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Originally Posted by DeusExMe
Supposing a person such as myself made an honest effort to live his life humbly before the God he serves, trying to do the right thing. This person would be adverse to downloading files of copyright material which he had not purchased. However, suppose the person owned a physical copy of a book and desired the book in Electronic format. In that case, is it ethical for the person to download the electronic text without purchasing it?
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That is for you to decide. It's certainly illegal. Whether or not it's unethical is a question that only you can answer. My personal view - and I'm certainly not condoning piracy - is that where an eBook is available commercially, one should purchase it. In cases where no commercial eBook is available, but one has purchased a paper copy of the book, it's down to the moral values of the individual to decide whether any "harm" is done to anyone by downloading that eBook, but don't kid yourself that it's legal - it ain't.
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In preparing for my Reader to arrive I have perused the selection of books which many of you have done such wonderfully hard work in making available on this site. I noticed that some (i.e. David Copperfield, Pride and Prejudice, etc...) are illustrated. Now I know little about copyright law...only that the book must be at least 95 years old or published before 1920something to be Public Domain. So do illustrations (which presumably came after the text of the work itself) negate the copyright free status of the book?
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In the case of the Dickens, the illustrations are original (all except two of Dickens' books were originally published with illustrations) and hence contemporary with the text. In the case of the Austen, the illustrations are not contemporary with the text but are from later out-of-copyright 19th century editions.
All the books in the "Downloads" section of this site are out of copyright SOMEWHERE in the world. One can easily check (from the date of death of the author and the date of publication of the book) whether they are in the public domain for you personally, should you be concerned. Certainly, however, the Dickens and the Austen are out of copyright for everybody.