Yes, these can be legal. It depends. If the copyright holders - or publishers - decide to re-release the stories of deceased authors as ebooks, then this is fine. These official releases will be available from online sources that are reputable, such as legal distributors such as Fictionwise, EbookAd , or from an epublisher. Usually illegal copies of books that have been made into ebooks or pirated copies of ebooks are given away through online Yahoo groups or places where you can download pirated stuff or private websites.
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There are many places that give ebooks away for free - and quite legally - like the Guttenborg project and Black Mask Books. It's all to do with copyright, whether the copyright has expired or not. If it has, then the book enters the public domain.
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