Recently I removed a link to a copy of Ray Franz's book Crisis of Conscience. It has been and continues to be the policy of JWD/JWN to not post download links to this book unless they are from http://www.commentarypress.com, Ray Franz' publishing Company.
I wrote Ray about the illegal posting of his work on the internet and have received a reply from him this morning. I won't quote his entire email but will use the pertaining parts.
Dear Lee,
Thank you for your letter and your kind concern. I appreciate what you have done to eliminate the pirating of my work. ... (text deleted due to other links to illegal downloads of his work)This has been an ongoing, very time-consuming problem for some years and an ironically sad feature is that those stealing my right to control the use of my work usually profess themselves to be Christians yet they violate the Christian teaching to do to others as they would have done to themselves.
[Another] author of the book (title removed for copyright reasons) had his work illegally appropriated and the source doing this even altered the text in places, causing Carl even more serious concern. ...(text deleted due to other links to illegal downloads of his work)As you evudently know, all these publications are available on our Commentary Press website for PDF download at a nominal cost. A major reason for our doing this is that it makes the book more accessible to persons in other lands, since it eliminates mailing costs for them. Those costs can run $13.00 or more for mailing just one printed book to Europe or other countries. Also it has not been possible, for economic reasons, to have books printed in some countries. As the Commentary Press website shows, four publications have become available by PDF download in Portuguese and two in French.
Anything further you can do to correct this wrong practice will be sincerely appreciated by me. If you communicate with any of these sources you may state that you have authorization from Commentary Press and the author/s to do so.
Sincere regards,
Ray
I wondered why Ray would make his book available online as a download-able file. I thought that was asking for this problem. He explains that well. It is one more way to get the information out to those who want it.
So if I am so concerned about Ray's book and the books of others who have been pirated then why am I not so concerned about links to WTS material? Good question and one that I have had to work out in my own head. For the most part links to older WT material involve material that is no longer under copyright laws. The WTS failed to renew the copyrights on them making them fair game.
But then what about newer publications. Hmmmm Well I could go to any hall or convention and get them for free. For that matter I could go to their website and download much of it for free. Or get a CD where again much of it is available for free. So am I depriving them of income? No. Although they do "expect" a donation. Is it legal? No it isn't.
So why leave those links. My belief is to leave them for educational reasons. I think we need to be able to compare issues of past publications with present ones to see the covert changes the WTS makes in its publications. We aren't selling it and therefore making a profit off their work. We don't remove the publisher info. I want it clear who published the work.
I also see the great value in scanned copies of the books in their various editions so we can compare and not have someone say we made the changes to make the WTS look bad. We don't need to change a thing to make the WTS look bad as was claimed by the WTS itself when suing Quotes about how he used simple quotes from WTS publications showing the things they have taught and exposing them.
Interestingly I think many of us have become much more serious students of WT publications after we left than we ever were as active JWs. Back then I simply read the question and underlined the answers without ever thinking about what I was reading. And when there were discrepancies I, like most JWs shrugged them off or worse marveled at how the WTS was keeping us up to date.
My personal opinion is to allow links to WTS material but to delete links to other copyrighted material. Am I being hypocritical? Yup. But then some things I can let pass and others I can't