If a court ruled that, I think I'd like to know where so I can bring suit against everyone who's ever manufactured a DVD with encryption for violation of my consumer rights.

And, yes, out of print books should absolutely be digitally available.

Like I said before, under Fair Use, it's pretty much only illegal to distribute copyrighted material. You can make all the copies you like.

Likewise, downloading a file is in no way illegal. You have no way of knowing what a file is when you acquire it regardless of how it's labeled. That's why suing people for downloading is practically unheard of (no one has given a single link to such a case in this thread as far as I can remember). It's not only because going after the sharers is the easier part, it's because that's the only illegal part.

Now if you acquire a file for which you become aware of as being an illegal copy of something, you're expected to delete it and be done with it. If you're stupid enough to put it keep it and share it with other people -- even if you're unaware of what it is because you haven't looked at it -- you've just entered the illegal scene. Ignorance is no excuse in that case. You have no right to whine if someone hauls your ass to court.

Ever picked up a programming book? Small, sealed, plastic cd sleeve glued to the back inside cover is all you need.

Just make sure there are no places where a person could subtly tear the sleeve open and it will work.

I bought one of those sometime around '94 that wasn't shrinkwrapped. All of my programming books with CDs included (and all other books with CDs that I've purchased that I can remember) have been completely shrinkwrapped. It'd be nice if FanPro went the other way, but that's far from guaranteed.

~J

What makes you guys think they'd even seriously considering doing it?

Extra production costs, minimal gain, potential loss of revenue on new products. It's lose-lose all around.

Now putting out-of-print books up for sale on the net, that's something that obviously has potential. But expecting them to give you an electronic copy of a book you just bought for free, especially when they have only recently begun being nice enough to give us an index in the back of the books again, is pretty much a pipedream.

Speaking of the RIAA, I seem to remember reading an article about how they were conducting Commando style raids on people selling burned CDs on the streets of LA, and how the LAPD were furious about that little decision of theirs.

Seems like they're determined to become the first REAL megacorp come hell or high water.

Dax: good lord, you're right. Time to form a paramilitary resistance movement.

Lime: true, for a small outfit like them, the benefits aren't really there (something like d20 could afford it, and doing so would really solidify its already disturbingly strong death grip on its market share). Perhaps if SR ever begins to get bigger. Who knows. At least there's hope in the immediate future for selling out of print stuff online, assuming someone at Fanpro can realize the potential.

Kage: people steal them out of programming books, too. Stealing's always going to be an issue if you do retail, but you rely on culture to get by. I could steal it just as easily if it were shrink wrapped, after all. It's my personal unwillingness to do so that stops me from actually doing it.

It definatly wouldn't cost them much to start selling them online. Just have them download the pdf's already floating around the net and start selling those. They'd only need to scan in 7 more and they'd have every book they ever wrote. (As in, not having to spend money to make new versions of out-of-date products to sell us.)

Oh, a question I just thought of:

Somebody stole my Dragons book about two months ago. I did buy it from a store originaly though. Does that mean I can download it legaly?

And, if I can, can I print out a replacement copy for myself?

Not in the US. In the US it's only a backup copy if it came from your original copy.

Disclaimer: this was true in '99, IIRC. It may have changed.

~J

Well damn. That sucks.

*Goes to shell out another $25 for the same book.

Ultimately, its the companies that put out copyrighted material that makes the laws. Just take a look at this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/23/dvd.suit.ap

The most telling portion would be:

Corps just keep getting greedier. If I were to go through all of my old comp games on disk, I'd be hard-pressed to find one that didn't SUGGEST making a copy. STRONGLY suggest.

a suggestion for fanpro assuming (dangerous practice, i know) reads through these forums every now and again. the people who made darwins world offer pdf versions of all the books they have made. the pdf versions usually run about 10-15 bucks less than the hard copy. and then they offer the hard copy for the difference between the 2. i bought the pdf for 25 bucks. then i bought the hard copy for 10 dollars more (usually runs 35 bucks). of course there are people who will "share" their e-versions with others, but there are people who do that shit anyways. if fanpro were to try this, they would see that there are more pros than cons. you can release a book before you get it back from the printer, and you make the players happy by allowing them the advantage of e-copies (it would kick ass if i could make up a rigger, or design a new gun during one of my boring psych lectures . having a nice hard copy to flip through is also nice. as far as printing out copies, by the time you factor in ink, and paper costs, it costs close to 10 bucks. they should try it at least once.

Not to mention you could so errata changes must faster.

The revolution will be televised, but you're not allowed to record it and re-distribute it to your friends.

The thing is, the game industry is a slim one. Until someone has a working business model that actually brings in profit and uses PDF products as a part of the business, you're probably not going to see anyone with a currently working business model switch over to it.

That said, I'd love to get my hands on some of the old SBs in PDF format. Otherwise, I'm stuck trolling ebay and used book stores for them, and, let's face it, that doesn't give Fanpro any money.

The solution, of course, would be for someone to write a business plan or convince someone with an established company in this field to do it for the proposal and license the older books. A tricky prospect (and it ain't going to be me).

There's a decent market for PDF products on RPGnow, mostly dealing in d20 game material and older TSR D&D products that have been scanned in. This would be a good thing to see for SR, but the time, effort and money going into the scanning/OCR of the old books might be prohibitive.

Tinker, Mordrid, and others - This issue has come up a couple of times already and FanPro's reply has been the same all along. On FanPro's behalf Adam has posted several times on the issue on Dumpshock and elsewhere.

FanPro has made it clear it would indeed like to publish some old OOP sourcebooks in electronic format and make a buck off them - possibly even updating stats to 3rd Ed.

However the problem arises that most of the original digitial versions/files for those books are no longer available (for a bunch of reasons) to FanPro even if the rights are. What this means is that those books would have to be meticulously scanned in, cleaned up and possibly edited. Currently the biggest stumbling block for FanPro's two-man show is manpower and means while still getting the new stuff out on the shelves.

The job is tough and demanding serious commitment so your typical web volunteers -who vanish when they lose interest or real life heats up in a couple of weeks, believe me I know what I'm talking about - aren't going to cut it. If on the other hand you have a serious proposal on the subject to make to FanPro, I'd get in touch with Rob, Adam and co. through the website.

I thought having all the books scanned and completely searchable would be a great idea so I only have to hual my laptop around to games. Was I wrong. After scanning in every book through OCR and then editing it then fixing all the errata adjusting tables to fit the pages, I still carry my books and flip through them. I can't read a lot of stuff on the computer screen for long periods and I don't trust my friends with my laptop.

Those damn pictures in the middle of the pages plays hell with the OCR software, then fixing all the BS was a real pain.

I regret doing it, what a wate of a month. Not to mention I had to buy a new BBB (number 3), becasue I had to cut it to pieces to fit in my flatbed with out distorting the pages.

I'd volunteer my free time if they sent me copies. I'd lovingly scan in each page, edit and return it on cd's, including the books they sent me.