionally (e.g. half each to two siblings) then the copyright probably followed that principle, unless you have already come to some agreement about it. If you are on good terms with the siblings then the best bet is to just make a deal for their part of the copyright. You could just ask them to sign it over to you, or you could cut them in for a percentage of future royalties. That makes the situation 100% clear, and any publisher is going to require 100% clarity before they consider offering a contract. Once you have the whole copyright you can go ahead and register. I've looked through the registration process and it doesn't actually ask about derivative works. What it wants to know is whether you own the copyright, and who were the authors (including works for hire). So just fill it in on that basis.