Copyright question for ebooks...

[Laura Gary-Michel]

A teacher I know has purchased some ebooks from Barnes & Noble and wonders if she can use them in her classroom with her students.
Can anyone clarify the copyright rules for ebooks or point me in the right direction for the info.

Thank you,

Laura

[Kate Owen]

As the whole recent debacle with Amazon and 1984 shows, e-books are clearly not like regular books. Ebooks are licensed, not sold, & therefore are not necessarily covered by the doctrine of first sale that enables libraries and individuals to loan, resell or do what they wish with a physical book. Purchased ebooks are frequently tied to a specific user- or at least a specific machine- and cannot be loaned unless a library-specific license is purchased (see Overdrive.com or Schoollibrary.com). The answer to your question lies in reading the license she agreed to when she purchased the ebooks. B&N ebooks have DRM protections- they can't be printed and can't be transfered out of the owner's account (which req. a credit card transaction to validate) so unless she wishes to leave the ebook on a single computer in school or pass around her ebook reader I'm not sure how she'd share them, even if the license permits. Is she planning on projecting them or something?

That said, there are plenty of ebooks she can easily use in her program, since they are in the public domain. Google Books can be used to find free ebooks too- just go to advanced search and select the radio button for "full view only."
Expiring Aug 4th is the World E-book Fair which is offering free download of 2,000,000 books until then.

If you want more info or if you get obsessed by copyright like I did Stanford Library's site is a good starting point: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/