Whats the rules for PDFs?

[yeebarr]

Re: Re: No...

It never entered my mind that he had just purchased the item and failed to understand that it would have legal protection similar to that of software, movies, or music. Oops.

Uh...yeah...I guess I did come across as being slightly naive here! But this PDF world is new territory to me (heck - purchasing stuff of the internet is new to me!)

But again, thanks to all that have clarified the issue to me (at least enough for me to chase my friend down with a baseball bat and demand my copy back!)

Yeah...I agree there probably is no way to police this...and people will keep copying the PDFs if they want to...I just wanted to know what the rules were (if any)! So thanks for the assists guys!

Oh - and go get your own copies of 4CTF! It's worth it!

 

[tburdett]

Re: Re: No...

Mark has the right of it.

Legality aside, it's dishonest - you're depriving a publisher of a sale, which is their bread and water.

I agree completely that it is unethical and dishonest. I fully appreciate that the amount of income generated by the sale of these .PDF products is severly impacted by the amount of piracy that goes on. I will also state that I have, on occasion, reported individuals on eBay who take part in this type of activity.

Monte Cook may remember that I reported an individual to him within the last week to 10 days by both email and his websites message boards. He, in turn, passed the word on to Wizards.

My comments are based upon my experiences dealing with this subject. They are not based upon any desire to encourage or promote this type of activity.

 

[Cullain]

One quick aside, though:

you do have the right to sell your pdf to someone else. However, doing so means you sell ALL RIGHTS to your pdf(giving someone the electronic document, erasing it off your hard drive. giving all hardcopies of the pdf to the purchaser, or destroying them, etc.)

In practice, of course, that's almost never how it works, but in theory it would be like selling a book or a cd to a used book/cd store.

-charlie

 

[Fast Learner]

Woah there Fast Learner! I (sort of) think WiKidOgre was making his comments in jest (he did say he was feelin' a little saucy tonight!)...but even if he isn't I think we're going a little off topic here! (Unless the whole concept about how many PDF's you're allowed IS strictly a moral issue...then feel free to continue!)

That was certainly my point, anyway. It's illegal, yes. And it's unethical/dishonest/immoral, yes. It stuns me how often people say "if they don't know, it won't hurt them" and use it as some kind of license to act unethically. Giving friends copies of PDFs you purchased falls smack dab in the middle of this, and it's worse because it clearly does create potential harm, since those who got it for free are very unlikely to buy it while they might otherwise have.

So, yeah, it's a moral issue, too. I guess I wanted to point out that someone might feel like stealing an item is simply a chaotic act (I'm not LG, dude!), and I wanted to add that it's also an unethical act (CN, at best, and possibly CE if you feel that stealing money from someone is an act of evil). Flaunting one's chaotic nature doesn't cover the right to act unethically.

 

[jaerdaph]

My father was an intellectual property lawyer for IBM for over 30 years. Here's what he told me regarding fair use:

It's like buying a CD album. You can copy the CD onto a tape, for example, and play it in your car. That's fair use. What you can't do is make copies of that album on tape (or burn to another CD) for all your friends. You also can't burn CDs off of the one you bought and sell them - that's bootlegging.

With a PDF, you can own one copy of the digital file (the CD in the example above), and print out one copy for your use (the tape for your car tapedeck). You can't give copies to all your friends of the digital PDF file or print it out multiple times for each them.

Here's where it gets murky: If you own a book, you can loan it to a friend to read. If you own a CD album, you can loan it to a friend to listen to. Can you loan a PDF, or a PDF printout? Here my dad just kind of smiled and said, hey, I'm retired. I *think* he was referring to the fact that these legal questions haven't been adequately answered yet.

A good rule of thumb: Think of it like software licenses, you know, like for that copy of MS Word you own. You can only have it on one machine if you have one license.

But hey, I'm in arts administration, not law, so what do I know?