Is it illegal to download PDF books from internet?

[Lawand.Ismail 0]

some books are not easy to find in the market or expensive. and internet is full of website offering thousands of books. some of them saying it is for free and legal but dont wanna face problems later. please whoever has an idea about that please help.

[Darkknight 2,323]

 

some of them saying it is for free and legal but dont wanna face problems later.

Then don't do it..

[Smaug 5,027]

The answer to your question is in the "accused of downloading torrents" thread. You don't get in legal trouble just for downloading, but you might for sharing.

[arsenal21 310]

I'm not a lawyer but if a book is out of copyright it should be ok? For example, James Joyce's work is out of copyright for the past couple of years.

[Lawand.Ismail 0]

Smaug, the link is not working. but do you think downloading from other websites, other than Torrents I mean, is ok? 

[WhyNot_DE 142]

Smaug, the link is not working. but do you think downloading from other websites, other than Torrents I mean, is ok? 

​It is not ok. what is said is that you might not get into troubles, which is different.

Copyrighted material is properietary, therefore means that the usage, copy, reproduction etc is protected and the owner/writer/publisher should get the respective reward for the work.

What I understand by smaug's post is that if you do it, at least don't share it (like torrents do)

 

 

 

[2B_orNot2B 8,419]

Smaug, the link is not working. but do you think downloading from other websites, other than Torrents I mean, is ok? 

That link appears to have become circular due to the recent major TT software update. However the thread Smaug recommended,  Accused of torrenting copyrighted material , is still pinned at the top of the Legal forum. There are over 2000 posts in that thread scores of which cover your concerns but, since the new TT software doesn't include the old-style 'topic search' feature, I'm not sure how best to point you at a specific post. Perhaps you could try putting "Accused of torrenting copyrighted material"+book in the site search box.

AFAIK the risk lies not in downloading content per se but either in inadvertently publishing it (in part or in whole) when using P2P file-sharing or torrent sites or by storing multiple copies (in part or in whole) without having obtained the permission to do so (included in the conditions of most retail purchases) of the copyright holder for the Intellectual Property rights.

While I see your points about the limited availability of some books in the market as well as the expense bypassing legit sources is, in effect, like robbing the author.

Until recently (~ 20 years ago) many more people used public libraries which meant that millions of books were lent out with their authors getting 0.001 cent per loan. Nowadays the authors of best sellers may be earning much more than they would in the past but I suspect that for each one that does there are many hundreds of thousand authors who have virtually no chance of recouping their investment of time.

Visit your local library (while they're still functional in Germany - unlike some of our home countries) and you may be surprised how willing the staff are to help you find the books you seek and how little it costs you to avoid the moral/ethical/legal quandary.

2B

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[tor 12,252]

Downloading a book legally is not illegal. Why don't you tell us what book and from where you want to download it. That will help the discussion.

downloading 50 shades of grey for free...is not legal.

[WhyNot_DE 142]

Downloading a book legally is not illegal. Why don't you tell us what book and from where you want to download it. That will help the discussion.

downloading 50 shades of grey for free...is not legal.

​Absolutely correct tor, like I say to Germans that I do torrenting everytime ... to download Linux distros and so on  . Ofc the first reaction is "if you have to ask, you're probably making something illegal"

So in my opinion, the question of the user was for copyrighted material, ofc that for "free" material downloading printing copying is no violation of the copyrights.. 

 

Cheers

WhyNot

 

[Lawand.Ismail 0]

Thank you guys for all the infos given. the books I am trying to download some are arabic books and some are Indian college references, and a couple of other books translated into Arabic. in all these cases the copy rights are not clear and no information are available, yet I can find the books online. and obviously they will not be found in public libraries ( I searched a couple of times). Anyway, I am thinking of downloading one book and wait for the threatening letter lol. 

[Kolmogorov 2]

Project Gutenberg, Google books and Wikipedia Wikibooks have plenty of info. about the legal background.

Basically if a book is out of copyright - or specifically in the public domain (e.g. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE) - in the jurisdiction in which

 you do the downloading - then you are OK. 

The questionable area is using "Calibre" to copy Kindle(Amazon) format (copyright) ebooks to other formats...

I'd be careful about that..

 

[HH_Sailor 1,015]

Project Gutenburg now (2019) has a notice that as I am in Germany, it is not allowed to supply me with any books. 

 

 Waldorf Frommer put a stop to that.

[Krieg 11,144]

11 hours ago, HH_Sailor said:

Project Gutenburg now (2019) has a notice that as I am in Germany, it is not allowed to supply me with any books. 

 

 Waldorf Frommer put a stop to that.

 

This happened last year.   It is a sad story, basically a giant company (represented by WF) sued Project Gutenburg because they had 18 books (in German) which copyright in Germany is still valid.   Those 18 books are free domain already in the USA.  The plaintiff wanted the books to be removed, which is really not reasonable.  The court decided that blocking the access to those 18 books to German IP addresses would be enough.  However Project Gutenburg thinks German courts had no jurisdiction in this therefore decided not to accept the judge decision and instead they blocked access to every book to Germany to make a point because they see it as a corporation bullying a non profit project run by voluntaries.  And they think that the disclaimer they had saying that they operate in the USA and users should check their local copyright laws before downloading was enough.

 

At the end people lose, it is a shame.

 

Here some detailed information about the whole thing in case anyone is interested:

 

https://cand.pglaf.org/germany/