'terms of services' writing for FREE stuff distribution

[phparion]

hi
i am thinking to make a website where i would provide all the poor students free books and stuff so that poor students can also come in front and can do research etc by getting free stuff.

as its purely non-profit site and also i dont want to hurt any individual's or company's copyrights too as well as i want to be on the safe side; please help me how to write my Terms Of Services or Privacy Policy etc to distribute books for free.

thanks in advance

[Aircut]

you can use only royalty free books. check out
Project Gutenberg [gutenberg.org...]

[Beagle]

phparion, are you aiming at people who have internet access to do research/reading, or are you aiming at getting actual (paper) books to people who don't have internet access?

If the latter, you might try approaching publishers directly, as some of them occasionally donate books to such efforts (although they'd want definite details of exactly what you planned to do and who would get the books, and would probably want some PR out of it).

If the first, you might think about providing a site that would link to the resources already out there, instead of spending time recreating them. The Gutenberg Project is one of them. Another good one is Bartleby.com; being a .com rather than a .org, it does run ads and it partners with amazon, but it also has the resources to provide some things that aren't copyright-free such as a full encyclopedia (with fully searchable text), dictionary, and other reference books. There are also sites using various "commons" licenses, listings such as Free Medical Journals, and I'm sure tons of things in other fields that I don't know anything about. If the people you're wanting to help have internet access (which is becoming more and more available at public libraries, etc., for free), oftentimes what they most need is a guide on how to find and use what's "out there." A site doing that could be a great aid. (Just an idea.)

[phparion]

I have just completed my Masters in IT, when I was in University I knew unlimited students who were not able to buy IT books, as they are expensive in hard copy and also mostly they are short in market.

many of my friends now want to do research on many IT issues but they dont have money to get access to latest books written and also papers as they are not easily available and if they are.. they are expensive, thats why I thought to make an online library for these students and also IT professionals who want to work for/in IT. I do not want to link any third party site but to upload all the books that i have in soft copy to my own space and provide a membership to users and then give them access to the pool of Free Books for reading and downloading without charging them for this service.

so my targeted users would be IT students and Professionals that will get free books from my site for their studies and research work...

now how can you guide me through this process.

[hunderdown]

You can't do what you want to do without first obtaining permission from the publishers and copyright holders of those books.

What you are proposing to do amounts to giving away free copies of expensive books. The fact that those copies are made electronically, rather than on a photocopier, doesn't matter.

And so that permission is unlikely to be forthcoming. Technically, what you want to do is feasible, though beyond my skills. But the copyright issues are sizable!