I very much doubt this is legal..

After looking at the contents of the ZIP file I would say this is probably a little illegal. The NFO files look a little suspicious.

I've seen just about every O'Reilly book on P2P/Torrent file-sharing networks at one time or another, but they are distributed in violation of O'Reilly's copyright. Maybe O'Reilly has authorized the free distribution of this book for some reason, but I doubt it. It's probably just a copy of the one found all over the P2P network:
http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=oreilly.google.hacks

And it's still for sale on O'Reilly's site:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlehks3/index.html

Yeah, a bit cheeky, PL, it's clearly illegal.

The site(s) from which the download comes is:

www.oebook.com/0-1.htm

www.vebook.org/0-1.htm

There's no indication on these pages who's behind the site or where the files come from.

It was good that Google introduced a lot of gadget on a universal level and open an Ajax API beta services. No one will need this book anymore or ?

I will contact O'Reilly directly to ask them. I was curious why there is a complete help file if this is not intended to be shared, but maybe this comes with a CD with the book.

Very good book, but so, so not an O'Reilly-authorized download. Bad Philipp, bad! International Link Like a Pirate Day was last week!

I updated the post with a link to more ebooks.

Stu: I've asked O'Reilly by now so I'll update the post when their answer is in.

Look at it this way, if you think they wanted to distribute for free Google Hacks and Google Maps Hacks or any other pirated books from that site, wouldn't you expect them to link to them from their own website (like you do), instead of having them posted to pirate boards like oebook.com?

I'm doubtful about the links on the "Google-eBook Download Center" as well. I think that it's easy to copy a book and upload it, but not so easy to get permission from the copyright holder to do it, especially for free.

Philipp, you may want to reach out to Tara too and ask her opinion. Maybe the authors have brought it under a CC licence ?

Stu: I don't know if this book is available on O'Reilly. E.g. my book "55 Waye to Have Fun" appears on lots of sites, and yet it's OK because I freely share it on http://55fun.com

However, I've come across the following by Tim O'Reilly which convinced me to remove the link until I hear back from them:
<<many of our books are available on CD, in a form that makes them fairly easy to rip to P2P networks. We face considerable illicit copying, and we regularly ask people to take copies off the net – and very often, they respect our requests. But when they don't, we don't argue for copy protection or stronger laws; we just accept it as a cost of doing business during a transitional period in which we haven't figured out the rules for the next generation of technologies.>>
http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2003/ebooks_0903.html

>I'm doubtful about the links on the "Google-eBook Download Center" as well.

Err unless I'm missing something obvious the first entry there is the Google Hacks book too?

* Rushes to delete all trace of this file *

Anyway, I agree that this was the right cause of action to take, expecially as the contents of the ZIP / RAR file seems to be "unofficial"

>missing something obvious

Unless of course they decided to release an old edition I guess?

I've found Battelle's book in PDF format. Shall I post the link too? (:)

As replacement link for now here's a list of free PDF downloads from the O'Reilly site:
http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/

Ah, there you go, O'Reilly's answer is in:

<<Hi Philipp,

That is not legal! That content was stolen from Safari Books
Online. I have reported the download site to our copyright
infringement team.

Thanks for taking the time to ask about this!
--
Chris Olson O'Reilly Media,Inc.>>

O'Reilly should offer all books as ebooks for free. They would create a win:win situation. Why? I confess, I downloaded Google Hacks (the English version) some two years ago when I started to get serious about SEO.
What did I do next? I bought it shortly after, this time the German version.

Real books on paper offer you more that ebooks. It's like listening to music in a discotheque: It rather makes you buy it than not although you listen "for free".

<< It's like listening to music in a discotheque >>

Which is like reading books from a library, whereas you can take the books away – you can't take the music with you when you leave a disco.

So, most books are already available for free anyway...

I also bought a couple of books that I found as free ebooks first. I think that's much more fun than reading a whole book on the screen...

I think that, seeing as this has been confirmed illegel, you should remove the comment from the source code that links to this book

Heh. Done.

The round up is coming. Those who the NWO deem as a threat will be rounded up and placed in FEMA camps. One of the tools they will use to arrest citizens who speak out will be illegal downloads and copyright violations.

Philipp,

Found out that Google Hacks Download article still circulated in Yahoo news by addict3d.org
http://www.newsiness.com/googleyahoonews/?p=google%20hacks%20download