Well, it might be off topic but I guess it is the right place to start a discussion since we have lots of published authors in this forum and its high time people know about this.
First Question.
If I am searching for a particular book say book "sample" in google, it comes out with a website saying free download "sample" book. and I am getting flawless download, how do I know its pirated or legal? not only me many people in my university whether they read or not, they have about thousands of ebooks in hard drive
Second Question.
If I am receiving one ebook from my friend, how do I identify its genuineness?, even my friend doesn't know whether its genuine or pirated?
Planning to delete all pirated ebooks if it is, coz its similiar to stealing, can anyone guide me on this??
If you receive an ebook from a friend, it is pirated. Your friend pirated it by giving it to you, regardless of whether he paid for it or received it as a pirated copy. If you download a book for free from Google or somewhere else and that same book costs money on Amazon, that is a good indication it is pirated. There are exceptions to this, because sometimes authors put their books in the public domain. Very old books such as Robinson Crusoe are in the public domain and are usually free. I don't know about other countries, but in the USA there are millions of books in public libraries in paper and ebook format you can just check out and read for free, so there is not much point in pirating. I download from the library and read many ebooks on my Kindle, it is free, effortless, and the author/publisher gets paid.
With stealing one can argue the value of an item is not lowered, by pirating the value of an "item" is set to zero. When someone steals my stuff it angers me a lot, but when someone pirates my stuff it makes me completely mad because the person values my effort and time at exactly zero. And that hurts. Far more than stealing. I can buy item when it was stolen but I can't buy back my time.
As for the books you get, yes, very likely those are indeed pirated books.
dmjlambert:
If you receive an ebook from a friend, it is pirated. Your friend pirated it by giving it to you, regardless of whether he paid for it or received it as a pirated copy.
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I don't know about other countries, but in the USA there are millions of books in public libraries in paper and ebook format you can just check out and read for free, so there is not much point in pirating. I download from the library and read many ebooks on my Kindle, it is free, effortless, and the author/publisher gets paid.
Why would it be pirated? Assume I bought a physical book, read it and pass it on. Is that illegal? Doesn't the same apply for ebooks / pdf etc?
If a library has a book and you borrow it that would be illegal as well if I follow your thinking. Does the money that you pay when you borrow the book go to the author?
sterretje:
Why would it be pirated? Assume I bought a physical book, read it and pass it on. Is that illegal? Doesn't the same apply for ebooks / pdf etc?
If a library has a book and you borrow it that would be illegal as well if I follow your thinking. Does the money that you pay when you borrow the book go to the author?
Your analogy is ridiculous and so often used by people who see nothing wrong with pirating.
With digital files you never really "return" the item, do you?
A paper book has inherited limited usage - by being physical item that safeguard its fair use. Multiple people cannot read the same physical book all at the same time. You can't lend the book to multiple people at the same time, nor you can lend it to too many people one by one (they need time to read it first before they can return it, the book will not survive etc..).
Nothing like that limits digital copy. Not even close. You can buy a digital book then immediately "lend" that digital book to your 10 friends and each can "lend" immediately the book to each of their 10 friends etc... if there is nothing wrong with this approach then you can easily see that in a day everyone in the world who would be interested in the book will have his own "borrowed" copy and that's all there is for the author, one lousy sale to the first idiot who made it free.
People always legitimize this by saying that they didn't take anything from the author by pirating their stuff because they would not pay for it anyway in first place and then they turn and readily make this thing available for likewise minded others and lowering the value to virtually zero.
Funny thing is, it is all "fair play" until someone "borrows" your stuff you expect to get pay for and make it available for free to everyone else.
I don't think it's a ridiculous compare. Yes, your description is correct that I can lend it to 10 people. But I don't; if I give the ebook away (to one person !), I delete it from my machine.
So don't tell me that I'm pirating.
What you're comparing it to is:
buy a book, make a copy and give that away.
That is not what I was referring to.
sterretje:
If a library has a book and you borrow it that would be illegal as well if I follow your thinking. Does the money that you pay when you borrow the book go to the author?
Libraries have special licensing and pricing with he publisher. The book expires from the reader device after a period of time, a limited number of copies are checked out at any one time, and the book wears out after a certain number of checkouts and must be re-purchased with more tax money.
sterretje:
I don't think it's a ridiculous compare. Yes, your description is correct that I can lend it to 10 people. But I don't; if I give the ebook away (to one person !), I delete it from my machine.
So don't tell me that I'm pirating.
I don't know if the licensing of a typical ebook allows for deleting from a computer or reading device and passing on to somebody else. The book was sold with a license for use, and pricing that accounts for a specific use and lifetime. I'm sure the license is huge with all kinds of legal talk.
Oscarko is right in one thing: it is extremely easy copy and distribute digital book. Paper books weight much, take much space etc. It takes much effort to create and distribute paper books. As long as digital books cost the same as paper books the seller plays "unfair" and I am not willing to support it by paying for the digital copy.
dmjlambert:
I don't know if the licensing of a typical ebook allows for deleting from a computer or reading device and passing on to somebody else. The book was sold with a license for use, and pricing that accounts for a specific use and lifetime. I'm sure the license is huge with all kinds of legal talk.
I don't know about ebooks. From my point of view, for this discussion they are the same as PDF, music files and movies.
And it would actually be ridiculous if you can't delete something. What if your machine runs out of storage space and you want to buy another book 
Smajdalf and sterretje may have points of view or opinions, and that is great! However, the point of view of the publisher and copyright laws determine whether a book/music/movie is pirated.
An ebook could be considered more valuable than a printed book because it doesn't take up physical space, doesn't wear out, is easy to enlarge/reduce/change the font, easy to bookmark, highlight, and copy short passages from, and cloud storage/backup of the book is free. Perhaps an ebook should be more expensive than a printed book. In my experience, ebooks are less expensive than the same title in print, in most cases. Does that make ebooks better and cheaper?
A publisher would not have a problem with somebody deleting an ebook from their computer or e-reader. You would have to check with the publisher regarding whether it is OK to then give the e-book to somebody else when you delete it from your own device, because the license agreement may disallow that.