My name is "Defendant Radzikowski"

[Lonely Tylenol]

If that country you live in is Canada, then you have the legal right to make copies for your own use. The levy covers that. You don't then have the right to distribute to non-owners. The levy does not cover that. You can acquire and copy media you own, you can't distribute to people who don't.

The law doesn't cover distribution of copied materials. But it does cover personal copies of borrowed materials, which is why I framed my example in the way I did. You can borrow a CD from a friend and make a copy of it legally. Also, you can make personal recordings from the radio. In fact, the court has ruled (twice, I think) that these "black cassette laws" cover filesharing of audio files, because when a file is shared, the sharer isn't making a copy of the file and sending it to people. Rather, he's allowing other people to read his file and make their own copies.

Which is all beside the point. If it's legal to make copies of media for your family and friends in Poland, then it's legal as long as you are in Poland when you do it.

 

[Korgoth]

I advise everyone in this thread to read Franz Kafka's The Trial before making any further comments.

First tell me what it's about.

 

[smug]

But I don't think that's WOTC's endgame here, anyway. More likely there are strategic considerations involved on their part that probably play a bigger role than actually getting, and collecting on, a judgment. This could be a shot-across-the-bow move by WOTC, for example, with them firing on the first people they were able to determine had uploaded based on the watermarks. Whether that's viable or not is certainly questionable and open for debate, but WOTC certainly doesn't think they are going to collect millions from a few individuals in Poland or the Phillipines.

If the outcome is that they can't get any joy from suing, say, Polish sharers, then what? Refuse to sell pdfs to people in those countries? Given that Poland is an EU nation, does that leave them open to sanction from the EU in terms of their operations there (might they end up unable to sell pdfs into all of the EU? I have no idea about the applicable EU laws).

 

[S'mon]

That's a nice broad slam on the US, and also incorrect.

We're slamming on posters here who think US copyright law is automatically enforceable on a man in Poland. As you know, that is incorrect.

US Supreme Court justices defer to 'international law' when it fits their own prejudices, but that's a different issue.

 

[Mirtek]

WotC is out of their mind if they believe that a civil suit in the United States is going to get any traction within Poland.

Just my two cents.

Well, if he has signed, upon buying the PDFs at DT, that the court of jurisdiction is the USA there are likely agreements between Poland and the USA to enforce such jugdments.

However I wonder about the justification for sueing in the USA against pirates who never ever bought a legal copie in the first place. They definately signed no contract that the court of jurisdiction will be in the USA.

 

[S'mon]

Well, if he has signed, upon buying the PDFs at DT, that the court of jurisdiction is the USA there are likely agreements between Poland and the USA to enforce such jugdments.

Nope - Poland is an EU member, EU law has strong protections against such terms in consumer contracts. You have to sue consumers for breach of consumer contract in their home jurisdiction.

Edit: Of course a US court may pay no attention to EU/Polish law, but the Polish court will pay no attention to the US court.

Edit2: In the EU, it basically doesn't matter what terms the company puts in its e-download contract; the court has to apply the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations and disregard any terms that imbalance rights/liabilities in favour of the company.

 

[Cergorach]

Might I interject that the poster who claims to be the 'defendant' doesn't have to be him, I can easily use a server (legally) from Warschau to post comments on ENworld, that means that pretty much any idiot could do it ;-) There are individuals on the internet that like to make posts that make 'waves' in the community, very recently ENworld has suffered from such a 'prank'. For the initial post to be considered evidence, it needs to be connected to the actual 'defendant', that isn't going to happen unless ENworld is going to provide the IP address to WotC/Hasbro. I do believe that the ENworld servers are located in the US, so some sort of legal demand could be made (either to the owners of ENworld or the hosters of ENworld) for the posters IP address. RPGnow/DTRPG probably already has the 'defendant's' IP address when he bought the products. He currently might have another, a Polish ISP might need to be contacted for that, I don't know how easily Polish ISPs give out their clients IP addresses...

For all we know this is the actual 'defendant', it might be a kid looking for some attention, it might even be someone affiliated with WotC/Hasbro or it's legal team (I'm not making some claim here, it's just not an impossibility). I would like to caution against making more of this, then that it actually is.

I would also like to point out that while the 'defendant' claims to have lent the pdfs to friends (which might or might not be legal under Polish laws), those might not have shared the files on the internet. Hacking is a favorite pastime of a certain subculture, so the files might have been 'stolen' before being shared on the internet. Another option might be that the suppliers where hacked and an illegal copy was obtained that way (RPGnow was hacked in 2007 and customer information was obtained). I know from experience that I had access to certain DTRPG pdfs before they where released (although I did pay for them before downloading, DTRPG has fixed that issue), so it's not beyond the possibility of reason copies where obtained from the suppliers. I'm curious if WotC can make the direct connection that the actual files the 'defendant' downloaded are the same as the ones being spread. As far as I know, RPGNOW/DTRPG generate the file once when you buy it and then stores it on the servers to be downloaded again. An external party could access the files and bypass the log function. Not only the 'defendant' had access to the files, also the employees of the supplier, the suppliers hoster, and the backup service they might use. Then we have the possibility of the watermark being manipulated by an evil minded third party, data can be manipulated...

 

[Dilandau Kale]

Just thought I would chime in and add some things that Scott Betts over on the Paizo forums had to say.

"The reason I know he's a pirate is because he posts quite frequently, under the same moniker, on one of the most active tabletop filesharing websites. In fact, and this probably will strike close to home for a number of people, damador was the individual running the project to remove Paizo's protection from their Pathfinder products so that they could be posted for filesharing. There is absolutely no way to consider this guy anything but guilty. I'm not going to provide a link to the website in question, nor quote his posts from there, as both would be a breach of CoC, so you're just going to have to trust me on this one. damador was a pretty significant figure in the tabletop pirating community and it is absolutely unsurprising that he is being sued over it."


paizo.com - Paizo / Messageboards / paizo.com / Website Feedback / WotC halts PDF sales

Whether It's true or not I cant say

 

[Sakai]

There is an other side of the coin. WotC claims that a pdf product, legally puchesed by you is on file sharing sites. they will have to prove, the act is done by you. That is illegal in USA. On the other hand they have distributed your full name, which is illegal in Poland. Whay don't you take the same action on your side of the border and sue them for leaking your full name. It is probably easier for you to prove your case. You might end up facing a penalty in USA and WotC facing a penalty in Poland. You may be safe as long as you do not step on US soil, where as abondoning Poland or EU markets might not be that easy for WotC.

 

[Enerla]

You admitted to copying a pdf for a few friends. That's all you've done, and stick to that story. Still illegal, but it's not going to be a big deal. If WOTC wants to try and prove that you yourself distributed the files to thousands of other people, let the burden of proof be on them.

But that isn't the thing he done.

1st: He is born in Poland
2nd: He lives in Pland
3rd: He pays reprography fees in Poland
4th: With that payment he pays for a permission to copy books (for himself or friends) if no profit is involved
5th: He uses this right to copy the PDF
6th: He runs demo groups to promote D&D...
7th: And he insists that if he pays for a permission to copy books (and give copies to friends) he gets what he pays for. And if contracts cannot legally restrict his rights to do so, then he insists he have done nothing wrong.