4ed torrents -How'd it happen?
- Thread starter Mercurius
- Start date
Scott_Rouse
Explorer
Rechan said:
Get over the idea this was some marketing ploy, it was theft.
I like my job more than that and would not do something so permanently damaging. I could think of plenty of ways to do viral marketing without punching myself in the groin at the same time.
Last edited:
DarkAngel1979
First Post
It should be mentionned that a lot of the discussion here is American-centric. The law is not consistent internationally.
The act of copyright violation, for instance, is a crime in Canada, but downloading a file has legitimate fair use purposes so right now 'pirating' is a grey area. That is, what you're doing is almost 100% certainly illegal, but they really can't prosecute you because you could be downloading, say, an mp3 version of a vinyl you do own, which falls under fair use. The police could conceivably bring in a bunch of students and grandmas to trial over downloading movies and music, but they would have to prove in court beyond the shadow of a doubt that the download was an act of copyright violation not covered by fair use, which is far from evident, would cost them face in the public eye, and probably result in a non-guilty verdict anyway. So instead they tend to go after the big fish, people who download and copy copyrighted material and sell it en masse. The various business interests are trying to make the law more severe (make the act of downloading itself a crime), but it's not exactly gaining traction. Except for the fact we have a Conservative 'tough on crime' government now, so who knows...? Right now, we have precedents like the tax on CD burners and CD-Rs whose proceeds are paid back to major record and movie companies that seems to say that in Canada, pirating is still tacitly accepted by the government.
Also, some European countries (where almost all the torrents sites are physically located) have loopholes regarding torrents in the law. Torrents are just a small file that tells people where they can grab a file, so the torrent sites are not technically hosting any illegal material under these countries' laws.
The act of copyright violation, for instance, is a crime in Canada, but downloading a file has legitimate fair use purposes so right now 'pirating' is a grey area. That is, what you're doing is almost 100% certainly illegal, but they really can't prosecute you because you could be downloading, say, an mp3 version of a vinyl you do own, which falls under fair use. The police could conceivably bring in a bunch of students and grandmas to trial over downloading movies and music, but they would have to prove in court beyond the shadow of a doubt that the download was an act of copyright violation not covered by fair use, which is far from evident, would cost them face in the public eye, and probably result in a non-guilty verdict anyway. So instead they tend to go after the big fish, people who download and copy copyrighted material and sell it en masse. The various business interests are trying to make the law more severe (make the act of downloading itself a crime), but it's not exactly gaining traction. Except for the fact we have a Conservative 'tough on crime' government now, so who knows...? Right now, we have precedents like the tax on CD burners and CD-Rs whose proceeds are paid back to major record and movie companies that seems to say that in Canada, pirating is still tacitly accepted by the government.
Also, some European countries (where almost all the torrents sites are physically located) have loopholes regarding torrents in the law. Torrents are just a small file that tells people where they can grab a file, so the torrent sites are not technically hosting any illegal material under these countries' laws.
Harr said:
I tried to illegally down load it via bit torrent, but I got a trapped version and even after it downloaded the book it kept working until it had teleported a troll into my office. After that things got dicey and I’m sorry I did it.
Kidding.
I worked in publishing for a while – in the newspaper business – and it sounds like a copy of the final digital file sent to the printers has been uploaded. As a digital file, uploading it would be almost as simple as sending an attached file on an e-mail.
Mercurius said:
Most businesses include costs imposed by theft into their budget planning. That is not to say they are ambivalent about the theft, just that they know its going to happen. Walmart does this and I suspect WotC/Hasbro does as well.
malraux
First Post
I would hope that the fool who did this is that dumb. Then its just a matter of searching the mail server logs for a large attachment with the name 4ePHB.pdf or whatever. I would imagine though that this was a thumbdrive/ipod/cd-r sort of deal which might be harder to trace.The Grumpy Celt said:
Blackeagle
First Post
mattdm said:
They may have some trouble getting any sort of trade secrets case to stick, considering that the PDFs didn't appear until after some people already had the books from Buy.com in their hands.
LcKedovan
Explorer
DarkAngel1979 said:
All shades of grey when it comes into international laws, outside of the U.S. of course.
In Canada we pay the Royalties to those companies from that Tax so in effect it is licenced not Piracy. That only applies to music/movies yo the best of my knowledge.
My other understanding is that If you owned the 3 books in hardcopy it would be neigh impossible to prosecute you if you then subsequently scanned or downloaded the books into .pdf for personal use. Basically "fair use".
If all that you did was download the .pdfs without purchasing the books you're commiting a crime.
-W.
Blackeagle said:
They still could get a civil case going, theft of property and that sort of thing.
AZRogue
Explorer
Scott_Rouse said:
I'm sorry this happened, Scott, as it has to color what would otherwise be a very exciting week before launch. I don't think that the book sales will be impacted too much by this, though, and hopefully the figures that come in later will support that. I hope you guys can catch the thief.
Other than that, though, congrats on the upcoming launch and try not to let the one negative event color an otherwise very positive month.
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