I for one have been helped many times by Geralds perls(?) of wisdom on this list, so as Gerald gives his knowledge freely to this list to help others time after time, then I for one say he can talk about what the hell he wants to.
Well I second that, Gerald helped me in a time of desperation, at no charge, by phone, on a Sunday night. That type of help goes a long way in my book.
Any thoughts on this as an alternative - so Gerald can continue to help out by providing a valuable service for little money, and at the same time not violate any type of copyright (I have not read all the fine print, admittedly): if I were to download the files myself, email them to Gerald (in theory) and say *Hey Gerald, can you do your magic on these files for me, put them on a CD for convenience, and mail it back to me? I'll pay you $50 to provide this service for me*.
I don't think there could be any violations there; so what's the difference between that and what Gerald is doing?
For the record, I am a VERY PRO-SOFTWARE-COPYRIGHT person, I do not use any software I don't own, I have made it a company policy that no pirated software is allowed, and have even told my children, and my neighbors children who did this, that they cannot keep a pirated game their friend made a copy of. I told them they may use it long enough to decide if it is a good game, worth buying, and then the disk was returned. I teach my children this is stealing, just like taking anything else. They are probably the only kids on the block who have ever learned that lesson. My point, I don't believe in pirating software, but what Gerald is doing just doesn't seem to fit even my high standards in that area :)
For the sake of getting a possible (free) legal opinion, I am sending the question to a good friend, the one who defended Phil Zimmerman in the PGP-Munitions case, and won, against the good government of the USA.
Have a great day, Jale