Illegally downloading a pdf of a product you do not own in hardcopy?  

Questionable.  Nothing to be proud of.


Selling electronic copies of pdf files?

Downright rotten.


The guy selling the pdf files is not just looking at a file he doesn't own.  He is claiming ownership.  Most annoying is that these guys generally consider themselves to be oh so clever.  They seriously think they have an edge because they are smarter than all of us.

They even put notices into their Ebay listings that say things like, "Attention Ebay:  I am the legal owner of these files."

A good liar is capable of making himself actually believe his own lies.  That's why they all come up with the same stupid arguments when someone calls them on what they are doing.  That's why they are so outraged when they are reported.  

My main motivation for reporting these guys is not legalities or to protect copyright laws.  That's all pretty much out the window - that genie is already out of the bottle.  What I mainly care about is the sheer arrogance...the sheer, balls-out gall that makes these guys publicly claim to own something that is clearly stolen property.

Not quite violating copyright, but this guy 'r3db3ar' did steal my scan for his listing:

My listing:  
** expired/removed eBay auction **


His listing:  
** expired/removed eBay auction **


Reported the bastard, and moving to block him as well.

I'm not gonna take a moral position or start the arguement here, but if you download a PDF that isn't offered by it's owner for free, even  if you do have the original in hardcopy, it is illegal and breaks copyright law. The question is not whether it is illegal or not. The question is whether or not you can live with breaking the law.

I avoid the likes of BitTorrent and the likes for the sake of keeping my PC running sweetly. I can't run the risk of anything troublesome finding its way onto my PC or laptop. I'm also a great believer in supporting genuine PDF releases and spend maybe $1K a year on sites like RPGNow. I just wish they didn't have a near monopoly in the current market.

In the US, making a single copy of an item you own is called "fair use."

I can't see a judge caring if you copied it or someone copied it for you.

FormCritic wrote:I can't see a judge caring if you copied it or someone copied it for you.

I the mid-90s, the law was changed so that someone can't turn a profit by helping you. Professors had been copying material, under fair use, to use in class. Places like Kinko's would actually make the copies to sell for a profit.

Seems like sort of a perverse law, one that goes around fair use to defeat it in practice. When greed is involved, sacred cows tend to be slaughtered.

mbassoc2003 wrote:Copyright Law in both the US and UK is very clear.

Don't really see where that's true at all. You post is filled with ambiguities (not saying this is your failure, but the nature of copyright), the recent discussions on this thread are filled with ambiguities, pretty much any discussion on IP is going to be filled with ambiguities, the very nature of legally regulating abstract thought leads to ambiguities. Even in the narrow context of distributing unsanctioned PDFs, anyone who reads the news can see what Google Books is going through to get it all sorted out.

Yes, I continue to use Google and their declared digitising as a benchmark to say, "Look, Copyright Law is an outdated concept and the law needs changing because at the very least it is morally questionable, and at the very best it is flawed in the modern world." In most of these situations only challenges in court will ever decide where the boundaries are going to lie in future years.

Now I do not sanction the download of illegal PDFs from the internet, but I do acknowledge that they are there and accept that the internet is a legitimate source of for all kings of information.

I am also upfront about the fact that I digitise and store in PDF form, practically everything I buy on eBay. I have been doing this for 5 years now, and morally I don't have a problem with it. But other people have other moral positions. I accept that the letter of the law says that I should not PDF a book that I buy, but I challenge that on the same grounds that I should have the right to do so, and until someone pursues me and prosecutes me in court, like Google, I will continue to digitise D&D.

There have been others who have posted the US legal position in great detail, and there is clearly a distinction to be made between how the law is written, how it has been interpretted to date, how any one of us wishes to interpret it, and what each of our moral stances are on the issue.

Too many variables to make it a black and white issue unless we're gonna be very specific about what is going to be debated.


Thanks, Deim.

That does not contradict the information and link posted on another thread by Pip I believe that 'fair use' in regard to making a backup copy only applies to music and sound recordings.

I'd be interested to find out if the courts have ever been asked to take a view on someone owning a PDF.

Playing devil's advocate, I suppose if I send a letter to the IRS and they scan it and store it on my file, they have breached my copyright without my consent. This is an issue that can be argues round and round. Case law and the written law itself (as opposed to an organisation's opinion on it) is the only real impirical data here. Everything else is merely supposition and conjecture.

FormCritic wrote:My original point was not actually about copyright law.  I suspect most of us have done something sometime that has violated copyright law.

What pisses me off about the Ebay PDF sellers is their attitude.

Yeah. I was wondering if they admitted up front and acknowledged that they had no right to do it, but just wanted a quick buck, whether you'd let them go or report them too.

I wonder if it's illegal to offer stuff for sale acknowledging that you don't have the right to do so, or if it's only illegal to actually complete the sale. Might be worth putting up a spoof listing just for fun.

Morally I see nothing wrong with supplying a backup PDF to someome who owns the original, but that is my moral position and it is clearly against the law (this has been explored extensively on the forum). Purely on the basis that if I passed along a backup PDF and it subsequently 'went wild', I would feel morally responsible for that, and may possibly be criminally responsible for that, I won't distribute the PDFs I create. I feel that PDFs like CZ:UW, Tortured Souls, Starstone etc. should be made available to purchase legally, but I'm not gonna be the one to do it.