Is it illegal to sell free material?

Question

If a publisher has made a piece of writing free on the internet. Is it then illegal to sell it in print? Even if the piece is unavailable for sale?

Answer 1

If it was published, then it probably is copyrighted.

Answer 2

yes,

if the writer / publisher isnt making money, why should some one what has copy/pasted?

Answer 3

Of course it is.

Free to read and observe, illegal to copy and pass off as your own.

Answer 4

It depends.  If the piece is "open source" then you can do whatever you want with it.  If it is covered with a GNU agreement, then it depends on what type of agreement.  Some allow distribution but not sale, others allow non-commercial distribution, still others allow sale.

I sold about 2,500 CDs on ebay that were full of Open Source files that other people created.  It was challenged several times by eBay, Macromedia, and some of the creators of the materials.  I won the challenge every time.  But this material was advertised as open source, free to do with as you please.

Answer 5

It wouldn't be free then would it??

Yes, it would be illegal. It is the author's intellectual property and not yours to sell.

Answer 6

No, optometrists do it all the time.  They don't pay for their contact lenses, they are given to them and they get to stick what ever price on them.  Now on a personal level, it's not illegal to sell something that was free but it's highly immoral and could cause problems should the person that bought such item find out it was free to the seller.

Answer 7

um free isnt selling :S

Answer 8

free as in available in a browser or free as in unenumbered by licensing restrictions?

or, as they say of open source software, free as in speech, or free as in beer?

the answer to your question depends entirely on your answer to mine.

but if you must know, sometimes yes and sometimes know.

it depends on the material, and the situation surrounding it, which you forgot to tell us.

Answer 9

as long as all of the people who contributed, allow you to sell it, then no.

Answer 10

It would be legal to sell the media that the information is presented on. You cannot sell someone else's intellectual property, but you CAN sell a piece of paper that happens to have something written on it..