It is now known to most people that there is also a download ban in the Netherlands. But that raises a lot of questions. Plus tries to answer them. Such is the case with photos and e-books.
Can I resell an e-book to others?
Because you can easily sell or give a paper book to someone else after reading it, you might think: yes. However, that is not (yet) the case. Digital e-books are still a relatively new phenomenon, so there is still some openness in the area of copyright. You may, for example, resell or pass on software, as long as you delete the copy on your own computer immediately afterwards. This could easily be done with e-books, but it is still unclear whether the same rules apply.
What is in any case not allowed is to make a copy of an e-book and then give or sell it to someone else. Making a copy is not allowed by copyright. You may, however, sometimes download a maximum number of copies of the same book when purchasing an e-book. But this usually involves use on your own computers and other devices. Not to share them with others.
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How are eBooks protected against illegal copying?
Some of the e-books have a so-called DRM protection. This means that you can only read them with certain e-readers or special apps: for example, Amazon’s Kindle. Reading with other devices or software is then not officially possible. Incidentally, there is software with which the DRM protection can be cracked, but that is not legal.
Other e-books are given a (water)mark so that with every copy that is made, it is possible to find out who the book originally belonged to.
Not much work is being done in the Netherlands to trace illegal downloaders of e-books. Stichting Brein did go after uploaders on a number of occasions who copied and distributed e-books on a large scale.
How do I get e-books legally?
Nowadays you can easily buy e-books on the internet through well-known online bookstores such as Bol.com and Amazon. But you can also buy and download special e-books in the Plus webshop, for example. Because e-books are less expensive, they are often cheaper than their paper equivalent.
Furthermore, all kinds of online bookstores, such as Amazon, offer subscriptions that allow you to read almost unlimited e-books for a fixed monthly fee.
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Can I just use pictures from the internet?
Just like downloading music or movies (link to download article), downloading copyrighted photos without permission is also illegal. So, for example, you have to be careful with getting a nice photo from a website and using it on your personal or business site. That can cost you thousands of euros.
Certain photo copyright holders, such as Getty, have an aggressive tracking policy. Using special photo recognition software, hundreds of thousands of websites are automatically scanned for photos used without permission. If an illegally used photo is found, it’s fairly easy to find the website owner’s address and send them a peppered bill. There is often little more to it than to pay it in connection with the collection or lawsuit that otherwise follows. So pay close attention to copyright when just downloading photos online.
Fortunately, there are plenty of places where you can legally download and use royalty-free photos. One of which is Unsplash.
For more resources, you can search with a search engine like Bing or Google. For example, search for: free photos. You will then get an overview of sites that offer free photos. Please read the terms and conditions on the site carefully.
What about movies, series and music? What is allowed and what is not? Read it here >>