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?
They aren’t going after the hoarders, they are going after the sharers.
viewable for free online
If you are viewing it on your computer, you have already downloaded it.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.already downloaded onto your computer and can be found in the browser cache
Exactly.
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.
It might be illegal to post it without permission, but you can download it all you damn well please and they can’t stop you. Unless it’s like government top secret something or other. In that case you probably don’t want it anywhere near your computer and should probably tell somebody where you found it.
Warthunder discord server lol
Astonishing listening to the news coverage of that story where the anchors were reading some terminally online nonsense from the teleprompter about Discord “Thug Shakers”
should probably tell somebody where you found it
Somebody, as in your lawyer. Who can then inform the correct authorities, while making sure you don’t become their scapegoat.
Everything on the Internet can be downloaded, copied etc
Mind posting a guide on how you tinker with those inspect element tools?
(Sorry for the late response.) Well it depends a lot on the site. Since I focus on books and scholarly articles, the ideal way is to find the URL of the original PDF. The website might show you just individual pages as images, but it might hide the link to the PDF somewhere in the code. Alternatively, you might just obtain all the URLs of the individual page images, put them all into a download manager, and later bundle them all into a new PDF. (When you open the “inspect element” window, you just have to figure out which part of the code is meant to display the pages/images to you.) Sometimes the PDFs and page images can be found in your browser cache, as I mention in the OP. There’s quite some variety among the different sites, but with even the most rudimentary knowledge of web design you should be able to figure out most of them.
If need help with ripping something in particular, DM me and I’ll give it a try.
Right click -> inspect element (Q) works.
You can also press F12.
And if right click is blocked, on Firefox holding SHIFT will unblock right click. There is also a plugin that does this for you.
Often websites will put an invisible element in front of the content to intercept this trick, but you can navigate through the elements to find the one they were trying to obfuscate.
Also you can just block elements you right click on in Firefox (though this might be an option added by an add-on). If there’s hidden elements you just need to go through each of those until you can click on the one you want directly (and you can tell by what is highlighted in the inspect element mode).
You can also hit delete in inspect element mode to remove that element. You can also edit whatever you want in the element. Makes me wish it existed back when I was doing more web dev work, would have made things a lot easier when debugging.
deleted by creator
Not true in the US, but commonly stated by Americans like it’s fact.
That sadly isn’t true everywhere. Here in Germany (and I suspect large parts of the EU) downloading/streaming copyrighted content without license used to be a grey area but has been completely illegal for a few years now.
Of course, VPNs are perfectly legal.
If something is in the public domain, there is no copyright covering it, so you should make as many copies as you feel like. Many public domain books are posted on the Internet Archive, where you can easily download them in various formats. Then you won’t have to work hard to get the data. Public domain artwork, likewise, is often available on Wikimedia Commons.
AFAIK web scraping (the act of grabbing and downloading any data you see available on the internet) isn’t illegal, and I would assume downloading PDFs provided to you online would fall under that. Since it is copyrighted it would probably be illegal to share it, though.
What if I web scraped something like a pirate site full of all the good media?
If you scraped a pirate site and stored a bunch of links to copyrighted content you’d probably be fine, actually using those links to download or share copyrighted content is what’s illegal. It’d be like buying the stuff to make a bomb or drugs, but then not making any bombs or drugs.
That being said, while not necessarily illegal, I wouldn’t want authorities to find my bomb and drug ingredients, or my scraped piracy links, as I’d probably have some 'splainin to do.
(Not a lawyer)
Why can I scrape the content from one place and not another?
Who said that you can’t scrape content from the other place?
If you scraped a pirate site and stored a bunch of links to copyrighted content you’d probably be fine,
If you’re referring to the last line, I say I wouldn’t want authorities to find it because I don’t want to have to explain it. I’m 99% sure someone would not just store links to a bunch of pirated content for fun, they probably have accessed said pirated content, now you have to explain to the authorities why you have links to pirated content without implicating yourself in copyright infringement.
Like I said, probably fine, I just wouldn’t want the hassle if I somehow got caught.
Why links and not video?
Sorry man, I’m not exactly sure what you’re asking.
If you are able to load the content on your computer without infringing copyright laws, you’re allowed to circumvent whatever the website has in place to store whatever data you would like from whatever website you would like, regardless of the nature of the site, so long as the content is legal (is not CP) and again not being presented in a way that infringes aforementioned copyright laws.
If you’re asking why the copyright laws exist, I can’t really help you with that one.
This. In a case around LinkedIn courts ruled that in the US it’s legal to scrape publicly available data. The company doing the scraping was selling that data to corporate customers, but ultimately use might depend on the information you’re accessing and under what permissions. (Not a lawyer)
According to the big tech its ok if you’re training large language model with it.
My brain is essentially an enormous language model.
Unironically yes, you would not know who Spiderman was without viewing a copyrighted work demonstrating what he looks like, and now you understand while generative AI fundamentally has to ingest copyrighted works.
You’re confusing the law that applies for the ruling class with the one that applies to common people
There’s a law for the ruling class? I always figured they gotta just cut their political buddies in.
If you can see it, you’ve already downloaded it. You’re just chosing to retain it.
As with everything with the law, it depends.
In Australia, distribution is the illegal part, seeding/sharing is where they get you. Not the actual download itself.
It’s usually not a question of legality, but efficiency.
It’s easy and efficient to bust someone for seeding, but busting hundreds for the odd file you can prove they downloaded is expensive and takes forever.
busting hundreds for the odd file you can prove they downloaded is expensive and takes forever.
And might well not be legally possible if all you have is an IP address, because lest we forget:
An IP is not an ID
Ask the AI companies who scraped my sites while the media companies were DCMA-ing everything in sight and working with enforcement paid for with publuc funds to prosecute/persecute the “pirates”.
It’s ridiculous that Homeland Security is spending resources taking down pirate sites. That’s a department specifically created to prevent terrorism, and instead they’re operating as Pinkertons for broadcasting companies.
You wouldn’t download a car…
Nooo never…
You’re right! Babies take way too much work to raise properly.
You might not.
The laws are bullshit and shouldn’t be followed. Information should be free to all
I never said I follow the law, I’m just wondering what the law says ;)
