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Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

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Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#91

Post by orijing »

wmf wrote: post #57
gwern wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Resold as PDF files? Not by this company, anyway...I don't think that business model will work out legally. I wonder. If the company holds onto the PDF and just sends out that PDF whenever someone mails in a book already scanned, isn't this the equivalent of those music services which simply make you prove through uploading music that you already have a copy and then give you access to their one stored version of t…

Weren't all those music lockers sued into oblivion? If they're smart, this company will take the hint.

You mean like Apple iCloud?

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#92

Post by pontifier »

dctoedt wrote: post #35
mp3jeep01 wrote: post #18

The way the current rules are written for fair-use, if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same PDF to both rather than scanning twice? I wonder how the governing bodies would view that. Side-note, I think it'd be interesting if if they collected/published data about what books are sent in, and from where.

> if two people send in an identical book, are they allowed to send the same PDF to both rather than scanning twice? In somewhat-analogous circumstances almost 30 years ago, a court said "no." The case was Micro-Sparc, Inc. v. Amtype Corp. , 592 F.Supp. 33, 34-35, 223 USPQ (BNA) 1210 (D. Mass. 1984). The defendant offered a keyboarding service: It typed in the source code of programs published in a hobbyist magazine,…

After reading this case, it seems to me that a different section of the copyright code was tested here. I believe space shifting of media other than computer programs has a solid history...

That the subject was a computer program is what seemed to trip up the case in my opinion.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#93

Post by kwamenum86 »

kwamenum86 wrote: post #16

They're not scanning your books for a dollar. They're letting you pay them to give them books. Then they resell them at some discount. Speculation...but that's what I would do.

They have do be doing something with those books. If not then they should be.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#94

Post by davidw »

CamperBob wrote: post #77
davidw wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally you'd get something besides a PDF, which is a pain in the neck to turn into a 'real' eBook.

Why is that? .PDF isn't proprietary enough?

PDF is really a display format, whereas epub/mobi are more HTMLish in that they are not quite so specific in how they want things displayed, and thus can be flowed into different screen sizes pretty easily.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#95

Post by sadlyNess »

jason_slack wrote: post #74
xp84 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and then pick up Would you be okay with them no longer being bound? They saw off the binding so they can use them in a sheetfed scanner.

Yeah I was thinking about it and I am happy to part with most of the books as they are programming books.

How about sending those unwanted programming books here to kenya, as a donation or at a throwaway price? We could do with them.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#96

Post by psyconn »

Bud wrote: post #19

What I noticed about this company, after checking their website: 1) They list an "Accept direct shipment from Amazon" option (coming soon). Think about it: this means a book could be printed, sold, shipped to this company, scanned and destroyed without ever being read. Something is very odd here. 2) The business is located four blocks from my apartment. Maybe I'll try them out...

re 1) it's very convenient for me as often shipping costs more than the book if you don't live in US or UK, not to mention the time factor.

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#97

Post by jianshen »

caryme wrote: post #9

My grandmother, who passed away last week, was an author. She self-published two novels through a printer who typeset her books and printed a few hundred copies. I don't know what happened to the original text files she gave her printer and I know she never got a digital typeset copy. I've been wanting to re-release her novels as ebooks, but haven't had a way to digitize them. This is perfect for me.

I was really hoping that the Google Books project would solve this problem for regular people. I know they take collections from public libraries and OCR them. Why not do the same for private collections?

Re: Company Scans Your Books For a Dollar – Ship ‘Em In, Get a PDF via Email

#98

Post by esrauch »

sebastianavina wrote: post #88
sigil wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 1), what's odd is that current ebook pricing makes this an attractive option.

I can imagine a group of 20 students, buying a book, shipping directly from amazon to that company, and getting a copy for a very small fraction of the cost

While that's true, the post you are replying to was basically saying "I can imagine a single person buying a book, shipping directly from amazon to that company, and getting a copy for less than the ebook cost" which I think is a more extreme version of your scenario.
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