Re: PDF files on company Intranet?

On Thu, Jan 13, 2000, Red Bradley <red.bradley[_at_]sru.edu> wrote:
>
> On 1/11/00, 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?
>
> I would not use a PDF file without permission -- these documents usually
> contain copyrighted material held by the author not necessarily the
> publisher. To emphasize this point, Adobe will not allow you to place
> its PDF articles on an external site. They will, however, allow you to
> link and download.

It would seem to me that if one file was purchased from a newsletter and the newsletter company was properly licensed to distribute a PDF file and since adobe allows unlimited numbers of its reader to be downloaded, then as long as the file was stored in a company intranet and licensed by the newsletter, that in any case the file could be opened by one member of the company at any given time. Where the problem could occur is if the file was duplicated, then an infringement would have occurred, unless the newsletter company had licensed more than one copy.

In other words it will all depend on the licensing agreement with the newsletter company and their assurance that the material within was not infringed upon.

Just a simple, wordy, humble, 1:09 am AST non attorney opinion

Greg Erkins
http://www.emailrealty.com/
<gerkins[_at_]gci.net> Received on Fri Jan 14 2000 - 10:12:16 GMT