Quote:
Originally Posted by shalym
Interesting...so if I go to a pawn shop and buy something that later turns out to be stolen...am I committing a crime? What about if a seller puts a book onto Amazon that they don't have the rights to sell, and I buy it, am I committing a crime then?
Shari
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No. That's
detrimental reliance. The reasonable person has a reasonable right to
rely upon the representations of a business owner as to the legitimacy of the item being bought. You are
not required to establish the provenance of that lamp you're buying at John's Pawnshop.
However, if it's commonly and widely
known that John's Pawnshop is a receiver of stolen goods--and a reasonable person
could have or
should have known that--then, if it turns out that your lamp was indeed stolen property, there's a solid argument that you should have known, or at the very least made a good faith effort to be sure that it wasn't stolen.
I suppose that in this day and age, you could say that it's impossible for you to know that a Pawn Shop in a small or larger city is a questionable venture, but the counter-argument to that is, it's easier today than ever to establish the bona fides of businesses and individuals.
Anyway, back to eBooks--I think it's a pretty safe bet that if you search for
Love's Savage Fury online, and it's for sale for $7.99-$9.99 on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc., and
then you see it on Mike'sLegitimateFreeEBooks, for nothing--then a reasonable person should probably question the aforementioned legitimacy of old Mike there. And as Diap said, if you look around the table and can't spot the sucker (can't tell how the business is making money), then you're the sucker (you and your data is the product being sold).
A lot of these spam sites don't even have the book; they just want you to attempt to download it.
Hitch