U.S. copyright law & this forum: sharing PDFs and so on

Hello everyone!

Here’s the excerpt from our community guidelines, but I felt I owed us a Seth-specific rationale below.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

We all know Seth’s ideas transcend culture – we’re multinational. We also resist limitation and believe in the free exchange of knowledge, particularly the most useful knowledge of all.

Many of us may also draw a personal distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Indeed the letter can never be comprehensive or the interpretation performed by a judicial system would be obsolete.

When the letter of a law says, “do not share this”, with the spiritual explanation “or you will reduce its value to the owner” but it is shared with a country, or a person, that cannot legally buy it, or does not have access to it, or who cannot afford it but surely would pay for it later, then it’s true that you may indeed be in full agreement with the spirit of the law while in violation of its letter.

There is a beneficial trust of humanity involved here. That trust is important. That belief is important. Let us hold fast to our own moral compass, the one that says, “this sign may say no trespassing, but there is someone injured on the other side - let me help them”, no jury of one’s peers would argue against.

But I have a favor to ask of you. Let us create this ideal world with our minds and emotions, within Framework 2, and within our own personal experience outside of these forums. Because while it is a noble and important crusade, here won’t do as an appropriate battleground. For you see, the servers that host this forum are located in the United States, and as unrepresentative it is of our membership, and as imperfect as the law can often be, we serve ourselves best by remaining legitimate.

So I kindly request that we not share or share ways to acquire any material, including but not limited to the Seth material, illegally (by U.S. law).

Thank you.

What can we do instead to make the material more available?

Although information is much more widely available than ever before, it’s possible not everyone has access to the Amazon Kindle Store (Jane Roberts), and the official material is after all, only in English. What you do outside of these forums is your own business, use your best judgement.

But as for here, let’s pool our constructive power to work within the confines of the law. Perhaps we can buy books for those in need, or other creative solutions. We’re only as limited as we believe. :wink:

All works are copyright by default whether the copyright symbol and holder’s name is present.

Fair use is, to quote this helpful film, not a right, only a “defensible position” in a court of law. It is a giant gray area.

Essentially I am comfortable with a certain degree of quotation on this website. The material we discuss here is, generally speaking, self-help, and thus contain a lot of exercises that I feel it’s fair to expect to be quoted at greater length than usual (but not excessive). If I were contacted by Laurel-Davies Butts (copyright holder) and asked to remove them, I would do so.

I will also politely request that any ridiculously long excerpt be trimmed, but most people seem to police themselves quite well.

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