If I break a book's binding to scan its pages, am I legally required to keep the book's physical remains to use the digital copy?

Perhaps blasphemous to some, but if I break a book's binding to feed it to a duplex scanner, am I legally required (in the US) to keep the physical pages post-scanning in order to justify having the digital version?

sean

• digitize
• legal
• copyright
• law
• scanning

Comments

• Trevor Owens: This is an interesting question, but I don't really think this is a digital preservation question. See the discussion on meta about digitization questions that are in and out of scope. http://meta.digitalpreservation.stackexchange.com/questions/3/is-digitisation-on-topic
• sean: @Trevor: I did, but the top-voted answer says that digitization as part of a preservation project is on-topic, especially as this pertains to legal issues and not mechanics
• Ben Fino-Radin: @sean the top-voted answer (from Courtney Mumma), says that questions about the preservation of the **results** (i.e. preserving the digital assets) of digitization is on topic. This is still off topic IMO.

Answer by wizzard0

I am not a lawyer, but I think in most jurisdictions you can get a notary to assert the fact that you indeed owned the original books, and then destroyed (and not sold, so no transfer of rights) them.

Then you can keep this notice instead of a whole stack of books in some safe place. Not entirely effortless, but certainly easier than storing all the paper.

Comments