What if I fly to Australia, download the Great Gatsby there, put it on my Kindle and fly back to the states -- is it legal to bring my copy into the country?
I'm in Australia, and I downloaded it this morning.
What if I put my copy in Dropbox so I can read it on my phone/iPad? What's the legal status of the copy Dropbox have?
Dropbox say they encrypt my data when they store it on Amazon, what's the legal status of the encrypted copy on Amazon, and who'd be held responsible for that if it happens in a different jurisdiction to me and my original copy? What if Dropbox already has a copy and uses de-dupe to not bother storing my copy? What if I try-but-don't-end-up-uploading-thanks-to-dedup my legal-in-Australia copy from my laptop, then download a copy-of-something-I-never-uploaded to my iPad? What if that happened via WiFi sync instead of downloading the files from Dropbox/Amazon? Are the hashes of the files somehow "THE PROPERTY" of the author of the book they identify?
What If I'd dropped the Gatsby .mobi file into my BoxCryptor(EncFS) folder inside my Dropbox folder? Without my key, it's just random data that happens to be called "TheGreatGatsby.mobi". What if I'd saved in in a PGPDisk image stored in Dropbox - then it's just random data without even a questionable filename - it;s mathematically no different to /dev/random, somebody's encrypted pron collection, or wikileaks upcoming nations-state-embarrassing-drop.
What if I travel through the US with encrypted copies of Gatsby but don't decrypt them while I'm there? What if I "delete" any copies from devices I travel to the US with, but my OS leaves all the data on my disk and just removed the filesystem pointers? What if I did a dd bit-for-bit copy of that disk-with-deleted-but-still-recoverable copyright-in-the-US data? What if someone else who never knew the disk contained possibly-recoverable copyright encumbered data bit-for-bit copied the disk?
If the answers to the above depend on some status or location of the passwords or decryption keys, what are the further implications of that - does storing my keys/passwords in Dropbox put them and the encrypted data the protect into some particular jurisdiction? What if I store my 1Password encrypted password file on Dropbox? Does having my head cross the border into the US with the passwords/key inside it make a difference? Does it matter whether I'm carrying a device or memorycard/stick with the encrypted potentially copyrighted data on it, or does have the encryption key in my head to data stored "in the cloud" somehow matter?
Copyright law, at least as it's developed/evolved since Gutenberg, really wasn't written with the capabilities and edgecases of modern technology in mind. Judges are called upon to interpret century-old artistic-expression-as-a-physical-object copyright laws to modern sync and cache enabled technology much of which is considered obsolete withing half a decade - and they don't always have sane/sensible interpretations available to them. They've got an army of oblivious/self-entitled Game Of Thrones torrenting kiddies on one side, and an army of Prenda Law style vexatious litigants on the other.
It's pretty clear that you would not be able to legally sell your Kindle with the imported copy- that was discussed in the Kirtsaeng decision, but I'm not sure if importing the copy for your personal use would be technically legal.
