I downloaded a book that does not have DRM (Digital rights management), I did not have to pay anything for it. Does this mean it is OK to give a copy of the book to my friend?
Note: This question is not a request for legal professional advice, and no answer to this question should be reguarded as legal advice. This question is a request for general advice about legal and ethical principles that cross jurisdictional boundaries.
NO!
Every eBook is released under a licence. Even if there is no licence specifically identified then it is covered under the general copyright law. If you purchased the book and it was not released under a licence that permits redistribution then you should assume that giving away copies to friends is forbidden.
Generally you can find the licence that the book was released under listed in the first few pages of the book, usually before any of the main content. There are some licences that permit redistribution either for a fee or not. Most licencing restricts distribution to those people who have a specific distribution licence and pay the appropriate royalties and fees to the publisher and author.
There is some question about older books that are public domain. The content of the book(the text) is the only thing that is public domain. The Ebook has added markup and is covered under copyright laws as a new creation. You can still use the public domain content as permitted, but the markup and any images included that are not public domain images are covered.
Also just because you are in a country that may not enforce copyright and licencing from the country of origin, does not mean that the copyright does not exist. In real world terms, think of it as an analogy to walking down a street and seeing a house that has no door lock. Is it OK to enter the house and take anything in it, just because there's no door lock preventing you from doing so? No. And even if the police will not arrest you that does not mean that it is acceptable to do so.
Drm-Free doesn't necessarily mean copyright-free. If the book is licensed as such that it is available freely to anyone, then you are allowed to make copies. If there is some license or terms of usage attached to the book that suggests it is not free to distribute, then you are not allowed to make copies and give it away.
Adding some rationale to the existing answers:
A common reason an author/publisher would not want you copying even a free ebook is that even "free" sales boost the book's number and visibility. An ebook the author gives away freely to 1,000 readers is better for him than giving it to 1 person who then emails it to 1,000 friends.
If the book is still available for free, the best thing to do is send your friends the link. They get the book, and everything's A-OK.
the only case in which you may legally copy an ebook and pass to a friend of yours is when (a) there is a "copyright" (in a broad sense of the term), and (b) the copyright says you may freely distribute the ebook (because it is in the public domain, or is published under a Creative Commons license). If there is no copyright at all, you should suppose that all rights are reserved.
In copyright law of practically every country in the world, a book automatically falls under copyright, even if no license information is present. The right to copy is exclusively granted to the author, with a few exceptions such as the right to cite and in some countries the right to fair use.
The rights on a book don't have to belong to the author, though. For example, the author may have chosen to transfer (some) of the rights to a publisher.
However, copyright doesn't last eternal. (A few lifetimes, but not forever.) If enough time has expired from the moment of publication, the book is now in the public domain and may be used freely. An example would be the works of Jules Verne.
Of course, those books weren't originally published as eBooks, but in many countries if something is an accurate reproduction without changes to the content this would not make it copyrightable because of a lack of originality.
The owner of the copyrights on the book may have chosen to place the book in the [public domain]. In that case, you can freely share the book.
Look for information about the copyright. Besides information in the book itself (usually found at one of the first few pages), you could look for license information at the web site where you downloaded the book.
A few licenses commonly used for content the author wants to be shared are the GFDL and all the Creative Commons licenses.
Some countries may allow books to be shared with family, for educational purposes etc. It depends on what country you live in. You will have to consult with someone familiar with the laws of your country that are applicable, or look it up yourselves.
If none of the above is the case, you're not allowed to share the book legally. Whether it's morally okay is something you'd probably best answer yourselves.
You need to check the "copyright" or the "terms of use" documentation provided by the platform you obtained the free ebook.
Example from Google Play Terms of Service:
6. Rights and Restrictions
License to Use Products. Following payment of the applicable fees for a Product, you will have the non-exclusive right, for the period selected by you in the case of a purchase for a rental period, and in other cases for as long as Google and the applicable copyright holder have rights to provide you that Product, to download or stream, in each case, solely as expressly permitted by Google via the Play user interface and subject to the restrictions set forth in these Terms and associated policies, copies of the applicable Product to your Devices, and to view, use, and display the Product on your Devices or as otherwise authorized by Google as part of the Service for your personal, non-commercial use only. All rights, title and interest in Google Play and Products not expressly granted to you in these Terms are reserved by Google and its licensors.
[...]
Sale, Distribution or Assignment to Third Parties. You may not sell, rent, lease, redistribute, broadcast, transmit, communicate, modify, sublicense or transfer or assign your rights to Products to any third party without authorization, including with regard to any downloads of Products that you may obtain through Google Play. Use of any tool or feature provided as an authorized part of Google Play (for example, “Social Recommendations”) shall not violate this provision so long as you use the tool as specifically permitted and only in the exact manner specified and enabled by Google.
Per your mention in chat in regards to Creative Commons Licence, it doesnt matter, if you agree to the site's terms that you will not transfer or pass around content than you aren't supposed to. That said I agree with Jason that your question leads towards I have this ebook from this site can I give a copy to my friend and that's not something we need or is in scope.
Coming from a design background, even if I give a site free access to download my work, or even put it on my site I include in the file that this is not for distribution by any means which is common. To add to that I am pretty sure sites would have that clause that you are not allowed to do so because it harbors good faith for handling a publisher's/author's content.
One ebook publisher, O'Reilly, explicitly states their rules in their terms and conditions, which are very different to the Google terms quoted above; which goes to prove that the answer to the original question depends on the terms under which you obtained the book.
http://shop.oreilly.com/category/customer-service/ebooks.do
You can legally lend, resell or give away your purchased O'Reilly ebook, as long as you don't retain a copy of it.
But if you've been given a copy illegally by someone, you cannot then legally lend, resell or give it away; it's still illegal.
Here is verbiage I put for the ebooks i publish:
All of Personville Press’s ebooks are copyrighted and generally do not allow indiscriminate sharing. No one at Personville is going to come chasing after you if you share your ebooks or reprint small passages on your website. We only ask that you be judicious about it. Want to share with a small handful of friends or family members? We’re not going to complain. But if you want to email it to 100 people or put it on your website for tens of thousands of people to download, that’s probably a different story. These ebook prices are kept low enough to make it affordable for anyone’s budget. All titles are lendable through Lendle, Booklending.com and Ebookfling. Personville Press enthusiastically supports these free services. If you received a free copy of the ebook from someone, we encourage you to purchase a digital copy anyway later on. That’s a good way to show that you support this author and independent publishing.
It depends on a huge number of factors like, country of origin, your country's take on copyright, what kind of licensing the book had, etc. If you didn't have to pay for it, was the publisher intending to promote the book? What kind of license did it have - There's actually a number of different licenses for different kinds of works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_license
I would check the publishing website itself, for they usually have some explanation for what you can do with the book.
DRM-free ebooks is usually intended for people who want to read their product on different platforms (usually for each person). It doesn't normally say anything about the copyright, copyleft or any kind of licensing/sharing - for that is up to the creator of the work.
If you look only at the legal side, the answer is no, you can't give copies to a friend. And usually it should be easy enough for your friend to download a free copy himself, making it all legal. Would be different with a free movie that is a gigabyte download, but eBooks are usually quite small.
If you look at the ethical side, it's tricky. The author may try to get a commercial contract for his future books, so he wants to be able to say "my first novel had 100,000 free downloads, so you should pay me for the second one". Clearly you are interfering with this. There may be dozens of reasons why your action might hurt someone that I or you just didn't think of. So why not just do what is legal and ask your friend to download the book himself? If he doesn't have internet access, then I suppose downloading a second copy on his behalf would be fine.
somebooksite.comand it has licenseabc. Can I give a copy to my friend? Essentially, the important question is:Does DRM-Free mean copyright-free?. Answer:No. Heed the license.