« can you borrow movies from a public library if you owe nyc public library money?
What are the best places to study besides the dorm common room and university library? »

How do online libraries detect whether you are copying?

A lot of online libraries do not allow you to copy a book – you can only read it online. How do they detect whether you are copying or not? They say they only allow a limited amount of a book to be copied but how do they know? Is there a way to fool them? :D

rather then right clicking you should try ctrl + c

you could also try copying it 1 line at a time

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 10:23 pm and is filed under libraries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “How do online libraries detect whether you are copying?”

  1. adamrv1 Says:
    January 1st, 2010 at 3:49 am

    rather then right clicking you should try ctrl + c

    you could also try copying it 1 line at a time
    References :

  2. jr_the_postman Says:
    January 1st, 2010 at 4:19 am

    Why would you what to copy thousands of books? To become a book seller?

    I can understand reading a book, I can understand having a book to hold in your hand is different than reading it on-line, but copying books wholesale to create your own computer library is an odd endeavor.

    I would believe most libraries would not know you are capturing a screen or two for your school homework. But arriving at noon everyday and spending the remaining day rapidly paging through many different books would attract attention. I am certain they are recording your ISP address…

    JR
    References :

  3. Bill Pardue--Librarian Says:
    January 1st, 2010 at 4:55 am

    If they’re just using commonly available data formats (html pages, regular pdf files), they probably won’t know if you’ve copied, but they may also use various technologies to keep things like the highlight/copy function of your mouse from working or disabling the "save as" feature or using proprietary formats that only work with their properly licensed software. That’s not to say that it’s always impossible to get complete copies, rather that they make it exceptionally difficult and not worth the effort. Many "regular" libraries subscribe to various online book services and they use similar tricks to control access to their works.

    You might find the e-books section of this wikipedia article to be helpful:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management

    Hope this is helpful!

    –Bill Pardue
    Arlington Heights Memorial Library http://www.ahml.info
    Librarians–Ask Us, We Answer!
    Find your local Library at http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/Public_main.html
    References :

Leave a Reply