D&D 5E Can someone please explain to me why there are still no PDFs for 5e core books?

[evilbob]

Can someone please explain to me why there are still no PDFs for 5e core books?

It's March, 2015.

I feel like this is a daily thread!

To be fair, I did try to do a search and check through several pages of forum posts before I put my thread up last week.

But honestly I say bring 'em on. The more noise generated about this issue, the more likely someone will either have to officially acknowledge it or maybe even do something about it. And other than complain in visible / respected forums, I'm not sure how best to register that opinion.

 

[Gecko85]

The fact that you have to say this boggles my mind... the fact that people try to sya "just pirate it" in other words also does....

when did it become so socially expectable to openly discus breaking the law?
when did it become ok to just take something if you want it?

Who said anything about piracy? Certainly not me. We have different interpretations of fair use (as do the courts). I own all three physical copies. I choose to interpret fair use to say I can format shift. I also choose to see no difference between scanning it myself or having someone else do it for me, as long as it's for personal use.

 

[delericho]

And other than complain in visible / respected forums, I'm not sure how best to register that opinion.

Have you emailed them?

 

[redrick]

Who said anything about piracy? Certainly not me. We have different interpretations of fair use (as do the courts). I own all three physical copies. I choose to interpret fair use to say I can format shift. I also choose to see no difference between scanning it myself or having someone else do it for me, as long as it's for personal use.

I'm not trying to say what you're doing is wrong. Not that my opinion matters.

You are of course free to interpret the law however you feel like. However, it is the interpretation of the courts which actually determine what is legal. Just like all the dudes who interpret the constitution to mean that they do not need to pay income taxes. This might hold up at the dive bar, but it doesn't hold up in court.

So, again, I'm not judging your actions at all! But I think it's better not to pretend that something is legal, just because you feel like it should be.

 

[Jester David]

I feel like this is a daily thread!

I need to save this somewhere for tomorrow's thread.

Maybe a stickied topic?
Or a "where are mah PDFs?" subforum.

 

[Morrus]

Maybe a stickied topic?
Or a "where are mah PDFs?" subforum.

It doesn't matter! Just because I had a conversation once doesn't mean that nobiody else is allowed to have that or a similar conversation.

 

[Iosue]

Who said anything about piracy? Certainly not me. We have different interpretations of fair use (as do the courts). I own all three physical copies. I choose to interpret fair use to say I can format shift. I also choose to see no difference between scanning it myself or having someone else do it for me, as long as it's for personal use.

The difference is, once you introduce the third party, that's distribution, not fair-use format shifting.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

My guess would be that WotC hasn't released any. Its a wild guess though.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Who said anything about piracy? Certainly not me.

Yes, you did. When you said to go download a copy. That is what piracy is, by the very definition.

We have different interpretations of fair use (as do the courts). I own all three physical copies. I choose to interpret fair use to say I can format shift. I also choose to see no difference between scanning it myself or having someone else do it for me, as long as it's for personal use.

You can interpret it all you want, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how the law is. And downloading a pdf copy from somewhere not sanctioned by the IP holder is the very definition of piracy. That is objective fact.


AS to the OP, if we're speculating, I'd agree with the above poster in that the focus is supporting sales of physical books and game stores.

 

[Gecko85]

Yes, you did. When you said to go download a copy. That is what piracy is, by the very definition.



You can interpret it all you want, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how the law is. And downloading a pdf copy from somewhere not sanctioned by the IP holder is the very definition of piracy. That is objective fact.


AS to the OP, if we're speculating, I'd agree with the above poster in that the focus is supporting sales of physical books and game stores.

Well, there is precedent:

RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property00/MP3/rio.html

Also, using the RIAA v. Diamond judgement (which was in favor of Diamond) as a basis, the US Copyright Office extended it to include DVDs. I haven't found anything specifically for books (don't have time to search right now), but their reasoning seems to be pretty general:

A. Personal Space Shifting is Legal

In RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc.6 the Ninth Circuit, citing the
Supreme Court in Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios,
7 described the
process of converting music files contained on Compact Discs to the .mp3 format in
order to make them more portable as “paradigmatic noncommercial personal use.”
8
That
description is just as applicable to the practice of copying motion pictures from DVDs for
use in personal devices.
The first fair use factor considers “the purpose and character of the use, including
whether such use is of a commercial nature . . . .”9
The reproductions in question are by
definition non-commercial in nature.

So, again, you can interpret fair use however you want. I'm going to interpret on the side of sanity. Using a PDF copy for personal non-commercial use of a hard copy book that I legally own is, to me (and some courts) most certainly not piracy.