Quote:
Originally Posted by RCR
Could someone tell me if this is illegal to do?
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It very much depends on where you live.
In my country downloading a text or a picture, or other copyrighted work from internet is not illegal. Unless it is a child pornography or something like that.
On the other hand, distributing the work, that you do not have the right to distribute is a copyright infringement. It still is not crime, but you can be sued by a copyright holder. You will be made to stop distributing and you might end up paying damages to the copyright holder.
Please note that most of the popular P2P programs (like KaZaA, Gnutella, bittorrent ... ) also distribute the parts of the file you have already downloaded, even if the download is not finished yet. So when you use bittorrent to "just download" a file, you *are* distributing.
Imagine a situation.
I build a successful website. The site is visited by ten thousand people a day. One day I publish a copyrighted text, or a picture, for which I do not have the right to distribute. BAM! In a single day I have made 10000 people to do something illegal.
This does not sound right, does it?
Or, I own a radio station and I play a song I have no right to play. Have I just made seveal thousand people to commit copyright infringement?
Quote:
Originally Posted by RCR
Does the act of converting the file, and putting it on my Sony make it illegal?
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Again, it depends on where you live.
If you happen to belong to those 5% of world population that live in a country where 90% of all lawyers of the world make their hard-earned honest living
, you have just, thanks to DMCA, become a CRIMINAL.
In reality I can not imagine a situation where somebody takes your reader, examines its contents and checks if the file you are reading can be obtained legally.
Unless
, that is,
the situation is that you are a mega copyright infringer (**), hosting 100 000 copyrighted works on your computer and serving 10000 books per day using several p2p programs and an OmenServe bot on an IRC channel and "Publishing Industry Association of America" is collecting evidence against you.
(**) please note that I have not used word Pirate.
DISCLAIMER:
I Am Not A Lawyer so all the above is only my personal opinion.
I do not think that you should download books illegally instead of purchasing them or borrowing them from your local library.
Even better, I think you should primarily download and promote works that are available for download legally and for free.