Quote:
Originally Posted by cmbs
If my eyes are not deceiving me, then I am very surprised and happy about this.
Thank you very much for actually reading what I said and obviously giving it some thought and coming up with . . . what I said! And thank you for posting it too.  |
Great!
And now that we're on the same page, I suppose we could revisit the
answers I gave to your original questions -- which questions we now agree that we agree about.
Granted, those answers were formulated under my mistaken apparently impression that you were referring to the specific links in the post that preceded your questions, so they don't, themselves answer your intended
general questions, but I think the process I went through to formulate them does answer part of what we now agree you were asking, namely how do you know whether the offered free downloads are legal?
That answer being that you just have to check for yourself. Yes, they can be sneaky little so and sos, and pretend that what they've got is legal when it isn't, and there's really no way you can be
absolutely sure that a site is legit, but a certain amount of due diligence is in order, no matter what.
In my experiences dealing with such matters as a moderator here (i.e. checking linked sites to see if they seem to be legit or not) I've found that most sites that aren't concerned with the legality of what they're passing don't bother to pretend that they are. If they claim to be legit, and invite take-down notices, they're probably at least
trying to
be legit.
Of course knowing a bit extra helps on that front too: for example, if they've got downloads of books that have never been released as e-versions, they're simply not legit no matter what.
Harry Potter springs to mind as the most obvious case in point.
While I
have had some experience dealing with identifying such sites, I want to be clear that I don't consider myself any sort of ultimate authority on the matter, generally, we mods discuss sites that seem to be suspect and one or another of us will notice something on the ones that aren't legit, it's kind of a collaborative effort for us.