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Comment by wool_gather | Hacker News Reader

Not to say that I don't think this is cool, but it seems impossible. How are you going to deal with the copyright issues of commercially printing work by arbitrary authors? (Not the part where you reformat stuff for a user to print at home -- the other part where you print it for them.)

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I haven't looked too closely at how this works, but regarding your concern, don't other printing services run this risk too if that's illegal? like Kinkos, FedEx, library printers?

I don't know where the line is (and I think it's pretty fuzzy and dependent on someone actually noticing and caring), but copy shops will certainly refuse to reprint an entire book for you.

Any time you print something at FedEx they make you accept an agreement stating that you are not printing or copying copyrighted material. I'm guessing those other places have the same type of thing. Even if it's a piece of paper posted next to the printer at a public library stating "By using this printer you acknowledge that you are not printing or copying any material for which you do not have the right to copy."

To be sure, it's a pretty loose contract and you could probably get away with printing a small amount of copyrighted material. But it at least shifts the liability onto the customer so the retailer can always point to the agreement and say "hey, they said they weren't printing anything illegally; that's on them for lying."

thats not quite correct, you just need the right to copy it, not to be the copy owner, and as mentioned elsewhere there are all sorts of scenarios where you indeed have such rights

Yep, you're right. What you said is what I intended. I've updated my comment.

Time and location shifting are protected, at least in the US. And with the exception of software that aggressively tries to prevent doing so, backups are also considered fair use.

If you share the material with someone else, you're into infringement territory in most of the 1st World and substantially beyond, as far as I'm aware. If I tried to do this as a service, I'd probably get sued to the stone age, and I'd deserve it. But running it at home? Who's gonna know, and who's going to have a legal leg to stand on if they care?

Also we all used to joke about various parents doing this exact thing, and I don't think I've ever heard anyone get into trouble for it.

> If I tried to do this as a service

Isn't that what this post is about? They are planning to print a physical book made up of arbitrary text chosen by the user and then ship that book to the user.

Somehow I missed the lede. You are correct, he is doing exactly that.

So my conclusion is bunk, although the decision tree I loosely mapped out might still be useful for others so I'll leave it as is.

Do photo printing services (or existing self-publishing services) assess content for copyright infringements? Or do they pass it off with "you assert that you have the rights to print this content"? I suspect something along those lines could work for this too. If the service can be 'blind' to what is being collected (eg, all happens on the user's device and the central printer just takes the collected file). Automated version of a local printshop that just prints whatever you give them.

Anecdotal but I published a book through what was at least then Createspace at Amazon. Many of the chapters were adapted from previous blog posts of mine and the book was flagged. I sent Amazon some links and they quickly cleared it.

> Time and location shifting are protected, at least in the US.

Can you share a citation for this? I'm a (former) lawyer and have never heard of a blanket protection for time and location shifting. It might be allowed for certain types of copyrighted content, or if done by the end-user. But I don't think there's a blanket allowance for all copyrighted materials, especially when a third party is involved.

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