Quite frequently I come across scanned books that are viewable for free online. For example, the publisher put them there (such as preview chapters), a library (old books from their collection that are in public domain), etc. Since I like hoarding data, and the online viewers that are used to present the book to me might not be very practical, I frequently try to download the books one way or another. This requires toying with the “inspect element” tool and various other methods of getting the images/PDF. Now, all that I access is what is, well, accessible; I don’t hack into the servers or something. But - the stuff is meant to be hidden from the normal user. Does that act of hiding the material, no matter how primitive and easily circumvented, mean that I’m not allowed to access it at all?
I suppose ripping a public domain book is no big deal, but would books under copyright fare differently?
Mainly I’m asking out of curiosity, I don’t expect the police to come visit me for ripping a 16th century dictionary.
Note: I live in EU, but I’d be curious to hear how this is treated elsewhere too.
Edit: I also remembered a funny trick I noticed on one site - it allows viewing PDFs on their website, but not downloading, unless you pay for the PDF. But when you load the page, even without paying, the PDF is already downloaded onto your computer and can be found in the browser cache. Is it legal to simply save the file that is already on your computer?
I’d say if the copyright holder says you’re not allowed to then you’re not. It’s piracy.
People will tell you that you’ve already downloaded the data so saving it is fundamentally, technically no different, but that doesn’t matter to the law, it’s still piracy.
Like yeah, it’s absurd and pointless and anti-consumer and anti-knowledge and unenforceable and unsustainable, but that’s copyright. It’s always been that way.
Copyright destroys culture and piracy is our ethical duty in the face of that. The only reason to care about it is so you don’t get caught.
What about AI? Don’t they basically do exactly this.
Sure, and I’d say that’s piracy too. I wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t also being siloed into private hands to enrich the wealthy and screw the rest of us.