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?
Who said that you can’t scrape content from the other place?
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.