Are ebooks legal, and if so can I give links to them? :whistle:
Just a question, don't get mad at me. :blink:

I guess that depends on the book.


A pdf version of Lord of the Rings would be illegal (I think), but seeing as WendyMaree is a writer of EBooks for children... She should be able to tell you more about this world. It's her job, afterall :ok:

Well, the book has to be quite old for the copyright to have expired. For reference, this is what Project Gutenberg bases its work on.

EDIT: Of course there are also those that have been freely distributable to begin with.

As far as I am concerned, any books also are under copyright laws. This mean that it should be exactly the same thing for Ebooks than for Abadonware: if it's not freeware and/or permitted to share it freely on the web by the writer then it is illegal.

What about H.P. Lovecraft's storys?
Written in 1902-1936

i think that may depend on the copyright laws in your country. in britain, i think the time before the copyright protection will run out is 45/50 years

Yay. They aren't illegal.

i can't be 100% sure its correct, i'd check just to make sure

I am in the U.S. where they are much shorter.

There are legal ebooks and illegal ones. There are authors who only write ebooks and these are sold through epublishers on the web. Twilight Times Books is one of these - my epublisher. These are legal, of course. I think nearly every book published today has an ebook version available. These are legal if the ebook version has been arranged with the consent of authors and their publishers and they receive royalties from the sales. The biggest online seller of legal ebooks is Fictionwise.

http://www.fictionwise.com

Fictionwise is a distributor of about every ebook that's ever been printed...including a couple of mine.

Some ebooks are distributed by the author for free - usually from their websites - not through epublishers or distributors where you'd have to pay for them.

There are also groups on the web who exchange pirated copies of ebooks....just like pirated software and games can be exchanged. Only ebooks that are sold without the consent of the author are illegal.

Phew...long answer :blink: :)

What about H.P. Lovecraft and other dead writers. And if it's available for free.

Yes, these can be legal. It depends. If the copyright holders - or publishers - decide to re-release the stories of deceased authors as ebooks, then this is fine. These official releases will be available from online sources that are reputable, such as legal distributors such as Fictionwise, EbookAd , or from an epublisher. Usually illegal copies of books that have been made into ebooks or pirated copies of ebooks are given away through online Yahoo groups or places where you can download pirated stuff or private websites.

EDIT
There are many places that give ebooks away for free - and quite legally - like the Guttenborg project and Black Mask Books. It's all to do with copyright, whether the copyright has expired or not. If it has, then the book enters the public domain.

Darn it. Guess I'll have to buy them in a bookstore then. :not_ok:
Lovecraft better not be illegal. That would stink. :ranting: Maybe. :whistle:

Fawful, I did a search for Lovecraft on Project Gutenberg, (a reputable site with legal ebooks) but none of his titles came up there. But from the look of the huge number of sites that have copies of Lovecraft's work, I think it'd be a safe bet that his work is no longer copyright. But I'm no expert on this. Usually the copyright passes about fify years from the death of the author...or something like that. I'm not really sure. I think his books were published around 1920, so it's probably safe to say that Lovecraft's books are in the public domain. It can be a difficult area to know for sure. With the Peter Pan books by James Barrie I've heard the copyright is still held by a London Children's hospital.

Official Lovecraft Homepage (links part here)
You can check if there're any books for free, legally, there. As for all books, I doubt it. Found some sites that let you download it for free, but they were in formats for pocket pcs and PalmOs. Besides that, there're sites like this. My guess is that some are for free, and others aren't, how strange it may be.

EBooks I never heard of such a thing. Are all books put into this form?

Would books that aren't sold be illegal? I been looking a for a trilogy for a long time now and I can't find them anywhere in the shops.

Ebooks stand for Electronic Books (same principle than Email; Electronic Mail). They are basically a text file, usually the digitized form of a already existing paper book.

There was eBook reader from Adobe, where you just select the file, and reader does it's job. :D

When we talking about eBooks, are we talking about PDF format? :blink:

EDIT: eBook Reader

Ebooks with images would probably be of pdf format, but I don't think it is necessary to be called such. Only a text file is way enough.

Project Guteberg's got .txt ebooks :whistle: Turned the txt version of Sun Tzu's "The Art Of War" into pdf once to be able to print it as booklet. Was one annoying job :not_ok:

As it says here:

from http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/fiction/a.htm

They still are under copyright. Although it's pretty easy to find all kinds of texts online. As far as I know, HP Lovecraft only wrote short stories.