Lately I have been conflicted with the thought of downloading PDFs because of copyright. I am sure it is not just me, but I don’t want to feel like a thief. Authors who are alive and selling their books, I buy them! But the classics or if it is a dead author I sort of feel like it is okay? For an example, if you do a quick google search of Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography, 1984, Moby Dick, then the PDF is right there to download. I get stuck between buying it or just getting the PDF. How do you feel about the situation?
by Both_Bid_88
31 Comments
forget pdf man, go epub 👌
If they are true classics, most of the time they have been put out for free download everywhere. I’m not sure of the proper terminology, but they are basically made accessible to everyone for free due to the fact that they are such classics.
Personally, if a book has been out of print for at least a decade and prices for that book are at least double what it used to be then I’d say it’s morally alright. I only use pdfs if either the author has approved it or if the book is long out of print.
check out Project Gutenberg, website where they publish thousands of free ebooks in public domain. [gutenberg.org](https://gutenberg.org)
I feel this way about the library. What I end up doing is reading the digital copy from the library and if I love it, then I buy a physical copy to keep on my shelf as a trophy/reminder and to support a work I love.
Are you asking our opinion on the *ethics* of downloading books?
One’s opinion on if downloading is legal or not is pretty irrelevant…if it has an active copyright and the author hasn’t given permission, then it’s illegal to download without buying. That’s not an opinion but a fact. If the copyright is expired and it has entered the public domain, then it is fine. Saying they have a differing opinion on the law isn’t going to stop someone from being prosecuted for the crime.
Or are you asking if we think downloading books should be legal?
Have you checked to see if you can access ebooks through your local library through Libby (formerly OverDrive) or Hoopla? Then you can do it guilt free if it’s bothering you.
There’s no opinion. It’s definitely illegal. Whether or not you or I care is a different story.
Why would there even be a question of whether you should or should not download public domain books? Like, that baffles me.
There is no moral or ethical quandary here.
http://www.standardebooks.com has beautifully formatted epubs. PDF files are suboptimal.
Or just use Libby to check them out from your local library.
Get the free Libby app and read books from your library guilt-free.
Well for one, lots of books are no longer covered by copyright. There are many places where those are hosted and available for free, 100% legal and legitimate. Moby Dick, for example, is an example of such a book.
As for books still under copyright, it’s really a personal moral choice you have to make. No real use getting into too much discussion here, as there are far too many people here that take the letter of the law as also the absolute authority in moral judgment. Suffice it to say that I think your instinct that “if the author is dead, it feels okay” is correct in my book, among other cases.
If you don’t need the book (like really need it) then it’s never OK. There are plenty of library apps or audiobooks apps you can use.
For books you have to get for school etc. Those are an abusive industry. I can’t fault someone for downloading. In reality most of those books should be what, 40 bucks max? Not 300. If you can buy a DnD book for that price there’s no reason the same form factor book on Calculus should be 10x the cost. None at all.
I think that companies tend to do a game theory calculation where they put all their effort into coercing people to buy the books at the dictated price and then killing secondhand via codes etc. But they don’t consider that people may just… not choose to participate in the market. Companies need to be competing for consumer choice or the system fundamentally breaks down. In college textbook markets… neither occurs since the purchases are mandatory and unilateral.
Public domain books are fair game as far as I’m concerned.
It’s kinda crazy to me to see people post other ways to get books for free while still implying piracy harms authors. If borrowing books doesn’t harm others, secondhand books don’t harm authors, piracy doesn’t either.
Authors are underpaid due to deep systemic issues within publishing, not because someone online shared their ebook copy.
I don’t want pirated books and I don’t want to work that hard to research, so I just use the library.
The public domain books are free. You can even get them for free from Amazon itself. A lot of digital only publishers are trying to make a quick buck from these public domain books, but legit free editions exist for nearly all of them if you know to search for it.
Confused. If it is still under copyright, it’s not a matter of feeling like it is stealing, it is. If it is in the public domain, download away. It sounds like you’re talking about the public domain books and they’re in the public domain, owned by the public, of which you are one.
If the author is dead, and all the profits go solely to the publishing house that owns the copyright, I say fuck them and download or pirate that shit.
Now if the publishing houses instead took deceased authors book sales and gave the proceeds (minus some fees) to the descendants of the author, then we’d be speaking a different tune.
I am an author. Public Domain is free, do as you wish.
Please do not pirate or share books that are not in the public domain. It is taking our art without compensation or permission. There is rarely anything we can do about it, but it still is something most of us consider stealing. Ultimately it is between you and your moral compass.
If you want good free stories, Top Web Fiction has a great list. Some web serials are equivalent to 30+ traditional novels, and they are either free or what you feel is fair through Patreon.
Mowgli was raised by wolves, Tarzan was raised by apes, I was raised by several libraries.
I live in a 3rd World country. Here the price of ‘The Book Thief’ is my whole months salary. So I Pirate. Poverty can’t keep me from reading.
I download from Z library. I figure I’m just saving myself a trip to the actual library. It’s close enough to the same thing.
I’d like to weigh in on the piracy debate as somebody who has only recently gotten back into reading in the last couple years. Though audiobooks and pdfs I’ve managed to read over 200 books in these last two years.
Without Piracy I would not have been able to afford or access many of these books.
To me reading is not only my top hobby, but one of the key ways in which I grow and develop as a person.
While I know there is a moral problem with Piracy, especially for authors who for the most part are not wealthy individuals and would benefit more profoundly from a purchase. I know that without Piracy I wouldn’t have read those books, let alone bought them. And I would have missed the benefits gained from reading them.
The utilitarian in me, accepts this very selfishness approach
If the book is public domain, do as you wish.If the book is not, then downloading without paying is stealing. It’s not lending or borrowing or second-hand selling because none of these activities produce additional copies. It’s STEALING. It’s as much STEALING as producing fake branded shirts is.
(I make an exception for science books and papers. For the research behind I have already paid with my taxes, and the law of my country does entitle me to be informed about the results of the research I have funded for free. Sorry, Elsevier, but you’re a fraud!)
Legality and “feel” are different qualities. I can’t answer for other countries, so I’ll answer for the US.
The short answer is that distributing a copyrighted work without permission and without an exception like “fair use” (which you would want to look up) is legally not permitted. You would need the author to give you permission, the license to give you permission, or a valid fair use rationale to feel “legal” in downloading or distributing a PDF.
Many older works are in public domain though, like Moby Dick. So are newer texts where the creator has decided to release their work for use – Tom Lehrer’s musical works are an example. So the short answer is to just look for the copyright info and try to buy or check out a copy rather than downloading it if it’s within copyright.
I pirate, buy, and borrow many, many, books. I pirate mostly when I want an epub book very quickly with no hassle, or if I dislike the author personally. Don’t really care if it’s right or wrong because the stakes are low either way.
You can loan from the elibrary
Anything published before 1928 is in the public domain and is not protected by copyright. You could publish them yourself and sell copies if you wanted.
When you download books that are still protected by copyright, you’re breaking the law but you’re not actually stealing anything. That’s just the language publishers use to make you feel like a thief.
Well, if it’s a very small write, who depends on sales for a living, then I’d want to pay.
But for anything else, fuck ’em.
Those are public domain books meaning the author or authors family chose not to renew their copyright and make more money off of them. It also means if someone makes a audiobook of said work it can also be free to the public. That’s what public domain means. Project Gutenberg is a legitimate website that is not illegal and any way. You can get most for free on Amazon or kobo or relatively cheap as well. The audiobooks on YouTube are not getting flagged for copyright so it’s totally legal.
The original edition of 1984 is still protected by copyright in the US and will be until 2044 (95 years after its publication in 1945). It recently lost protection in the UK.
The others should be in the public domain unless they are newer editions or translations.
That isn’t really a matter of opinion.
As to whether it is ethical to download those books without paying, I’d say it is. To me, the purpose of copyright is to incentivize production of creative works. So, I wouldn’t even worry about the ethics of breaching copyright law to read a PDF or epub of 1984. Orwell and his descendants have already attained plenty of financial success to incentivize artistic creation.
Where copyright protection is more important and where it is therefore potentially unethical to pirate a book is with newer books by less successful authors. When deciding whether they can afford to forego traditional work to write a book, authors aren’t worried about the possibility that they’ll be successful beyond their wildest dreams only for their estate to lose a few sales to piracy. They are worried that they won’t make enough to support themselves and their families. Those are the people it’s important not to hurt.