In theory, making copies of the work of others is a violation of their intellectual property, unless you’ve been conferred that right, regardless of whether you’re making money.
In practice, if you are not making money, then it is difficult to establish damages, and so a court case will ordinarily not be pursued.
In practice, there are statutory damages on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars, but the chances of things getting that bad are astronomically low.
I doubt any rightsholder is looking over stuff that LW members put out. They generally target people downloading off ‘pirate sites’, who they then send nastygrams to the effect of ‘That’s a nice house you got there. Wouldn’t want anything happening to it, would you? Now send us some cash or we call in the lawyers and sue your ass for a million bucks.’
Anyhow, you should be fine with a pdf you released to some obscure site, even if it’s not technically legal.
(Come to think of it, I’m not sure that the risk of getting sued increases that much if you print and sell it. But it is seen as more socially unacceptable.)
Disclosure: IP-related issues have a mind-killing effect on me, might be best to take everything I say with a grain of salt.
That is what I figured. (Does that apply even to strictly free things? Should I be concerned about the uploaded pdf, attributed or no?)
In theory, making copies of the work of others is a violation of their intellectual property, unless you’ve been conferred that right, regardless of whether you’re making money.
In practice, if you are not making money, then it is difficult to establish damages, and so a court case will ordinarily not be pursued.
In practice, there are statutory damages on the order of a few hundred thousand dollars, but the chances of things getting that bad are astronomically low.
I doubt any rightsholder is looking over stuff that LW members put out. They generally target people downloading off ‘pirate sites’, who they then send nastygrams to the effect of ‘That’s a nice house you got there. Wouldn’t want anything happening to it, would you? Now send us some cash or we call in the lawyers and sue your ass for a million bucks.’
Anyhow, you should be fine with a pdf you released to some obscure site, even if it’s not technically legal.
(Come to think of it, I’m not sure that the risk of getting sued increases that much if you print and sell it. But it is seen as more socially unacceptable.)
Disclosure: IP-related issues have a mind-killing effect on me, might be best to take everything I say with a grain of salt.