Making Screen Captures from eBooks for Personal Use

[Lovamelin]

The idea being that I take these screen caps and save them in some online repository like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. that I can then access later. It's like my own way of creating cliffnotes. Sometimes I read an e-book and find I only like a few pages or a couple chapters. I do take advantage of bookmarking within the app as well but it seems like I should be able to bookmark things and save them in a way agnostic of the app I'm using. I do own the ebook so how I use it, save it, spread it around should be within my rights correct? Also from the research I've done different apps (Aldiko, Amazon, Nook, iReader, etc) don't communicate with each other. Which I imagine is on purpose. Anyways, this all seems clumsy and annoying. I just want to make sure that I'm not violating copyright by saving portions or pages of ebooks I own and then saving them elsewhere. I think I've read this can be a copyright violation if you delete the book. Not sure how stringent all of this stuff is honestly. Thanks for any help you can provide!

[quincy]

The idea being that I take these screen caps and save them in some online repository like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. that I can then access later. It's like my own way of creating cliffnotes. Sometimes I read an e-book and find I only like a few pages or a couple chapters. I do take advantage of bookmarking within the app as well but it seems like I should be able to bookmark things and save them in a way agnostic of the app I'm using. I do own the ebook so how I use it, save it, spread it around should be within my rights correct? Also from the research I've done different apps (Aldiko, Amazon, Nook, iReader, etc) don't communicate with each other. Which I imagine is on purpose. Anyways, this all seems clumsy and annoying. I just want to make sure that I'm not violating copyright by saving portions or pages of ebooks I own and then saving them elsewhere. I think I've read this can be a copyright violation if you delete the book. Not sure how stringent all of this stuff is honestly. Thanks for any help you can provide!

Where in the U.S. do you live, Lovamelin, or, if not in the U.S., in what country do you reside?

[Lovamelin]

Yes, the United States.

[Mr. Knowitall]

Odds are the screen shots would fall under fair use but, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details.

For some eBooks screen shots may violate your license, but that's a different matter than whether it violates copyright law.

[quincy]

... It's like my own way of creating cliffnotes ... I do own the ebook so how I use it, save it, spread it around should be within my rights correct? ... I just want to make sure that I'm not violating copyright by saving portions or pages of ebooks I own and then saving them ...

There have been problems with this in the U.S. (especially the "spread it around" part).

Screen shots have as much copyright protection as the copyrighted work they come from. Some courts have looked at them as derivatives of the original.

What state in the U.S. are you in, Lovamelin?

[Mr. Knowitall]

If "spread it around" means "make multiple copies" and, more so, if it means "share it with others", the situation gets a lot more sticky.

quincy, what state law issue do you believe may affect the analysis?

[quincy]

...
quincy, what state law issue do you believe may affect the analysis?

I was looking for the Circuit by way of state name.