Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
<Snip/>you may wish to check the legitimacy of a book that you find on the site before you download it. If, as some people on this thread have indicated, they feel that this is "not their job", and they don't wish to do so, then that is of course their personal choice to make.
<Snip/> quite obviously pirated books appear among the search results returned by the site. Some people may find that warning useful. Those who do not are free to ignore it.
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I've cut a couple of bits.
Now you know I agree with you about copyright in general, and people should avoid obviously illegal (assuming it is illegal to download in your country) material.
The problem with sites like archive.org is that they are perfectly legal sites (used by yourself), condoned by the country it is hosted in (which is itself anti-copyright-infringement) so your average man on the street would assume it is legal.
You can no longer tell if a free book is legal or not by publication date because there is so much free (promotional) ebooks that are obviously not PD everywhere (Google Play, Kobo, Amazon etc all have free newly published ebooks), you can blame Cory Doctorow or the Baen Free Library if you like
I have Ice Age and Gravity as free movies given to me by Google Play, I assume they are legit and promo items but I didn't do any kind of check (let alone exhaustive), I have also downloaded free music and ebooks from them, Amazon, Google et all. All legal all legit all currently in copyright, fine, I can (probably) tell if a legitimate site is hosting a lot of infringing titles, but I can promise you my mother can't.
Went on a bit, so if that was TL;DR for anyone, a quick summary.
If the site is legit but has dodgy stuff on it as well, go after the site because your average person - used to so many legal free downloads wont have a clue.
Edit - forgot to ask what method you would use to quickly check if something was a promotional freebie or uploaded illegally?