I am planning to start a blog from which everyone can download ebooks. Mainly textbooks and novels. Is this legal? I have downloaded the ebooks from other sites.
It is surely not legal. You neither can sell them or can give them for free if you dont pay royalty to the authors and publishers otherwise you have a license to resell or something. If you don't care for legal issues, you can provide them.
If there copyright and you put them up for download, then yes. But take for example The Pirate Bay. They don't host the actual torrents themselves, so there not doing anything illegal (in the netherlands it is btw, mininova lost a lawsuit).
It's a bit strange you cite Pirate Bay as "not illegal", since the Pirate Bay's owners were found guilty at a criminal trial, sentenced to a year in prison and fined the equivalent of millions of dollars. They have appealed, but there is no guarantee they will win. And this trial was just the last in a long series of legal disputes over the site. Also note that one of the Pirate Bay's defenses is that they have no knowledge or control over what is being shared. That's very different than you picking out specific copyrighted texts to share, since that shows you intentionally illegally sharing copyrighted works.
As far as I know, there not illegal yet because it's still online. Anyway I'm not a lawyer, I'm just giving an example (thanks for the link btw, interesting read). Back on topic, I'd say just do it. If it's illegal, you'll first get a couple of warnings before you actually get fined (correct me if I'm wrong please), or your website will just be taken down. Look into the laws, or just do it and see if you get "taken down". thats your options atm .
There are many illegal sites that remain online because they have set up their servers in a friendly country, or they move from hosting company to hosting company, or they have multiple servers in multiple countries. In the case of Pirate Bay, their servers <i>have</i> been taken offline more than once (it's actually down for me right now, which may or may not be due to a legal action or sale of the site). The whole "site owners go to jail" is what makes it look illegal to me, though. Nope, no warning required. Your site can be shut down immediately, and, depending on where the site owner lives, he can be fined thousands of dollars. Criminal proceedings are also possible, but I think unlikely unless you are a big fish.
If they are PLR items then they will include a file stating clearly what you can and can not do with them. I personally have thousands of ebooks, scripts etc that have either reseller rights or master reseller rights. If this is the case make sure you read te file that is included and follow the rules of eac individual item. You will find some are not allowed to be included in a site if you offer a free membership option. Some are not allowed to be included in the type of site you want to do period. Others can only be sold, not given away. You will also find some can be rebranded, others not. So Check each item carefully before adding it to your site.
Not exactly a professional attitude is it? Just because one does it does not meant others should do it, or be encouraged to do it. The problem is only compounded and honest web site owners names blackened along with the bad ones because of this type of attitude.
There are plenty of ebooks that are copyright free. How about distributing those instead. Your not just helping your reader but also doing a favor for the book writer.