Ask Lemmy

26924 readers

1621 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

121

Is it illegal to download things that aren't meant to be downloaded? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/asklemmy

57 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Vipsu 54 points 2 months ago (2 children)

According to the big tech its ok if you're training large language model with it.

[–] lugal 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

You're confusing the law that applies for the ruling class with the one that applies to common people

[–] Mango 2 points 2 months ago

There's a law for the ruling class? I always figured they gotta just cut their political buddies in.

[–] Anticorp 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My brain is essentially an enormous language model.

[–] SlothMama 4 points 2 months ago

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.