Library question - audio books to ipod
 

Maddy has finally gotten into the Harry Potter books but she's not much of a reader so I got her Sorcers Stone on CD and put them on her ipod for her. She's loving it and reading along with the actual book.

My question is - if I were to check out the rest of the audio books from the library is it taboo to put them onto an ipod? I would erase when done but we don't really have a portiable cd player anymore so this is the best way for her to listen to them.

*Pulls out iPod and counts how many albums on it are "borrowed" from wife's job*

Hehe - that's what I was thinking GD. I'd buy them for her but at $40ish a pop it runs a little pricy.

The libraries know what happens. They see people come it, check out the maximum # of CDs they're allowed at one time, then come back within a couple hours to return them and get another batch.

It seems fine to me. You are just making it more convenient to listen to. Now if you posted that on the internet, that would be bad.

But the question is: is it LEGAL? It definitely sounds like a gray area, but I am curious.

We do this, only we rent them from a local movie rental place. We did buy the last 2 books though. We have them all on both computers and my iPod. Maddie's got book 1 on hers and is in about chapter 10. She's not a big reader either.

It's certainly illegal, but it's not enforced. No different than photocopying the books or duplicating the vhs videos that have been available for years. Unless you're distributing or selling them, no one's going to bother to hunt you down.

Definitely not legal; without specific license two copies are being made from one purchased copy. Theoretically it could get libraries into trouble if they are shown to be aware of it and doing nothing to prevent it (for this reason one library I worked at didn't prevent a patron that came in an photocopied an entire textbook but they could not use our for-fee retrieval-and-copy service for that purpose).

Many libraries over the years have tried to work out deals to allow electronic copying and distribution but I don't know if any have had broad adoption yet.

But I have seen many people not even bothering to momentarily check out the books. They just sit in a carrel with a laptop ripping them directly in the library.

That was always the Kinko's policy too. They never policed people using their self-serve machines, but they wouldn't do any of their behind the counter copy services on copyrighted materials.

Some Kinkos have, in the past, policed self-service machines.

What GD said. Go for it. :)

Well, now, if you're using an iPod, then theoretically iTunes fetches the license for that disc. I don't know if each disc has its own unique license or whatnot, but if they do, then it could get interesting when the third or fourth person comes along and wants to do the same think with that disc set.

Like GD, minus the wife, I've done that with library CDs.

Excellent. Thanks for the input. Maddy will be so happy plus it's kept her quiet for two whole days now - woo hoo.

iTunes does not seek a license for a pre-burned CD as I do not believe that CDs HAVE an individual serial number. They do have a code which says what the CD is which is how your computer gets the info (iTunes defaults to retrieving such data from CDDB).

Isn't it considered legal to photocopy X number of pages for research purposes? Or are laws being broken at colleges all across the country?

Or should I say "were being broken" as I wonder how much of this practice still exists in the age of the interwebs.

"Fair use" exists as a defense to claims of copyright infringement, but there's no absolute definition of "fair use". It's not just about how many pages you copy. There are a whole bunch of factors that go into assessing fair use, and it's basically done on a case-by-case basis.

And it's not that "fair use" is a legal right - it's a defense.

Yes, laws are being broken all across the country.

There's a reason college professors still have to charge way above photocopying costs for those reading packets they put together. So that the campus bookstore, or whomever is doing it, can play clearances on them.

But no, nobody is going to raise a stink about photocopying a journal article for individual research purposes or a semi-lengthy excerpt from a monograph. But I knew student workers at every college library I've worked at who would use the back-room copiers to simply photocopy their entire textbook for free (to them) and save all that money on their books for the quarter.