question about legalness of downloading articles, ebooks, etc.

[Iwillheal]

Like I downloaded an ebook of a book I already own merely because of convenience since I wanted to copy/paste a long quote. Then suddenly I realized I was on the university computer and was not sure if what I was doing would be considered officially "legal." I then asked an assistant librarian and she said this time it was okay, but....She did not finish her sentence but that "but" sounded big, like "Kim Kardashian butt" big, based on her shaking her head and all. Then the other day I couldn't find an old philosophy book in the library and did not want to purchase it from Amazon because it was surprisingly expensive (over 200 bucks) and luckily I found a college website that had readings online in pdf format and a scanned photocopy of the exact chapter I was looking for (again, for a couple of quotes). Is there a website or book or something that has very clear guidelines about this sort of thing? Man, last few of weeks I've been wasting my time and falling behind, and I'm barely keeping it together so the last thing I need is getting chastised for downloading something illegal. It's raining, my favorite movie star Tom Cruise and his lovely wife Katie separated, life is not getting any easier for me. 😀

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[Qwerk]

Re: the e-book, what kind of site are you downloading it from? Is it a site like Google Books, which gives you free previews and out-of-print full texts and is perfectly legal? Project Gutenberg, which gives you legal copies of out-of-print books? Or a shady peer-to-peer site?

Re: the shorter readings, my college web site says this:

The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair use that user may be liable for copyright infringement.

So if you're downloading a few legally-posed pages of a printed book from course web site, I think it's fine.

 

[Iwillheal]

Both. One was a p2p site but the ebook of a book I already own, and it did certainly make it more convenient to have the book around for the quotations I was going to use. And the other case was from a course website. I guess it's best I don't risk it and stick to legit websites. Not worth it. Thanks Qwerk.

 

[Qwerk]

Some schools discipline students when they get copyright violation notices from content producers. It's pretty easy to track who downloaded what if you're on your school's network. Definitely something to consider if you're downloading from these sites on a school computer using your own account.