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[Vorhaart]

Originally Posted by Whisperfoot

My opinion is that making the content available when the publisher definitely does not want it to be so at a certain time is immoral. However, I feel that once the genie has been let out of the bottle, that item has just become public domain, whether the laws say it is or not. Should an end user feel bad for accessing that public domain? For me, that's where things get cloudy.

Exactly. In this case, I think it is less an issue of "Is this right or wrong?" and more an issue of "What can we learn from this?" Shrieking at each other about whether this is fair use or theft should really be secondary to trying to determine (a) how to prevent this from happening in the future, and (b) determining what the market itself is trying to tell us. The horse has already left the barn; arguing over who didn't lock the door is really secondary to trying to catch the horse.

Originally Posted by Whisperfoot

If a person has the books on pre-order and then they get a sneak peak at it, I don't consider it as bad as when a person had no intention of buying the books and then gets them for free. If the latter person then goes on to use the material and still does not buy the material, then I think that a moral line has been crossed.

Definitely. If you don't pay, you shouldn't play. Simple as that.

Originally Posted by Whisperfoot

In this case I would like to think that most people who are downloading the books are just taking an unauthorized sneak peak, but are still planning to buy them.

Or have already bought them, and are just waiting for them.

Originally Posted by Whisperfoot

At any rate, someone on another messageboard pointed me to a location where the books could be downloaded. This wasn't a torrent site, but an actual download site where one click gets you everything in its entirety. I forwarded the links to WotC so they can try and get them taken down. The decision to honor copyright law was an easy one for me to make. I can wait another week and a half.

Well done, no arguments here. Although, there is little difference between a torrent and an http download; both can be easily exploited for the purposes of illegally obtaining material to which you have no rights. The problem is not how the material is obtained from a technical standpoint, rather a more complex legal one. The law is ultimately concerned only whether or not the burglar broke the law, not whether he used a Stanley or a Craftsman crowbar to jimmy the door.