From: brahms@mindspring.com (Stan Brown) Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Legality of downloading: summary (was Re: Is LOTR online somewhere in book form?) Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 22:25:19 -0500 Organization: Oak Road Systems Lines: 36 Message-ID: References: <385eab8b.276356391@news.inetworld.net> <844mkl$t92$1@news.eisa.net.au> <8EB0A7BB1pt101594@199.45.45.11> NNTP-Posting-Host: c7.ae.b3.2c X-Server-Date: 10 Jan 2000 03:25:18 GMT X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.10 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!news.mindspring.net!firehose.mindspring.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:12477 With almost a year left in the millennium, brahms@mindspring.com (Stan Brown) wrote in rec.arts.books.tolkien: >At the risk of opening a can of worms, could we explore this a bit? It's >clear to me that keeping and using the illegal files is illegal if one >does it instead of buying a copy of the books in question. But if one >already has a copy (or more than one) of the books, do the files become >legal "archive copies" analogous to archive copies of software? I'm not a >lawyer, so I don't know whether that holds water. > >Anyone know for certain? I'll post a query to misc.legal.moderated, where >some Real Lawyers hang out, and we can read what they say. (I'll post a >summary back here so you don't have to subscribe to another newsgroup.) I did that, and got a couple of replies. To summarize: Typically it is illegal to make a copy of copyright material. Downloading the files makes a copy of them, obviously. Therefore it's a copyright violation to download them. On the other hand, if the purpose is simply to do full-text searches more conveniently than with the print copies one already owns, this may fall under the "fair use" exception. Maybe. Go not to misc.legal.moderated for counsel, for they will say both yea and nay! -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, USA http://www.mindspring.com/~brahms/ Encyclopedia of Arda: http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/default.htm Tolkien FAQs: http://home.uchicago.edu/~sbjensen/Tolkien/TolkNgFaq.html (Jensen) http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~gsl9286/aft/faq/ (Loos) Inklings site list: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/GregorArlt/inklings_sites.html more FAQs: http://www.mindspring.com/~brahms/faqget.htm