body: There's [this comment thread under a post about student textbooks](https://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/5xr7ol/redditor_tells_a_story_of_his_accounting/deke0ah/) and a few other threads in the same post about the same legal loophole: Commenters are saying that while it is illegal to distribute copies of an original book, it's okay to make a copy for personal use, keep it, and then give away or sell the original book as used, and then others can repeat this until everybody has a personal copy, and there's only one original in the wild. Is this right?
  
  
  
title: Is it legal to create a copy of a book for personal use and then gift the original to others, so they could repeat this process indefinitely?