Looking to buy the following 20 items used

I know I’m a bit of a copyright killjoy, but a few of the books you mentioned are consumable and should not be resold or bought used UNLESS someone bought extra copies that they did NOT USE OR someone bought one intending to use it and then used something else.  I REALLY appreciate how affordable SCM’s books are AND how generous they are about allowing us to copy consumable books for reuse within our OWN families OR printing out multiple copies of ebooks for use within OUR OWN families and so I just wanted to chime in and encourage everyone to take a peak into copyright law and just consider how YOU would want to be treated if YOU were the one producing and selling the materials and trying to make a living to support your family.  This is an excellent website http://homeschoolcopyright.com/

And I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty, I’m just assuming that you aren’t familiar with copyright law and I am hoping to help you understand a little more about it, in order to support SCM’s generous pricing and use policies.

Consumables would be the GOAL Bible Study, The Copywork Book, and The Print to Cursive Proverbs – perhaps others that I’m missing, but anything you write in should not be resold if you’ve used it – EVEN if you’ve copied to a separate sheet of paper – MUS workbook users. 

Blessings,

Rebekah

@Rebekah, Thank you so much for your support and commitment to doing the right thing and helping others to do so as well. However, I hope you don’t mind if I add some clarification and address some inaccuracies.

It is actually a myth that copyright law does not allow writing on a separate sheet of paper to preserve a workbook, regardless of what some of the homeschooling articles and publishers have said.

Yes, there are some homeschool publishers that make “copyright” statements with such restrictions. For example, I’ve seen products saying that you can’t re-use a workbook for multiple children by erasing, using a separate sheet paper, or having the child write on a transparency. I’ve also seen some say that you can’t resell a workbook no matter what, or that the book you purchased is only licensed to you and not owned, so you can’t resell it.

The problem is that these kinds of statements go above and beyond copyright. The exception would be that you agree to a set of terms before purchasing or agree to terms by breaking a seal on the product. But then we’re talking about a mutually agreed usage contract and not copyright.

Copyright covers a specific set of uses and none of us can simply make up extras restrictions. We cannot add anything that is more restrictive than standard copyright terms and have it be legally enforceable.

Let’s say SCM started putting statements in our books that you could only use them on Tuesday and that to do otherwise was a violation of our copyright. Is it infringing copyright if you use the book on Friday? Of course not.

It’s easy to spot because it’s ridiculous. But the reason it’s not a copyright violation is not because it’s silly. It’s because the statement attempts to add restrictions above and beyond copyright law. The same goes for the examples I mentioned above.

Now it’s important to know that we can freely go in the opposite direction and choose to relax our copyright and grant additional rights.

For example, we give you permission to print or make copies of most of our books for use by multiple children within your own immediate household. In doing so, we have not added restrictions beyond copyright. Instead, we have relaxed our rights to give you additional rights. And the limit of within your immediate household is fine because it only restricts the extra rights we give you and does not add to regular copyright. 

I’ll wrap up by giving some examples of how copyright applies in a variety of uses of one of our consumable books.

1. Your child writes in the book. You are free to resell the book. You or the buyer could erase the writing and use the book it again. The buyer could even have a child write on another sheet of paper. No copying has taken place so it’s okay.
2. You have your child write on another sheet of paper. The child is writing his own work and not copying ours. No copy has been made and you’re free to use the book with another child or resell it.
3. You have your child write all the questions / prompts on a separate sheet of paper along with his answers, then a copy has been made. Since we have granted you the right to use the book with multiple children in your household this does not present a problem for that use. But it would be a copyright violation for another publisher that doesn’t grant you the extra rights that we do. If you wanted to resell the book, legally you would have to first destroy any of the sheets your child has made because it contains a good portion of the book.
4. You print or make copies for multiple children in your immediate household, as we allow. If you want to resell the book or loan it to someone else, then legally you would have to first destroy the other copies you have made.

I hope that helps. I would be happy to clarify or answer any questions.

Looks like we will both be doing the same history module next year!

I found most (75%) of the books you’ve requested for our homeschool on http://www.abebooks.com. I have bought books from this site for several years and have never had a problem receiving my orders correctly. The prices are so discounted, and often shipping is free. Just read the book descriptions carefully so that you choose how “used” you want the books to be.

Hope that helps!

Lindsey

I have The Beggar’s Bible to sell you. Just PM me and we’ll work it out.

I have Spelling Wisdom Book One, not used at all, if you are interested. Let me know.

Thanks,
Melissa

oops, meant to pm that….. sorry, all.