Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server.

Hi everyone!!

This is a thought me and a teacher of mine at high school are pondering about currently. My teacher got a cd full of html versions of O'Reilly books from a computer conf. he recently visited. He and I were kind of wondering if it would be totally legal to put all of these html books on our linux http server, so that anyone would be able to reference them when needed. So far, I don't really see anything illegal in that, but if it was legal, wouldn't that help our book fund, because then those that couldn't afford O'Reilly books could be able to reference from them from a server??

Thanks for any input anyone would have on this subject!!

bladx ~ 《uchas veces tengo preguntas!

Comment on Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server. by chromatic (Archbishop) on Mar 10, 2001 at 23:01 UTC
It's not legal. I asked a colleague at O'Reilly about this a few months ago, having found a Russian web site with all of the released CD bookshelves available. Copyright law, in the US, sometimes makes an exception for educational purposes. If your teacher only wants to make the books available to his students, there might be an exception. If that is the case, I would recommend he send a short e-mail to either Tim O'Reilly or Frank Willison, explaining the situation and asking for clarification.	[reply]
Re: Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server. by merlyn (Sage) on Mar 10, 2001 at 22:15 UTC
It's very likely that they won't let you do that. I don't have the CD-ROM, but I imagine the license is "for personal use only, not to be placed on a server". That kind of thing. I know that if I see it on the net, I report it immediately, and O'Reilly gets the site shut down. Poverty is not a reason to violate a copyright. -- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker	[reply]
Re: Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server. by little (Curate) on Mar 10, 2001 at 22:03 UTC
Hi bladx, simply ask O'Reilly for permission to make these docs available inside the Highschools intranet. Thats the only way to not to do anything illegal. Respect others property. Have a nice day All decision is left to your taste	[reply]
Re: Legality of posting html versions of a few O'Reilly books on my server. by bladx (Chaplain) on Mar 10, 2001 at 23:14 UTC
Thank you everyone for your helpful input!!! I didn't know if it was legal or not... but I figured that it probably wasn't cause it would be too good to be true ^_^ so thanks for the help, and i'll let my teacher know!! Bye now! bladx ~ 《uchas veces tengo preguntas!	[reply]


go ahead... be a heretic
	PerlMonks