A Formal Apology.

I am coming to you today to give a formal apology over something I half unwittingly did...

It has been brought to my attention ( In a pretty crappy way ) that I made a mistake sometime in the last year and a half. 

Around that time, I, at the suggestion of a Pagan friend, joined the social community Pagan Space. ( No, I am not linking to that place,because once I joined,  I saw very quickly what kind of folks were there (I am sure there are good ones too, but of course the good ones are usually the silent ones, compared to all the asshats out there.) 

During my brief time there, one of the threads had several links to "free" Pagan books. There were several, and while I cannot remember all of the authors, one of them was very well known, which gave me pause, and the publisher of his books is known for cracking down and not giving away it's titles for free, which should have given me more pause than it did. As the author has been deceased for some time, I remember thinking maybe they were now free because a certain amount of time had passed. ( I knew very little of digital copyright laws and such. I have more education about it now. )  

While I did not download ( and I admit, it is mostly because I had the majority of the titles there in physical form, the ones that I did not have I was not interested in, and there was still that little voice.. ) because there was that little doubt in the back of my head, however I DID share the link with a very close friend. She in turn, because she trusted the fact that it came from me, went and published the link in her blog ( which has since been removed once we found out the truth. ) and shared it with her followers.

While I am pretty upset at the way it was brought to my attention, once I got over my shock and indignation at the way it was  handled, and how I was accused of some terrible things, once I removed the people and the emotions from the situation, then I saw that I had indeed done something wrong.

Even though I did not download anything, or publicly share the link, I DID pass it on to another person, instead of doing some research first, or contacting the publisher. So I shared a link to digital content that I was not 100% sure of the legality of, which in turn, because my friend trusted me, got shared with other people. ( Which I just found out about last night..I had not seen the post until it was shown to me. ) I contacted my friend right away and told her what was up, what I had done, and had unknowingly assisted her in doing, and she removed the post right away.

I was going to just let it go...it was not an intentional or nefarious thing...but I am not a thief, and I fully admit to my wrong doings and short comings. Letting it go was not the right thing to do, and it would eat at me until I spoke about it.

I feel terrible for not trusting my intuition, and for not taking the steps necessary to prove or disprove the validity and integrity of the download. I made a mistake, and unintentionally sent that link into a space it might never have seen if not for me. Now I know better, and as far as I know have not made the same mistake since, as I am now much more well versed in that subject, enough to know that you need to do some homework before clicking anything free on the internet.  

So for that, I am very sorry. I made a mistake, and while it was not on purpose, it was still wrong, and it is not something I do or condone. I have way to many writer and author friends and acquaintances, not to mention people who craft for income and have to deal with intellectual theft often, to not be aware of how wrong it is, especially now that I have read a lot of the laws and regulations.

Again, I am very sorry for this, and I swear to fully research anything of that type again before I share it with a single person.