From: BiersBlackwood-AT-aol.com
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 06:26:36 EDT
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] questionable transactions on eBay
To: puptcrit-driftline.org-AT-lists.driftline.org


Mary,

"Out-of-print" doesn't mean "out-of-copyright" or "in the public domain."   
Even Kinko's Copying Centers refuse (sometimes annoyingly) to photocopy the 
pages of a book.

It is likely that many of us have copied pages from a book to pass on to a 
friend, but none of us, presumably, were charging for it.   The E-Bay seller is 
making money from selling someone else's work, and while he is indeed selling 
a product, he isn't a book producer. He isn't creating the information he's 
peddling, merely swiping it, just as a spy might take photographs of classified 
documents for microfilm.

If the books in question are in the public domain after all, though, then he 
is legally able to trade on the contents.   It doesn't sound that way, 
however.   It sounds as if they are simply old, and rare.
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