After a little more looking around, it looks like what might have happened is that someone with an
ACM Digital Library (or similar) subscription might have downloaded it, which they were free to do, but then posted it for others to download, and I suppose the bit-torrent thing makes it hard to trace where it came from so they stay out of trouble. Although the website is kat.ph (Philipines?), it's hosted in Canada. I checked because I wondered if it was some third-world country where it would be easy to get away with distributing things illegally.
If anyone finds other info, let us know. Meanwhile, I guess I better edit my first post above.
It sounds very suspicious to me, no matter what form the pdf is. Does it contain a copyright notice? Is there anything in the file or on the web where the publisher or the author tells you that the book has been released like that?
If it had been released, I would expect it to be available in a more conventional form than a torrent.
I looked, and the copyright page does have:
No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher; with the exception that the program listings may be entered, stored, and executed in a computer system, but they may not be reproduced for publication
and I compared it to the copyright page in the programming manual WDC has online and found it has no such notice.
This is getting stranger by the minute. The copyright page also has:
Distributed in the U.S. by:
Publishers Group West
1700 Fourth Street
Berkeley, California 94710
1-800-788-3123
www.pgw.com
So I called them up to ask, and after I gave the woman the title and ISBN, she says, "That's not
our book."
I went to that location and it wanted me to sign up for something before I could download anything. I decided to pass...I don't randomly sign up for things. Great way to increase one's spam intake.
I don't either, and I did not give them any email address or other info, but it seemed like they just wanted me to be able to help distribute it, since that would reduce their upload bandwidth requirements.
