[RANT]That would make too much sense. One would think that they would say, "Hey, apparently there's a demand here, let's look at how we can make some money off of this." There is nothing in my file that is not in the book, and vice-versa. I listed a few ideas in the email I sent to the lawyer in response to the takedown notice letter I got from them, and I never got a single response at all. Kinda nice to threaten me with a $20K-per-copy lawsuit and then not even have the decency to respond to my email, eh? I was pretty stressed out for quite a while because I had no idea WTF was going to come out of it, whether they were actually going to come after me for money (good luck since I'm broke as :censored: and am almost upside-down on the mortgage!) or whether my compliance would be satisfactory. I can only assume the latter since I never heard anything back from them. The other possibility is that they've been silently watching my every move...
I think the fact that I have a working knowledge of Canadian copyright law might have deterred them a bit - in Canada, if you buy a copyrighted work in one format/medium, you are legally entitled to make a copy onto any other format of choice for backup or compatibility purposes - for example it isn't illegal to make an MP3 from vinyl or a CD for personal use. So, they'd have a really hard time nailing me for scanning the book to PDF in the first place. Secondly, I never directly emailed or otherwise sent any portion of the book directly to anyone else; I simply didn't hide its location, and then it was up to others to make the decision to "pirate" it. It's a very gray area and our ***** Conservative government has been doing its very best lately to make our copyright laws just as restrictive and senseless as those in the US.
I don't take issue with copyrights being enforced on new, current content (to an extent), but when a book (or record) has been out of production for 25 years and is no longer available in the mainstream marketplace, what is the point of enforcing copyright? Nobody stands to lose any money since what is being copied is no longer being sold. If anything, I would be inclined to buy more from a publisher/producer/artist that understands the benefits of sheer distribution volume over a tightly controlled market. I practice this with my music purchases - I WILL NOT buy a CD or digital music file that is copy-protected in any way.[/RANT]
Having said all that though, while I don't agree with the legal position taken here, I do respect it. Sorry for the long-windedness, just felt like getting that off my chest.