Ask HN: Legality/ethics of archive.org to get pre-published versions of books?

[wsec]

There are some computer and math books produced for university courses placed on the internet pages of those courses. These books or lecture notes are then formally published and removed from the course webpage, but a copy can be found either on archive.org or some other site.

Is it legal or ethical to obtain the previously published pdf from archive.org or some other site? One example is "Algorithms" by S. Dasgupta, C.H. Papadimitriou, and U.V. Vazirani, which was previously available on Dasgupta's webpage but later taken offline when the book was published in paper form.

The other situation would be course notes that were publically accessible but later removed from the webpage but still available on archive.org.

[wahern]

There are inadequate facts to ajudge legality. However, if the authors intentionally linked to the "pre-published" PDF from their publicly accessible website then arguably it was in fact already published. Nonetheless, in the U.S. at least, the act of publication has little relevance for new works as a general matter, so publication is something of a red herring except in so far as it hints at implied licensing. Ultimately, the important question is how the work was licensed before the final/derivative work was published again through more commercial channels.

In terms of ethics, if you felt compelled to ask then perhaps you should dig deeper, and in particular inquire with the authors about 1) how they intended to license the work, and 2) what their licensing arrangement was with the publishing house. It also couldn't hurt to inquire with whomever uploaded it to archive.org; perhaps they had permission from the authors. Neither answer would necessarily resolve the legal question, but might satisfactorily resolve your ethical qualms.

[des234 → wahern]

OP here: thanks for your answer.

My concern is whether obtaining a work through archive.or constitutes theft when that work is no longer directly available from the author. In the case I have in mind, professors write a book for their class which they post online as a pdf. Later they publish this course book material through Addison or some other textbooK publisher. Old pdf copies are still available although no longer on the course websites.

Another example of such a case is Concepts Techniques and Modes of Computer Programming for which pre-prints are also available.

My assumption is that from a legal point, since these books were first put online with free access, then obtaining them through archive.org shouldn't be illegal. However, this seems to infringe upon the intention of the authors who have de-linked their original work now that the work has formally been published. Archive.org is exempt from certain aspects of copyright; authors who wish their work to no longer be available through archive.or must request it.

I don't see any licensing text in the original pdf used as the course notes.

[wahern → des234]

  > Archive.org is exempt from certain aspects of copyright

Achive.org isn't exempt from anything, at least not in the U.S. Their actual _archiving_ of web content might be considered Fair Use, but that's distinct from a right to redistribute such archived content to third parties, which in turn is distinct from your right to make copies (e.g. to create and maintain a copy on your hard drive by downloading the file.)

Ultimately, as regards the law of copyright, it doesn't much matter _how_ you acquired the content. What matters is if _you_ have a valid license.

The reality of copyright is that the scope of authors' rights in works is _huge_. We all regularly violate copyright. (I can't find the original reference, but I remember once reading a draft SCOTUS opinion where a justice wanted to claim that transcribing a poem onto a sheet of paper from a radio broadcast was obviously not a violation of copyright--not fair use, but outside the scope of copyright entirely--but all the other justices quickly corrected him.) However, authors' ability to detect infringement, and their available remedies, are knowingly and intentionally circumscribed. The law often works this way (i.e. rights not being co-extensive with remedies), but it's taken to the extreme in copyright. For one thing, it means that more than most areas of the law, strict legality is quite divorced from your intuition. Also, this can lead to complex conflicts between your personal ethical system and the law.