Reading books online

[JL2011]

Hi,

K, I’ve seen discussions about the legality of online music, movies, etc. But what about books? Religious books, more specifically?

For example, there is a Facebook page named “Catholic - Universal Church”, and I see it posted the book The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis, which I wanted to read, but then I wondered about the legality of it being posted for free.

How can I ever know when a book was legally uploaded to the web?

 

[nickybr38]

Hmm… well, for one you can look for online ‘libraries’ that only upload free for use books. Books whose copyrights have run out, basically.

Reading a book online would be the same as listening to a CD online that you haven’t bought, I would think. It only makes sense.

So I would suggest avoiding publicly shared books expect in cases where they’re uploaded to ‘free use libraries’.

 

[juno24]

Keep in mind that many, many works are now in the public domain, meaning they are completely free of copyright laws. Here is a handy chart for the time frame used in the US to determine when something becomes part of the public domain.