Find out if "Further reproduction prohibited without permission" document is original

Question

There are many documents containing "Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission". I'd like to read those which were legally uploaded. However I am unsure about how I can determine if the uploaded copy on a webpage is the original, the single reproducible copy or a further-copied pirate copy. Do you have any tips? If it's not possible to determine this, would the legally wiser choice be to read the document or to assume that it's an illegal copy?

Answer 1

It does not matter whether the document is authentic, because it is true, by law. Under copyright law, you must have permission of the copyright holder to copy any protected work (original creative work not created as a work of the US, as an example under US law). This is true whether or not the copyright holder tells you that copying requires permission.

A matter for more concern is "false permission", where a person without the right to grant permission utters something that the courts would usually interpret as being "permission", for example releasing a Harry Potter book under CC-0. The legal requirement is that you have actual permission, not that a prohibition was not communicated to you. It is in your interest to know whether the actual person making available a work under some license actually has the right to grant a license. But there is no way to know for certain who holds copyright. You can, however, attempt to determine that a work has been registered with the US copyright office, looking here. Works are still protected when not registered, so failing to find a copyright registration does not guarantee that the work is "open access". It would tell you who the registered copyright holder is.

There is no "innocent infringement" defense, but under §504(c)(2), your liability for statutory damages can be reduced to as little as $200, if you can prove that there were no indications that the work is protected.

Answer 2

Trick question: you can't read the single original copy "legally", because it's stored on a hard disk in a datacenter and you have to make multiple copies of it to even get it to your computer.

This sounds silly but has been used in court in various situations, and eventually got a specific exemption ("technical copies") in EU copyright law.

Answer 3

Even if someone already violated the direction not to make further copies, that does not make it unlawful to read the document. Just as if someone makes and sells a pirate copy of a book, it is not copyright infringement to buy that pirated copy, nor to read it. It would be to re-sell it, however.

It is not technically easy to create a digital document where copying (or unauthroized copying) can be easily detected. Indeed the best way is for the copyright owner to state, separately, where an authorized copy may be found, and to declare that all other copies are unauthorized.