copyright law would've already burnt the library of alexandria several times over, just something to consider about the validity of these laws written and bribed into law by publishers
It's fine that you don't agree with the laws, but the guy is asking what the actual legal impact may be if he participates. Answering with "who cares, the laws are dumb" isn't helpful to him... people get arrested and charged against dumb laws all the time, and it sounds like he'd like to avoid that.
edit: this is maybe the link he's after? looks like you need to be logged in to see it though.
so what if I didn't answer their question? its called a comment for a reason. (also: its "them", don't assume their gender like that, come on its 2024)
There are a few reasons for that. The primary being that sharing a physical book do not count as copying, but sharing a digital book does.
The second reason is that libraries tend to operate under government control, and governments has done things to enable libraries and work around copyright law. An old one that my country (used to?) have was to require publishers to send copies to the national library. In return, national authors got a symbolic sum (very tiny) each time a copy was taken out. Being forced to send a copy to the government isn't technically against copyright law, since no unlawful copying is being made, but the result has a very similar feeling as unlawful copying.
Sure, but if anything that just reinforces how ridiculous it is to claim that "copyright law would've already burnt the library of alexandria several times over" - the LoA was very much backed by government power - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Early_ex... describes not merely going out and buying anything they could get their hands on, but outright using government mandate to seize and copy new books that passed through port.
