If you borrow a book from a library or a friend, scan it to a file on your computer and return the book, you&#x27;ve committed a distribution of a copyrighted work without the permission of the copyright holder. If the copyright holder discovered this they could sue you at which point you could attempt to present a Fair Use defense based on the four factors [0]. Assuming it&#x27;s a whole published book that&#x27;s available for sale, you&#x27;d need a noble use to explain why you didn&#x27;t just buy a copy to scan for yourself but even if you lose, the damages could be relatively small assuming you didn&#x27;t distribute the file further.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fair_use#U.S._fair_use_factors</a>