You know the answer is crime. You'd need a pretty good lawyer to get you off that charge.

stickers all over his with his name on and this helped me win an original piece of art worth £3500 so I have no problem with it.

for John Peel's wife to sell off his record collection

to well-meaning messages in books. Surely the writer's intentions should be clear by the gift alone?

And as you point out when the gift is passed on the recipient's feelings for the gift are made only too clear.

it's a gift.Have no problem with people writing on records or in books. When i get a record or book i don't think 'Great ! keep it in mint condition so i can knock it out on eBay in 30 years' I want to read/listen to it.
Like those kids who kept Dinky toys in the original packaging and never took them out,It's these people who are responsible for the mess the world is in. Who didn't tear open the box to get to the car. ? It's a Toy car not a Securities bond. Rant over.

...the records and books with comments in them. I don't buy a record or book to sell in 30 years, I buy/bought them to listen to or read.

I don't have a camera handy, but my Animal Krackers LP has a brilliant note to myself (aged 7). "I'm lissening to this becase Daddy hates me."

Excellent choice of record there for me, I think.

About ten years ago, I picked a Salinger book off my shelf that had been bought for me by a colleague when I was 18/19, but never read. Inside was a very heartfelt, loving message. I never saw it at the time. I wonder what he thought about me completely ignoring his plea.

who's ex boyfriend was a best selling novelist. He was a bit of an arse by all accounts. One of his books had a girlfriend character directly based on her which painted a very one sided view of a failing relationship, favouring the man.

My friend took it upon herself to type out a message explaining to the reader this dishonesty and filled in a few gaps about the author. She photocopied loads of these notes and every time she was in a Waterstones slipped the message into the relevant chapter of his books.

I have a lot of records that I sort of "borrowed" from my older sister: Beatles albums, T Rex singles, Move singles, Kinks singles and Mott The Hoople's "Roll Away The Stone" (in which Ian Hunter asks Lynsey De Paul if she's ""gonna bring your records" to the "rockabilly party on Saturday night") and pretty much all of them have "Jane Lowe" written on them in girlie teenage scrawl. That's what people used to do. Kids took their records to parties and "marked" them to avoid disputes about whose was what.
I have a lot of second hand records and books too, with other people's names, or little messages in them and I like it. I bought my copy of Four Tops Greatest Hits Vol 2 "pre-owned" in a second-hand record shop nearly thirty years and I know who the previous owner was and where she lived: Cathy Mythen 176, Stonedale Cres. Croxteth Liverpool 11. It's a record I've played an awful lot over the years and I've sometimes wondered about Cathy': what she looked like; what became of her; if she still lives at 176 Stonedale Cres. And I've often wondered what possesed her to get rid of an album with Walk Away Renee, Still Water, Do What You Gotta Do, Yesterdays Dreams, I Can't Help Myself, Simple Game etc. on it. Daft cow.

Of stapling concert ticket stubs to the inner sleeve of the lp that was being toured. It's quite a nice reminder of times long gone when every now and then I dig out the vinyl and see one.
As for books, I have some with messages written by family who are now long gone and that's nice as well.

No-one seemed that worried when Porky did much the same!! I always used to look forward to those obscure and surreal little messages on the run off grooves. You can't scratch in the run off of an MP3 file. Sigh...

heaps of old punk singles, many i already owned, from Grouchos in Dundee about 20 years back. All the covers had been customised with home made stickes utilising that stuff like ticker tape with raised lettering. Most of the stickers were political slogans ("fuck the front", "black and white unite and fight", all that good stuff).
They are a good, if not better, representation of the times that bore them.

It has my first name on the cover with "love from Kath XX". I thought of pretending that I had once had a girlfriend called Kath who loved me enough to give me such a damn good record.

Couldn't go through with it.

I own/have owned a fair number of American records where the owner's name has been scrawled onto the sleeve and/or label with a thick, black, permanent marker. Perhaps the worst being the otherwise pristine White Album (sleeve, poster, back of pictures and all four labels. Curse you, Greg Farnam, whoever you were.)

That said, I have a copy of "A Collection Of Beatles Oldies" (the Fame reissue) whose labels were signed by my classmates at school (I'd bought it during the lunch break in my last week at school.)

With regard to the John Martyn album, mojo, I'd be less worried about the scrawl and more concerned with the damage that the snot that appears to have dried onto the run-out groove might do to your stylus!

"was"?