Henrix
Explorer
- Re-read the purchase agreement when you bought your PDF. You likely signed away your rights to local laws and agreed to handle disputes in US court or US arbitration. Such provisions are standard with online purchases and they are enforceable.
Except that in most civilized countries you cannot sign away rights to laws.
Software companies, and others, often want us to think so, but they are in error.
You cannot sell yourself into slavery, for instance. No matter how you formulate the contract.
In Sweden, which is what I'm familiar with (though IANAL), Swedish law allows you to sell software secondhand, no matter what the EULA says - you own the stuff you've bought, and can do as you want with it.
You can sell it, loan it to a friend, whatever. As long as that is the only copy - if the program is installed on your computer, or if you have another copy of it, then it's illegal copying.
So, if the OP had been in Sweden he could have let a friend borrow the pdf - if he did not keep a copy.
Of course, if he could not trust the guy completely not to make a copy, or share it on the interwebs, it's evidently very unwise.
(And I suppose that he'd have to prove in court that somebody else did it and not he, which seems difficult.)