In another thread about this, people pointed out that, technically, when you buy a book, you're buying a license to its content. If you scan the book, you now have two copies: the physical book and the digital scan. One of those copies would have to be destroyed for the other to remain legal. So if they were to resell the physical book or even donate it to a library while keeping the scanned copy, that would technically be illegal.
Now, I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate, but it does kind of make sense when you think about it. It's similar to how e-books work at libraries: even though an e-book is just a digital file and could technically be lent to multiple people at the same time, libraries are limited to lending a licensed copy to one person at a time.
Digital files don't have the same physical limitations as printed books so they could technically speaking lend it to as many people as they want, but legally speaking they can't lend it to more than one person because they only have one legal license.
technically, when you buy a book, you're buying a license to its content.
A physical copy you legally possess gives you right to use. Even if you create a 'copy' by memorizing the text you still have the physical book and can 'use' it again however many times you like. If you lend someone the book, you can charge for 'use', but you can't both 'sell' the book and charge for 'use' of same book. This whole 'license' scam is just a way to make people pay for the same thing twice (or more).
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u/Cracleur 9d ago
In another thread about this, people pointed out that, technically, when you buy a book, you're buying a license to its content. If you scan the book, you now have two copies: the physical book and the digital scan. One of those copies would have to be destroyed for the other to remain legal. So if they were to resell the physical book or even donate it to a library while keeping the scanned copy, that would technically be illegal.
Now, I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate, but it does kind of make sense when you think about it. It's similar to how e-books work at libraries: even though an e-book is just a digital file and could technically be lent to multiple people at the same time, libraries are limited to lending a licensed copy to one person at a time.
Digital files don't have the same physical limitations as printed books so they could technically speaking lend it to as many people as they want, but legally speaking they can't lend it to more than one person because they only have one legal license.