Bartle By Fiction. Great Fiction Ebooks. Classic Literature. Free Medical Ebooks. Business Book Mall. Light And Matter. Open Source Physics Ebooks. Tech Books For Free. Free Science. Free Tech Books. Play Scripts By Professionals, Online. Public Book Shelf. Free Romance Novels Online.
Free Online Novels. Free Online Catholic Novels. Dozens Of Free Ebooks. Johnt Cullen. Short Stories From John T. Free Public Domain Audiobooks. Questia Library. Chest Of Books. Quick Found Art. Online Programming Books. Top Mystery Online Books. It's like copying songs from CDs you own to your MP3 player. You don't have to have the original media in order to access the information you purchased.
My husband is taking distance courses that he receives on a CD or can download online. And you know what he does? He prints it all out? It's the same thing - just going the opposite direction. Some people prefer reading a screen, others prefer paper. Regardless of the format you purchased something in, you ought to be able to change it for yourself. Eric Mack has been on his paperless challenge for weeks now and he has posed an interesting question on his blog- Is it legal to scan your books to read on a Tablet PC?.
This seems a simple question on the surface but he points out that when you research the copyright law and the definition of "fair use" it is in fact not a question with a straightforward answer.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher. Well, here's my view - it's all about what a jury would decide if it went to court. As part of my research today, I've contacted copyright. I don't know if I'll receive a response in time to include in my paper, but I wanted to be thorough nonetheless.
I've also received some interesting feedback from several people vis this blog, email, and other blogs. There's definately no easy answer. I'll blog more on this tomorrow. To copy some pages or maybe a chapter or two for your own use could be seen as fair Use, but as soon as you trade or sell your digital copy, you've riped the auther off!
The definition of fair use is the bugaboo in this issue. It means different things to different people, making it a mine field in situations like this. Anyone with children has heard this exchange many times:. It seems to me that neither publishers nor authors would object to the usage that Eric is discussing. I view scanning the book into a digital form for easier access to be firmly in the "fair use" camp. It is no different than copying or handwriting a single chapter of the book to take to today's lecture to avoid carrying the 8 pound textbook.
I don't think an argument can be made that this exceeds fair use. Even the evil RIAA doesn't go after legitimate consumers who make digital copies of music files they own, they go after people who distribute and download copyrighted material they do not own. This quandary of Eric's would go away if publishers of textbooks would release their material in ebook format, as long as it is a standard format like PDF and didn't prohibit the inking that Eric so desires. Many publishers do in fact offer their books in PDF format which eliminates this question entirely, but until they all do Eric will likely continue to scan his books and feel slightly guilty about it.
This is usually the end result of all attempts to limit fair use of copyrighted material. The legitimate consumer does what is needed to make legal copies but often feels bad about it. The copyright thieves do whatever they want to break DRM and profit illegally anyway. Again, both of these are based on the assumption that you and I have both paid for a physical copy of the book.
I would argue that any individual has a "fair use" right to make additional copies, even complete copies, of any legally owned work for their own personal use. The four fair use factors should even support this claim in any objective analysis. And, as such, it is a law only a judge could love. It allows them to do the "right thing" and back it up with a decision where the judge can write just about anything they want to justify their conclusion.
In reality, no one is ever going to take an individual to court for digitizing their own personal library. The question of whether one may make a complete copy of a copyrighted work for his own personal use seems settled: he may.
He may then mark up the book - either the original or his copy - again, for his own use. Whether he does this "as a student" or "as a management consultant" or even as a "crass commercial operator" appears to be irrelevant: the making of a copy for one's own private use seems clearly to be a "fair use" under the copyright law.
I draw this conclusion from a re-reading of the Michigan Data Services case One of the dissents disagreed vigorously with this idea and thought that since the student could clearly have made the copies, and all the copy service did was relieve them of the tedious work of copying, the decision should have gone the other way.
There are a couple of interesting subterranean issues here. One of them is privacy: It would be outrageous for a copyright holder to think that he, or the courts at his instance, might invade my home and snoop around to see what use I am making of a purchased copy of his material. But in the MDS case, the objectionable use involved people going to a commercial copy service - and so there were no privacy interests to consider.
The desire of the copyright owner to control every single possible use of his material interferes with the healthy discussion on the commons, and so a balancing of these interests has to be done carefully. The analysis in the world of books is very different from a similar analysis we've been trained to make in the software world.
In the early days of computing, we used to "buy" our software, but lately we have had to become mere "licensees" of the software. During the s Microsoft, realizing that "fair use" would allow purchasers of software to make copies for their own use, moved to "licensing" plus "activation" - the result being that you cannot make a useable copy of a software product without "hacking" deliberately.
Now virtually all major software vendors e. Adobe, Alias Wavefront have followed suit. This trend would not be possible in the publishing world because there is no computer required to read a printed page and once a buyer has possession of the page his use of it cannot be monitored. Of course, if the scanned page were to become an interactive tool in its own right - as for instance, if it were enhanced with fill-in fields and active buttons - it might itself become a "program" which could then be "licensed" rather than sold.
But then, the programmer would own the copyright in the program under the theory that the original was "transformed". I wonder then whether he would require permission from the copyright holder to incorporate the original page into his program or whether his use would be excused as a fair use.
The privacy issue may not be completely resolved yet -- even in the computer software field. The extent to which a computer user's privacy is compromised in today's world is offensive at least, to me : one solution to the problem would be to invalidate all shrink-wrap licenses as attempts to circumvent the copyright law -- an idea which many courts have struggled with but which has so far not carried the day. And the balancing of the social interests in the "commons" versus protecting private property was done well until the s when reproduction technologies started to shift the scales and make new kinds of distribution possible.
But notwithstanding all the subterranean issues, Eric's questions seems to me to have a clear answer today. You haven't converted it, because the original persists. You've copied it. Destroy the original and you can call it conversion. Re the previous comment: there have been several court decisions that indicate that you do not have to destroy the original. You have a right to make a personal copy for convenience and preservation.
Re Chris Maddocks: the statement on the inside cover page of your book is unambiguous, but it is an unambiguous statement of the publisher's claims, which is not the same thing as a statement of your rights. The publisher has no obligation to tell you of your actual rights, but they can't assume that you've waived the rights that copyright law gives to you unless you've knowingly entered into an explicit contract with them.
Merely purchasing the book at a retail store is unlikely to ever be considered an explicit contract with the publisher. Re Michael Sampson's two questions: The answer to 1 is probably yes. The answer to 2 is almost certainly no. The reason being that the publisher owns the rights to sell you an electronic copy of the book.
The fact that they may not be excercising that right does not mean that they are cedeing that right to someone else. Your fair use rights definitely do not include profiting from selling copies -- even to people who have the right to make their own copies.
Which is too bad, because I had the idea of setting up a service that would record legally-owned LPs to MP3s. People would have to bring their LPs in to prove ownership. Due to the amount of manual labor involved, however, the only way that such a service would be feasible is if it built up a library of MP3 versions of all the LPs that were brought in over time, and simply pulled files from the library whenever a patron brought in an LP that was already on file.
Now here's my question: two students can legally agree to share the expense of a book, buying just one copy. Some publishers might like to make this illegal, but it will never happen. If those two students then scan the book onto a single computer, which they also share, is that legal? I'm thinking it probably is not, because they now have the ability for one to be reading the electronic copy while the other reads the hard copy simultaneously.
Richard, I'm actually looking into the inside cover disclaimer, too. As far as I can tell, it's not a contract and the owner is not obligated to do anything about it any more than the publisher can say that the reader must be wearing a shirt and tie when reading the book.
I've seen and read about conversion services. Those that I had found require that you send in the book or tape, etc before they will convert it. As far as your point about two students legally sharing the expense of a book buy buying one copy. In your illustration, I don't think that would be a legal use if the objective was to effectively provide two concurrent "uses" of the book one scanned and one in print. I simply want to control how I use the book.
I compare this to the forward thinking - and much appreciated - software companies that allow me to install and use one copy of their product on my desktop and my laptop, provided that they are not in use concurrently.
Seems reasonable to me and I'm happy to do so. So far, I can only be in one place at a time anyway. It's a great book. I know what I'd do. I;d use the electronic copy for my course and then, after the course, I'd probably toss the electronic copy and keep the hard copy in my library. As much as I'm a high-tech guy, I do enjoy the feel of a book. As for my "dead-tree" library, as Marc Orchant likes to call it, I enjoy looking across the covers and titles.
I find it refreshing and inspiring. A person who is blind or otherwise unable to read printed text can have materials put into another form tape, braille, etc , and be able to access the text in that form. What about someone with a physical disability who can't lug 50 pounds of books around on campus? Why can't that person have a textbook scanned and then available on a computer?
They can. Personally, as long as the author is compensated for the print book, I feel that the method used to access that book is irrelevant. The content is being read in some form. As long as I delete the version on my laptop when I sell or give away the text, I should be able to have it on my computer.
Re: what it takes for a copyright owner to prevail: To clarify this point, from what I understand a copyright owner does not have to prove any harm to win an infringement case. They only need to prove that a copy was made that was not subject to one of the exceptions e.
Whether the copyright owner was harmed or if money was made or not, as I understand it, only comes into play when damages are calculated. The actual copying of the book is the potentially infringing act. Long answer : this basically comes down to whether it's legal to create a copy of copyrighted material.
Downloading vs. Streaming means viewing the content without creating a copy. Since you are downloading books, you are creating a copy, and copying laws apply. It is worth noting that even if you are able to stream the book instead of download it, it is still illegal, as a result of a landmark ruling by the European Court of Justice in the Filmspeler case. Article 2 of the EU's copyright directive establishes that books are protected material emphasis mine :.
Member States shall provide for the exclusive right to authorise or prohibit direct or indirect, temporary or permanent reproduction by any means and in any form, in whole or in part:. Such a situation cannot be regarded as satisfying the condition of the fair balance to be found between, on the one hand, the rights and interests of the recipients of the fair compensation and, on the other, those of those users.
The conclusion from all this is that, if the source of the copyrighted material acquired the material legally, then it is still possibly legal for you to make a copy of it other laws apply in that situation; what those laws are is outside the scope of this answer.
However if the source acquired the copyrighted material illegally, then it is illegal under all circumstances for you to make a copy of it. The next question is whether Libgen acquired the book legally. I'll consider it self-evident that for most books, they did not if they did, why would publishers be suing them?
Accordingly the conclusion is:. It is not legal to download copyrighted books from LibGen. You can still download if the copyright has expired e. See also: the answer to this question on the Law StackExchange , writen by someone more familiar with copyright law than me. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.
Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Legality of downloading books from websites such as Library Genesis Ask Question. Asked 3 years, 4 months ago. Active 1 year, 6 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. I found a great answer on Quora by an attorney, parts of which I'm going to quote: Yes, it is illegal to download "make copies" of material that is protected by copyright.
Improve this answer. JohnEye JohnEye 5 5 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges. If I go to jstor. All rights reserved. No other license mentioned. If I go to sci-hub. One of them is legal and one is not, apparently. I assume that there is an agreement between the University of Chicago Press and JStor, so they can distribute it on the internet, but not one between the University of Chicago Press and Sci-Hub. Anyway, it's a private contract between these two parties that I cannot see and audit.
Am I supposed to ask for this contract every time I download a paper? It isn't admirable. Those who aspire to the academic life should also aspire to high standards of conduct. Respect the people authors who enable your own work. Find ethical solutions to the problems you face, even when they are difficult. Buffy How do I advocate sneakiness? I actually tried quite hard to keep my personal views on the matter out of the answer and focus on the facts.
As long as you don't get caught, you are unlikely to get in trouble This is true for pretty much everything you can do that might get you in trouble. Show 7 more comments. Rodrigo de Azevedo Rodrigo de Azevedo 1 1 gold badge 4 4 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. Arthur Tarasov Arthur Tarasov 6, 17 17 silver badges 37 37 bronze badges.
While you say some interesting things here you are still advocating unethical behavior. Sadly it seems others here seem to agree that this is ok.
It is not. Buffy I agree with you and in a perfect world everyone would act ethically and be happy. But the market for textbooks where poor students are forced by state-regulated and partially state-funded universities to get deeper into debt to government to buy specific textbooks sounds pretty inefficient to me and far from ethical either.
Let people innovate and form a better market. Is a pay-first-read-later book the dead end for written knowledge? Hopefully not.
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