Re: PDF files on company Intranet?

On Wed, 12 Jan 2000, Greg Erkins <gerkins[_at_]gci.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2000, Michael Sowinski <msowinski[_at_]dpra.com> wrote:
> >
> > I would really appreciate a word of advice. Several newsletters that
> > my company subscribes to have begun to offer their periodicals via
> > electronic delivery services, such as PDF. If my company, which
> > includes 8 offices nationwide and one in Canada, stores those PDF
> > files on our company Intranet site where they could be accessed by
> > all of our offices, would we be infringing?
>
> So the non-lawyer, layman, answer is you could store any PDF document
> anywhere, but to create them you need a licensed copy of the Writer.

not only is the reader software free from Adobe, but others offer free readers _and writers_ for PDF. It is not illegal to produce a PDF file with software not licensed from Adobe. It is just illegal under copyright law to use such tools to infringe the copyright of the newsletters. Whether the PDF file is an infringement or not could be determined by analogy with other such processes of copying. Most likely you should seek a license from the newsletter publishers. Probably you already have one that specifies you can't do what you intend, but could do it if you negotiated and paid more money. Making a backup copy might be considered fair use, but making copies for a commercial purpose not fair use. --This is another non-lawyer, layman answer, but I'm not sure that this question is one that needs an expensive answer from a professional attorney.

Eric Eldred
<eldred[_at_]mediaone.net> Received on Thu Jan 13 2000 - 15:48:13 GMT