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I was reading some mathematics books and I observed that most of them have either of these mentioned before preface.

Case I

Copyright: All right reserved by XYZ

or

Case :II

Copyright: All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the publishers.

I am actually travelling next week and I won't be able to carry the books physically. I was thinking of downloading the PDFs of the book from sites like Libgen.

I think it would be illegal and unethical to do that in case II because writer strictly prohibits that.

Am I free to download and read the PDF of the book in Case I.

P.S.: I live in India.

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  • What is unclear about "illegal" and copyright? Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 2:29
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    "What is unclear about ... copyright?" Start with everything. There's plenty to be unclear about, so it makes pretty good sense for someone to ask about practices they find iffy. Especially in a case where someone owns a physical copy and wants a digital version for personal use only, I'd say there's a lot of room for good-faith questions.
    – bdb484
    Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 3:12
  • The difficulties of copyright are nuanced. There are a great number of questions which are not nuanced or subtle or difficult, and to not know an answer is to show very little or no prior effort. You're not free to do anything you want just because nobody has explicitly told you not to do that specific thing in these particular circumstances, and in copyright the default is to be forbidden from doing.
    – user4657
    Commented Nov 11, 2018 at 4:42

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Libgen is a well-known piracy service. The probability is very high that a work you find there is copied and distributed illegally.

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