Is this legal?

[Greg Swartz]

I was ebay looking at 2005 NEC prices, and I saw this ad about a 2005 Master Exam Prep CD.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Master-Electricians-Exam-Study-CD-2005-NEC-more-L-K_W0QQitemZ140122945527QQihZ004QQcategoryZ2228QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I looked further and noticed:

Included on this CD is the following:
1. The COMPLETE 2005 NEC Code Book
2. The COMPLETE 2005 NEC Handbook which simplifies many aspects of the Code Book with easy to understand explanations of electrical terms as well as illustrated examples of practical applications of the code.
3. Formulas and Calculations which are essential to know for your Exam!
4. 2005 NEC Keyword Index which makes searching the Code Book a snap! Keywords with the articles and the pages they are on! No more searching frantically through the Code Book!
5.Exam Questions & Answers : over 300 pages of questions and answers with explanations provided.
6.Master Electricians Sample Resume : a quality example of what your resume should look like. In fact all you will need to do is insert your information and you will have an instant quality resume!

While anyone can publish such an item, numbers 1 and 2 are what concerned me.

What do you all think... Is it legal?

Greg

 

[brantmacga]

i would think 1 & 2 are completely illegal. it may be possible to buy licenses, but there's no way they can sell that @ $29.99 if they paid NFPA to publish in PDF format. i'm guessing they've copied everything they offer from someone else. the keyword index sounds like a tom henry product.

 

[celtic]

You can contact NFPA's copyright department here:
dberry@nfpa.org

Send a link to that auction.
They will have a difinitive answer

 

[brantmacga]

i did right after i replied awhile ago

 

[QES]

Soo not legal, but we are not the copyright police.

 

[infinity]

Did you already report them? I didn't get to order my copy yet.:wink:

 

[lloyd B]

Ya. They stole all that material,Wait till Tom Henry sees that he is going to have a fit .

 

[celtic]

Soo not legal, but we are not the copyright police.

No we're not the police, but don't you think we(legal owners) pay a price when copyrighted material is pirated/stolen?

 

[Greg Swartz]

Cool guys!

Thanks. I didn't know for sure.

Greg

 

[lloyd B]

After reading all his feed backs on Ebay there was a couple of positve feed backs on that item,one guy says ,just a listed everything worked and he payed 19.95.Only on Ebay.

 

[mdshunk]

Ya. They stole all that material,Wait till Tom Henry sees that he is going to have a fit .

No kidding. I bought some electrical CD's on eBay that were reported to have "bonus material". The "bonus material" were bootleg copies of old Tom Henry VHS tapes. It looked like someone set up a digital video camera in front of their television and recorded Tom Henry tapes right off the screen. Really ancient stuff.

Ordered another set of CD's that were to come with some "workbooks". The workbooks were Xerox copies of Mike Holt material. eBay's full of that sort of thing.

 

[LawnGuyLandSparky]

No we're not the police, but don't you think we(legal owners) pay a price when copyrighted material is pirated/stolen?

How do you figure?
Do you think if Home Depot could eliminate all theft that retail prices would come down?

Everything that is sold in a free market is already priced the highest it can, or at the price that will yield the highest profit for the seller. Theft cuts into profits, it doesn't raise retail prices.

 

[celtic]

In the days of old, you could install virtually any piece of software on as many computers as you wanted.

People "might" have 1 or 2 computers at their disposal.
Today, it's a different story - I have 3 I use and plans for #4's and 5.
Will I be able to purchase 1 '08 NECH and install onto all 5 machines?
No, I won't be able to:

System Requirements for
National Electrical Code? (NFPA 70) Handbook
CD-ROM (NFPA 70), 2008 Edition

The NEC Handbook CD is installable two (2) times
onto computers with the following system requirements:
....

http://www.nfpa.org/catalog/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=NFPA+Catalog&pid=70HCD08#TabAnchor


This is the "price" we pay.
I never said the cost per unit went up, I said:

....don't you think we(legal owners) pay a price when copyrighted material is pirated/stolen?

That "price" can be measured in actual dollars ...previously, the limitations were non-existant...someone did get paid to develop and implement that security feature.
Theft does raise retail rates.

In your HD example, the cost for vidoe security measures, "skrinkage guards" looking at reciepts, RFID tags, etc are NOT free.
If the profits go down, how does a company recover them?
Either they don't or prices go up to cover the security measures.

 

[LawnGuyLandSparky]

No, the cost to implement security measuers, check receipts, and have shrinkage guards isn't free. It comes out of the store profits.

When profits go down due to theft, the store never recovers them. There is no static "we have to make X amount per item, so if theft increases we have to raise prices to cover the theft."

This would mean that prices would be lower in lower theft areas, and they're not.

Here's another example. My brother lives far upstate where electricity costs 1/2 what it does down here. His Home Depot prices are the same, there is no benefit to the customer for the store saving 50% on utility costs. There is also no benefit to the customers when the local wages are lower.

 

[brantmacga]

There is also no benefit to the customers when the local wages are lower.

mmmmmmm have to disagree on that one. every time i travel i end up griping because buying the same things in other areas always costs more than it does here in south GA. its all relative.

 

[petersonra]

No we're not the police, but don't you think we(legal owners) pay a price when copyrighted material is pirated/stolen?

This is an ongoing argument. Applies to books, music, video, etc.

Out and out theft is probably bad, especially for this kind of relatively expensive material.

For more moderately priced things (like books and songs) the issue is not so simple. In many cases the copyright owner ends up benefiting from the "piracy". Its why a very few companies have completely given up on the various DRM schemes that end users universally hate. The response to the DRM free product has been pretty profitable for them.

 

[petersonra]

The thing with HD is that most of their cost is in the product, and there is some advantage to having common pricing structures for stores in a geographical area.

It is not unusual for a chain to close a store that has high shrinkage (i.e.-theft) simply because it is unpalatable for them to raise prices to cover the cost of a high degree of theft, even if it would make it possible to keep the store in business.

No, the cost to implement security measuers, check receipts, and have shrinkage guards isn't free. It comes out of the store profits.

When profits go down due to theft, the store never recovers them. There is no static "we have to make X amount per item, so if theft increases we have to raise prices to cover the theft."

This would mean that prices would be lower in lower theft areas, and they're not.

Here's another example. My brother lives far upstate where electricity costs 1/2 what it does down here. His Home Depot prices are the same, there is no benefit to the customer for the store saving 50% on utility costs. There is also no benefit to the customers when the local wages are lower.

 

[LawnGuyLandSparky]

The thing with HD is that most of their cost is in the product, and there is some advantage to having common pricing structures for stores in a geographical area.

It is not unusual for a chain to close a store that has high shrinkage (i.e.-theft) simply because it is unpalatable for them to raise prices to cover the cost of a high degree of theft, even if it would make it possible to keep the store in business.

I agree.
My point is, the end cost of a consumer product isn't necessarily going to change just because a business sees fluxuations in it's costs. Increases or decreases in thefts have a much greater impact on a company's profit than the consumer price.

Unless you believe Home Depot hires security, installs cameras and demands most product be shipped with RFI devices to save YOU money.

 

[Greg Swartz]

Well, just so you all know, I bought the CD. I wanted to see what was on it.

The CD contains .pdf files of the 2005 NEC, 2005 NEC handbook, a masters exam from some company, and yes, it does include a very bad reproduction of a Tom Henry document.

The NEC and NEC handbooks are of professional quality. They are fully searchable. When I ordered from him, he sent me a flyer stating that the 2008 NEC & handbooks will be available when they come out.

So... is it a pirated copy... probably... I don't know for sure though.

 

[haskindm]

Lawnguysparky,
Stores do not operate in a vacuum. There is no endless supply of profit from which things like theft may be deducted. Theft, rent, utilities, salaries, all go into what is known as overhead. When overhead is increased, prices must be increased. A business like HD has many stores on which to base it's overhead figures and they can come up with an average for their stores. Your argument that theft does not affect prices is bogus. If you and I are competing contractors and you pay twice as much for your materials as I pay for mine, are we going to bid the same amount for a job? According to you, we will. The extra that you have to pay for material will just result in lower profits for you. I believe that you will need to bid a higher price to try to recover the cost of your materials. This is the thinking of many people today, that nobody gets hurt by theft, or insurance fraud, or falsified bookkeeping; that it all comes out of this bottomless pit called profits. In the end, everyone that is a consumer pays for the dishonest among us.