So what are your thoughts about NPR totebags? Getting perks if you donate isn't unusual.

"Getting perks if you donate isn't unusual."

Small perks usually and I am critical of those as well, as they blurry the line. But here it rather looks like a usual subscription model to buy.

Faster access seems like a small perk, even without donating you can get books far faster than you'd be capable of reading them

Can you think of any legal mandates that might influence that decision?

Right now, no. What do you mean?

The whole site is illegal anyway. Is there a legal difference in "donating" and getting benefits. And "buying" for benefits, when the benefits are illegal in both cases?

Words don’t have the same significations around the world. It’s not about the legal meaning in the US but about the cultural (not legal) meaning of the word from where the author comes from.

For me (not in the US), donating have a different meaning than buying. When I buy, I become a customer and it establish a business relation and the organization owe me a bunch of things (the product/the service, my customer rights …).

When I donate, it’s mainly to support a cause and I know I’m not tied to anything in return. Even if there are promised perks, the structure doesn’t owe me anything, the perk is just a mean to thank me for my donation.

Again, it’s not the legal definition from my country (or maybe, I really don’t know), it’s just what those words means culturally here.

Also, using « buy » which implies a business relationship (even an illegal one) when the project is explicitly about freeing knowledge from businesses would be pretty ironic.

Tax collection, business licenses, etc