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<blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7521607">I both partially agree with you, and your exultant use of the word &quot;theft&quot; makes it tempting to write you off as a rabid zealot.My take on patent and copyright protections is that we as a society have an interest in giving creators an incentive to work, and so we give them legal protections.&nbsp; It's not because they have some kind of natural right to their creative output that we have a moral duty to protect.&nbsp; Unfortunately, Disney and the like have waged a successful campaign (with terms like &quot;intellectual property&quot;) that have convinced too many people that ideas are like property, and they should be protected as such.(Side story: a friend of mine was a junior lawyer on the team that went around suing college students for downloading music.&nbsp; She reflexively use the words &quot;piracy&quot; and &quot;theft&quot;.&nbsp; She also, in her spare time, did pro bono work for &quot;undocumented immigrants&quot; and was ferocious in her condemnation of the term &quot;illegal aliens&quot;.&nbsp; When I started calling music downloaders &quot;unauthorized music fans&quot; she, to her credit, acknowledged the point I was making.) Anyway, if you can demonstrate that the owner of the grimoire actually took some money that was due to WotC, instead of theorizing that maybe they possibly might have, then I'll be with you on the &quot;theft&quot; thing.&nbsp; Otherwise, I will agree that while they are probably in technical violation of the law...or somebody's laws...they are doing so in a way that actually adds value to the copyright holder, and are certainly not in violation of any moral law.&nbsp; Not any more than going 56 in a 55 zone is.Hosting PDFs of the actual books, on the other hand, would be a different matter.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Guest 6801328, post: 7521607"] I both partially agree with you, and your exultant use of the word "theft" makes it tempting to write you off as a rabid zealot. My take on patent and copyright protections is that we as a society have an interest in giving creators an incentive to work, and so we give them legal protections. It's not because they have some kind of natural right to their creative output that we have a moral duty to protect. Unfortunately, Disney and the like have waged a successful campaign (with terms like "intellectual property") that have convinced too many people that ideas [I]are[/I] like property, and they should be protected as such. (Side story: a friend of mine was a junior lawyer on the team that went around suing college students for downloading music. She reflexively use the words "piracy" and "theft". She also, in her spare time, did pro bono work for "undocumented immigrants" and was ferocious in her condemnation of the term "illegal aliens". When I started calling music downloaders "unauthorized music fans" she, to her credit, acknowledged the point I was making.) Anyway, if you can demonstrate that the owner of the grimoire actually took some money that was due to WotC, instead of theorizing that maybe they possibly might have, then I'll be with you on the "theft" thing. Otherwise, I will agree that while they are probably in technical violation of the law...or somebody's laws...they are doing so in a way that actually adds value to the copyright holder, and are certainly not in violation of any moral law. Not any more than going 56 in a 55 zone is. Hosting PDFs of the actual books, on the other hand, would be a different matter. [/QUOTE]

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