Sabrina’s Weblog

Updated 28/03/08

I have published here a link to a Russian page where you could download lot of EFL/ESL material.  In the webpage there was a downloading agreement that reads:

By agreeing to our Terms and Conditions, you are stating that you are downloading this material for familiarizing purposes only, and you agree to delete it afterwards and purchase the hard copy.

Because of this, I thougt it was legal and I saw no harm in downloading books for trial purposes before you actually buy them.  However, I have just received an email from the  author of one of the books which was available there for download asking me to delete  the link on the following grounds: “I’ve no doubt you thought that the ‘download agreement’ might make it OK, but the people who own the copyright for those materials (the publishers and authors) would have to agree as well, and they haven’t been asked.  I not only found links to my books there, but lots of other authors as well.” As I found it very reasonable I am editing this post now. Hope you can understand.