Bill Clinton signed into law the No Electronic Theft (NET) Act after it was
passed unanimously by both houses of Congress. NET permits the Justice
Department to pursue midemeanor or felony cases against those willfully
participate in, but do not profit from, large-scale illegal distribution of
copyrighted works. It also extended the statute of limitations and increased the
punishments for copyright infringement.

Enforcement of the law has mainly been targeted at software piracy, but the case
of Jason Spatafore is more apropos to the issue in this newsgroup. He posted
parts of one of the Star Wars prequels to the internet. He pled guilty to one
count and received probation and a fine.

Copyrights exist for a very good reason: to protect the economic value of one's
creativity. Some authors permit others to use their works in various ways, some
don't -- that is the copyright holder's right, not an infringer's. One does not
have a right or duty to perform an "advertising service" for an author or
performer by violating copyright laws and putting the author's or performer's
copyrighted work(s) into the public domain. If one wants to advertise
copyrighted works, one can obtain permission from the copyright holder, provide
a review of the work(s), or link to a site which already has permission to
present the copyrighted work(s) in whole or in part (as in this case, the
publisher's website offers five sample recipes; the author's website also has
sample recipes).

http://www.cybercrime.gov/netsum.htm
http://eric_goldman.tripod.com/articles/nljnetact.htm