is downloading a book online considered a crime?

It depends…some eBooks are made for free publication, so those are quite open for download.

how can i find out

find out if its copyrighted… if it is then yes its a crime unless you have teh authers permission.

The best way is to go to a site that actually hosts free eBooks - those are safe to download.

yes but thousands of people get away with it every day. its calling pirating “copying something and not paying for it.”. the reason why its a crime is because your stealing the author of the book money.

another way to look at it. you write a song and it ends up in iTunes. Your song is worth 3$ to download. i go on a website and download your song for free. so when i download it for free i took 3$ from you. see what i mean