Damaged library books by accident Bob borrowed a book from the library and months later, accidentally dropped his bag (with the book in it) in a river. He retrieves the bag, but the book is ruined, being all sandy and wet. What is the consequence of this accident legally speaking?
If this is a public library in England or Wales, then they are allowed to charge for lost or damaged items, at their discretion, even though there is a general duty for libraries to make their normal lending services available free of charge. The Library Charges (England and Wales) Regulations 1991, a statutory instrument made under section 8 of the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 of says this in regulation 3(2)(e): A relevant authority may make a charge [...] in respect of library apparatus, library material and any other equipment or thing used in providing the library service which is lost, damaged or destroyed by, or whilst on loan to, the person paying the charge. Similarly, they can charge for late return of items, and for various special services. &quot;Library material&quot; includes &quot;words, figures, images, sounds or data recorded in or on any medium&quot;, which certainly covers books - even picture books. The library has broad discretion as to the amount and terms of any charge, but the replacement cost of the lost item is a typical starting point. Whether it was Bob's fault that he dropped the book in the river is irrelevant. He is on the hook for the charge. Potentially, he could claim against somebody else if they had damaged the book and thus caused him to suffer a financial loss, but that does not affect the fact that Bob has to pay the library. While other libraries could make this part of their contractual terms for using the service, this specific regulatory provision is necessary because the default position for public libraries is that they cannot charge any fees to local residents for borrowing books; this aspect of their operations is a matter of public law, as opposed to a contract between the library and any given local resident.
The equivalent of Strunk &amp; White would be The Redbook. The equivalent to the Chicago Manual of Style would be The Bluebook.
Yes, if the book was published in 1913, the copyright has expired. You can freely scan it in and publish it. But note you have NO copyright to the material. You didn't write it. Copyright law gives rights to the AUTHOR of a work. It doesn't matter how much effort you went to scanning it in and formatting it. Nothing in copyright law says that that gives you any rights. If you add anything creative of your own, you would own the copyright to the new material. Like if you drew new illustrations and added them to the book. Or if you included your own commentary. Or you added explanatory footnotes. That still wouldn't give you rights to the original text, but you would own the new material. But in the same vein, if the book was originally published in 1913, but the copy you have includes material added by a later editor, that later material might still be protected by copyright. Just a side thought, it occurs to me that if I was going to republish a public domain book, a good idea would be to add footnotes. If my footnotes appear on almost every page, then no one else could just take my electronic files and sell them himself. He'd have to go through page by page and purge out all the footnotes. Make it hard for someone to "borrow" your work and you might scare them off.
If you simply want to acquire knowledge in law, reading is the most effective way. Even law courses (at least where I am from) consists of tons and tons of reading. Read, read, read. Usually the items are: Legislation (i.e. the actual law). If you are attending an Intellectual Property class, you will be assigned to read Copyright laws. In a Criminal Law class you will read the laws about prosecution, and legal definitions of various crimes. Textbook / lecture slides. They will provide a laymen explanation of the concepts and terms you come across in the legislation, along with simple examples. Legal cases. These are especially important in a country where Common Law is in practice. Here is a fact: you cannot learn every aspect of law. There is simply too much. That is why there are lawyers who specialize in contract, accident compensation, land dispute, etc.
When Bob buys a thing, it becomes his, and it ceases to be the property of the seller. By &quot;buy&quot;, we understand that to mean &quot;pays for and receives physical control of&quot;. At that point, Bob is responsible to control of his new property. His ownership of the property is not contingent on him leaving the store. You might assign blame to the shop if they were negligent in some way, for example if they hire a thief to do the exit-check and the door guard takes Bob's property. Obviously, the thief is ultimately liable, but the store might under special circumstances be liable if they indirectly caused his loss. A store does not have an obligation to guarantee that a customer immediately and securely exits the store after making a purchase, so they are not liable for failing to immediately eject him from the store after buying the goods.
This is likely to depend on whether Person B is aware of what Person A is doing, regardless of any imputations Person A makes as to the nature of their business. If Person B is aware, or it is found that Person B ought to have been aware, that Person A is doing something illegal, then they may be held contributorily liable for damages suffered. For instance, in (what is still) a landmark case for copyright infringement, A&amp;M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc., 239 F.3d 1004 (2001), Napster was found to be contributorily guilty of copyright infringement. A defense that they attempted is they weren't aware of it - which was thrown out on the basis that they should have, and could have, known that it was happening. I'm not a lawyer, but you'll need to give a lot more information about the situation for liability to be determined. Oh, and also &mdash; both of them could be held liable. It's not necessarily a case of one or the other.
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.
First point: During the pandemic, most libraries have ceased in person services and only do downloads, pre-arranged loans, pick up and drop off. Second point: In non-pandemic times, typical U.S. municipal library is a somewhat odd mix of young children with parents or nannies, homeless people, remote workers who don't need to talk on the phone much, retirees, and middle school and high school students studying and reading for pleasure (with the studying more common among students whose home situations aren't well suited to studying due to poverty, many siblings or housemates, or noisy family members or neighbors who play instruments). Libraries are usually incentivized to be well occupied as it helps when they seek municipal budget contributions or tax levies. FWIW, I've used municipal libraries for lengthy research projects as a lawyer now and then, both in times when I've been between offices (e.g. at one point tenant finish wasn't done at my new office but my old lease has expired and I was mostly working from home), and when I need to concentrate and the phone and colleagues interrupting me with innocent reasonable questions that aren't urgent keep interrupting me. Third point: It is rare in practice for libraries to be overwhelmed with remote workers, in part, because you can't really talk on the phone or attend Zoom meetings, or meet with people. It is also poor for spreading out with a lot of dead tree paper, especially if filing is necessary. Coffee shops which allow for talking and allow food and drink are more popular and commonly used by low volume realtors and lawyers without offices (I used them for meetings when I was a newly admitted solo practitioner), day traders, freelance and novel writers, graduate students, etc. The prohibition on talking and on consuming food and drinks in the library mostly solves the problem. Also, lots of remote workers don't want to work someplace that has little children squealing during story time and lots of homeless people. In my experience, the most common kind of remote workers in municipal libraries are day traders. It is much more common for municipal libraries in the U.S. (which are one of the only places you can just be without spending money) to come up with ways to limit homeless people (or to better accommodate them) than to boot them out. Many municipal libraries in urban areas have hired social workers in lieu of security staff to regulate things, place limits on sleeping in the place, and sometimes place a maximum number of hours in place. CLOSING THOUGHT: Libraries are publicly owned property, and as such, library managers have not only the regulatory authority of a representative of the government, but also all of the rights of a property owner at their disposal legally. This gives them wide discretion to adopt and enforce rules that couldn't be imposed otherwise.