[darryl]

The Australian law on this subject is embodied in our Copyright Act of 1968. There is little doubt that if you download an ebook still subject to Copyright without the permission of the Copyright owner than you have infringed the Copyright by the act of downloading it. Your copy is an infringing copy. This will not normally be a criminal offence but the Copyright owner can sue you. The question is do you have a good defence. Sub-section 115(3) is the provision relevant to this situation but provides only a partial defence. Basically, you will not be liable to damages if you can establish that you were not aware at the time of the infringement and had no reasonable grounds for suspecting at that time that you were infringing copyright. You may still be liable to account for any profits (not really relevant if you downloaded one copy for personal use), and may or may not incur legal costs. Section 116 allows an action for conversion or detention with a similar defence.

The uncertain part is the no reasonable grounds for suspecting. I would suggest that when you download using a torrent from the Pirate Bay or probably most other torrent sites, this defence will be difficult if not impossible to make out. But archive.org? A non-profit with a laudable public purpose?

I have not researched whether there are any relevant judicial decisions on this point, and am going to give my opinion based only on the wording. Don't rely on it. It is not legal advice. But I don't think you have a general duty to check that everything you download from archive.org is not covered by Copyright. On the other hand, something about a particular item may make it reasonable for you to check. Certainly very recent material like the latest new movie or book you download at your peril. The site is, after all, an archive, so one would not normally expect to see recent commercial products available on such a site. However, is it reasonable to expect every visitor to the site to check if an older work, often a well-known classic, is in the public domain in your country? Personally, I don't believe so, though I suspect this may change depending on what warnings the site gives and their placement.

Unlike Harry, I can't say I care very much. I would never encourage people to breach Copyright laws, but they have become in practice very bad laws. Copyright lengths are obscene, and of no public benefit. In fact this doesn't fulfill the laudable goal of encouraging new works because the actual author (or other creators) seldom receive any benefit. In fact, Copyright and other Intellectual Property laws, whilst they do some good, are also doing substantial harm in many areas. It is time for a fundamental review, assuming this is even possible given the vested interests involved.