Quote:
Originally Posted by NatCh
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. |
On the contrary, I find a lot of illegal download sites do have copyright notices on them. They often say they're legal because of Fair Use laws, but not always. Sometimes it's just a straightforward copyright notice. Sometimes they even write up something trying to look impressive.
To me the main question is
what are they distributing and how do they have the right to distribute it? As you said, some books are obviously illegal. Some books are obviously legal like Public Domain books. But why does any one blog or similar website have the right to distribute a lot of still in copyright ebooks from a lot of authors? MOST DON'T. Booksellers presumably do. Collaborative sites where authors go to publish their work do.
Even if an author is giving a book away for free, that doesn't make it legal for everyone else to do the same. You've got to read the specific copyright notice on each book and if there's none - then nobody has permission to distribute. It's something that isn't automatic, but has to be given.
Individual author sites will have the work of the one author, and usually a lot more from them, like regular blog posts, announcements, etc.
I think if you do want to be careful then you do need to have a little knowledge because some of these sites will try to fool you if you don't know any better. A copyright notice is not assurance that the distribution is legal. It can be hard to tell. If I'm suspicious, I leave a site alone.