In the US, making a photocopy of a book without written permission is illegal actually. But, you did give me an interesting idea. I buy a book, I highlight stuff in the book, I underline things, I might even draw little pictures in the book. However, at no time have I violated the author's copyright on the book. This is because I modified it for my own personal use (fair use), if I were to sell my copy then yes I would break the law, but not if I keep it for myself. Now someone again will start in with the license vs ownership. So I point to the US supreme court case regarding VCRs. In the 1980s VCRs became popular and people were taping everything. The television industry did not like this. Why would you go out and buy a copy of a movie when you could tape it off of the tv? The case went to trial and the supreme court cited "fair use." What this means is, you can tape the shows (which you do NOT own, you are only allowed to use, exactly the same as a license) as long as you are doing it for personal reasons, i.e. I'm not going to be home at 8pm tonight but I want to watch the show. I have no doubt that that argument will eventually spread to CDs and DVDs and possibly even to software. As I said, when you tape something off of the TV you are not given ownership of that show, you are given permission to watch it. In the case of software, you are given permission to run the software. It seems to me that the situations are very similar.
