Can I publish my book over the internet for free?
Posted Saturday, January 2, 2010 by admin
I wrote a study guide for a Sun java (programming) exam. I want to know is this book legal. Please feel kind to read this and provide an accurate answer for me.
Sun microsystems, the owner of the Java technology conducts several examinations in world wide as such as SCJP and SCWCD. There are many study guides are available for these examinations. But, there are no study guide currently available for the latest version of _____* exam. Because of this, it is very very hard to study for this exam. We have to read number of books, browse internet for so many web sites, to study for this examination. The exam content has a very large scale.
I wrote a study guide for this exam, by extracting contents from ebooks, web sites and some other several resources. I directly extracted some contents from more than 50 copywritten resources. However, I also added my own instructions too.
As those copywritten resources says, it is prohibit to extract their content and/or publish. How ever I did it, and maked my own study guide in pdf (ebook) format.
I know it is illegal. But, please feel kind to read the rest.
Now I have my study guide in pdf format. I can make a separate web site, only for this study guide, and allow anyone to download this pdf file for free. If I do it, my study guide will be the first and only study guide currently available for this ____* exam. I post this question before doing it!
I wrote this study guide to help others. I don’t wish to earn anything from it. My ambition with this ebook is to help other peoples those who are preparing for this exam. This is the only, only, and only purpose of writing this ebook.
Therefore I want to publish this ebook as I said above, even though it is an illegal task.
I added my name and country in this ebook. But I didn’t added my address or any other contact information. I mentioned in “preface”, that I extracted some content from other resources. Now my question is this. Under the above scenario, what will happen if I publish this book on a separate web site, as I mentioned above? My country is Sri Lanka, but I didn’t publish my contact info, so can they caught me for this in any way?
I also want to know, whether I’m doing a good job or bad job?
Please feel kind to provide accurate answers and comments.
* : In the above question, I didn’t mentioned the name of this exam, to be hidden from search engines.
You are going to have to list every resource you used in the bibliography of the book. That is what is fair, right, and ethical. You probably haven’t violated copyrights, but you might want to see if you can take a little extra time to reword the questions and answers a bit so it’s not being directly lifted from the copyrighted material.
On the other hand, if you’re in Sri Lanka, you might be immune from US prosecution of copyrighted materials. I don’t know.