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This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people (literature.cafe)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

I found this notice on the copyright page of something I bought at a recent used book sale. I can't recall seeing a warning so overtly hostile to book borrowers and hope I never do again. I know about the first sale doctrine, and that this is completely unenforceable, but it still offends me. Should I contact the author for instructions on returning it unread?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Not sure what the rest looked like, but some newer authors have the unfortunate inexperience that results in copy/pasting those pages. I've seen this exact wording out there before and I suspect that the rest also includes some iffy sections. I'm fairly sure that whoever cooked up the one I saw was either making it up entirely and thinking that they could throw in anything they want and have it binding; or were outright generating it via one of the llm models.

Either way, whoever cooked it up, and anyone that copy pastes it like that don't understand how copyright works, at least here in the US, and I'm unaware of anywhere in the world where this would be legally enforceable at all. I've looked, to the best of my ability, but only so deep.

What's kinda dumb is that there are a ton of options that are used by publishing companies that you know are written up correctly, and are easy to find. Iirc, the etail booksellers all have copyright pages available as well.

It's like trying to home brew your own contracts; yeah you can do it, but you'll screw up.

But, yeah contact the author since it's self published. Let them know the text as is not only isn't enforceable, but arguments could be made that it invalidates the rest of their boilerplate copyright page. I've never heard of it being challenged in court, but other forms of licensing can be invalidated in entirety by one bad section.