you can make 100 copies for yourself. what you can't do is make a copy that you give to someone else while simultaneously retaining access to the original (or another copy).
the way libraries work is by relinquishing posession, which replication would circumvent.
> what you can't do is make a copy that you give to someone else while simultaneously retaining access to the original (or another copy).
I’m pretty sure I can do that.
> the way libraries work is by relinquishing posession
I almost included that I could shred my copy, keeping only the digital equivalent, and still retain the same rights to the work and lending it.
Any individual in IA’s position could do this without fear of legal scrutiny. An organization doing it is under scrutiny not because there’s actual, meaningful copyright violation happening but because they systemized a thing no reasonable person would object to individuals doing.
> I almost included that I could shred my copy, keeping only the digital equivalent, and still retain the same rights to the work and lending it.
This is the part that is not true. For example, you are free to transcribe a book onto a parchement and read it that way, and store the parchment separately from the book for archival purposes, and keep the parchement even if the original book gets destroyed.
However, this is a limited exception to copyright. You are not in fact allowed, at any point before or after the original copy is destroyed, to lend or re-sell the parchment you created. That parchment will forever be an unauthorized copy, but one that you are allowed to use in certain limited ways.
The only wrinkle is that, at least in the EU, when you acquire an authorized digital copy of a work, you are allowed to lend or sell that copy as long as you don't retain access to it during the lending/after the sale. This is allowed even though technically you are technically creating a new copy of the digital work and destroying your own afterwards, but this is an exception specific to digital realms, it can't be extended to digital copies you make of a phyisical work.
Obviously there are lots of jurisdictions and you have to hit a broad brush with answers, but generally, no. Your reproduction is only considered to be reasonable by law while you retain the original.
Now I'm wondering how this would apply in situations where the person doesn't know if they have the original or not.
Inspired by the fact that my emulation of Link's Awakening to play on a screen I could see is technically legal since we had a cartridge stuffed away in a drawer. But for 10-15 years that cartridge lived in a limbo land of 'we used to have that, it might still be around somewhere...'
"myself" being the operative word here.
you can make 100 copies for yourself. what you can't do is make a copy that you give to someone else while simultaneously retaining access to the original (or another copy).
the way libraries work is by relinquishing posession, which replication would circumvent.