[jjeaff]

I don't think digitizing a document has ever been ruled as being transformative enough to warrant its own copyright. Now a sylized photo of a document might.

But I could be wrong. Do you have a source?

Even in the case of Aaron Schwartz, they prosecuted on the grounds that his download bot constituted unlawful entry to their system.

[davvolun]

For various reasons, I'm not able to provide a source for this. Suffice to say, just because it seems likely that you would end up winning the case doesn't mean someone with deep pockets won't do everything they can to keep you from doing it.

Does that apply to OPs argument? I don't think so; but just like Aaron Schwartz, lawyers can be quite creative when their clients are willing to pay.

[xbmcuser]

Hasn't gutenberg.com being doing this for the last 40-50 years ie digitising pubic works.