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WotC puts a stop to online sales of PDFs
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<blockquote data-quote="Lonely Tylenol" data-source="post: 4744094" data-attributes="member: 18549"><p>Well, if you want to be technical about it, piracy isn't theft. It's copyright infringement, which is a completely different branch of criminal law. According to the law, stealing <em>means</em> to take an object into your possession without ownership of the object being transferred to you. </p><p></p><p>Making a copy of a PDF is much the same as using a photocopier to make a copy of a book. Under normal circumstances, you have the right to reproduce (under fair use) and distribute 10% of the document, or one chapter, whichever is shorter, or 20% of the document if it does not contain chapters. If you copy more than that, you're in violation of the law, not because you've stolen anything but because you have copied more than you were allowed to. If you make a copy of a book, and leave that copy lying around on a desk, and someone takes it without asking, that would be theft.</p><p></p><p>This distinction is pretty cut-and-dried, and it comes up every time a piracy-related thread occurs. It baffles me that there is still some kind of confusion on the legal realities of copyright law, considering how many times I've seen this exact point explained in detail on these boards.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lonely Tylenol, post: 4744094, member: 18549"] Well, if you want to be technical about it, piracy isn't theft. It's copyright infringement, which is a completely different branch of criminal law. According to the law, stealing [i]means[/i] to take an object into your possession without ownership of the object being transferred to you. Making a copy of a PDF is much the same as using a photocopier to make a copy of a book. Under normal circumstances, you have the right to reproduce (under fair use) and distribute 10% of the document, or one chapter, whichever is shorter, or 20% of the document if it does not contain chapters. If you copy more than that, you're in violation of the law, not because you've stolen anything but because you have copied more than you were allowed to. If you make a copy of a book, and leave that copy lying around on a desk, and someone takes it without asking, that would be theft. This distinction is pretty cut-and-dried, and it comes up every time a piracy-related thread occurs. It baffles me that there is still some kind of confusion on the legal realities of copyright law, considering how many times I've seen this exact point explained in detail on these boards. [/QUOTE]
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