copyright public-law
Is it legal to upload PDF to my site just to let people read it?
<p>Is it legal to buy a PDF eBook then upload it to my site just to let people read it (like a public library) and not download it?</p>

<p>You are allowed to read the book yourself; you need a special license to make it available in some form to others, as a library does. In that case, the license may allow concurrent use or single non-concurrent use; library licenses typically limit the number of times a book can be lent, or how long the license lasts; there may be regional limitations (e.g. "can only be checked out in US" or "only in India"). There are also questions of server security that publishers will need to have answered (the cost of a work licensed for multiple concurrent uses at a university may depend on the number of projected users, implying student-faculty population and a password controlled access system).</p>

<p>Assuming that you didn't have to provide any such information when you acquired your license, you got a single user license and cannot redistribute. It is possible, but very unlikely, that you paid for an "open source" book: if there is a public license, then by terms of the license you can distribute it for free (and could have acquired it for free).</p>

<p>Under US law, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 USC § 106</a> lists the exclusive rights granted by copyright.  According to that law:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:<br>
  (1) to <strong>reproduce the copyrighted work</strong> in copies or phonorecords;<br>
  (2) to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work;<br>
  (3) to <strong>distribute copies</strong> or phonorecords <strong>of the copyrighted work to the public</strong> by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;<br>
  (4) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly;<br>
  (5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to <strong>display the copyrighted work publicly</strong>; and<br>
  (6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>As you can see, even if you could somehow argue that a copy isn't being made (which it is), you'd still be displaying the work publicly, which is also infringement.</p>

<p>So, unless the copyright holder has authorized you to do this, or unless it somehow falls under an exception like fair use, this would be copyright infringement.  And this sort of thing seems very unlikely to fall under fair use - it utterly fails the third and fourth <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107" rel="nofollow noreferrer">fair use</a> factors.</p>
