From: Jakub Hegenbart <kyosuke@...>
Date: 2006-01-31T00:05:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Strange posting about ebooks

Paul Robinson wrote:

> I'd advise you destroy all the PDFs that you received illegally.  
> They're not yours, you don't own them, it's piracy. You might think  
> having the PDF is handy, so fine, pay for it.
>
> For what it's worth, the Pragmatic Programmer's series all seem to be  
> watermarked PDFs if they're legit - I bought the PDFs legally - and  
> in the footer of each page in the main part of the books, it will say  
> "Prepared for..." (in my case it says "Paul Robinson") and name the  
> person involved. I'd suggest sending copies to the PP team so they  
> can track down who is stealing from them...
>
> -- 
> Paul Robinson

Ehm, this could be considered a FUD or at least an (uninformed) 
exaggeration. Or at least, the legal state in some countries doesn't 
just correspond to it. I'm not (!) questioning the morale, just the 
"piracy" and "received illegally" parts. Where I live, it's just 
nonsense and also it's the very rhetorics currently being used by local 
recording companies to intimidate the people from using the rights the 
copyright law explicitly grants to them. The "Prepared for..." person 
also might have nothing to do with it. Tracking down the culprit might 
be much more difficult than that.

An yeah, you don't own the book even if you pay for it. Or you can have 
the paper, but you still don't have to have the right to read it. Kind 
of reminds me the Harry Potter affair, the latest book, AFAIRC...

Jakub