Report sellers who infringe copyrights!
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Post Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 12:47 pm 
 

I wasn’t aware that the White Box was available from Drivethrurpg as a pdf with supplements!


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Post Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:54 pm 
 

Wow... so what's the basis of the "LICENSED WIZARDS OF THE COAST AUTHORIZED REPRINT" statement?

  

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Post Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 10:54 pm 
 

waysoftheearth wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:Wow... so what's the basis of the "LICENSED WIZARDS OF THE COAST AUTHORIZED REPRINT" statement?


He bought it off Drivethrurpg, who is presumably authorized by WotC to sell these.

  


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Post Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 5:28 am 
 

Is this suggesting that anyone is "authorised" to scan, print and resell any old PDF they happen to buy from DriveThru?  
Or is it more specifically that WotC or DriveThru has issued a statement saying it's open season on reselling their D&D PDF catalogue?

Either way, I can't quite get my head around it :)

  

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Post Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 7:55 am 
 

If these are bought Print-on-Demand from DrivethruRPG, DMs Guild, Lulu etc. then no copyright infringement is occurring at all. These would be perfectly legitimate published products and the seller is free to sell them as they please. Unless of course they entered into a 'no resale' contract with the vendor, which I very much doubt would even be enforceable - You can buy this book but you must destroy it after you're finished - Does the US allow publishers to have legal control over the disposal of privately owned property they sell yet?

So the real question is, have WoTC released the product PoD? And if the answer is 'yes' then there is nothing to see here. The seller is doing exactly what a seller of a spiral bound Chainmail is doing. Selling a product they purchased from the publisher, and hoping for a profit.

EDIT - drivethrurpg.com/product/17010/Chainmai ... iatures-0e.  So if he bought PoD, what part of this transaction is illegal?

And what 'ethically' is different from me buying 12 copies at $8 and selling them for $20 and me buying 12 copies of Chainmail I came across in a charity shop for $40 a copy and selling them for $100? I do not get why selling a legitimately purchased book from a licensed online reseller, paying the published asking price where the IP holder receives their agreed cut, and then attempting to find arbitrage in the market is in any way unethical. It seems that the only issue is an affront to collector's belief that they should be able to dictate the rules of the marketplace, when the transaction is between the legal IP holder, their licensed seller, their legal purchaser, and an unknown party who for whatever reason prefers to be able to physically see what they are buying and/or is too lazy to Google their purchase before buying.


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Post Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 8:18 am 
 

waysoftheearth wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:Is this suggesting that anyone is "authorised" to scan, print and resell any old PDF they happen to buy from DriveThru?  
Or is it more specifically that WotC or DriveThru has issued a statement saying it's open season on reselling their D&D PDF catalogue?

Either way, I can't quite get my head around it :)


It seems to be the case that WoTC decided a long time ago (more than a decade I have been buying TSR PDFs from the forerunner to DrivethruRPG), that they would take a small profit from their redundant IP and manufacture PDFs before they were beaten to the post by the illicit side of the PDF 'sharing' community. They seem to have done very well out of it, and I for one have parted with a sizeable volume of $$$ over the years to fill in a collection that I did not wish to have to chase down and scan, and also felt an obligation to support the flourishing legitimate PDF market that was starting. Without the support that most people gave to the PDF market, the money would not be there for all the small press stuff that now gets published under the banner of OSR or NuSR or whatever moniker is in vogue this week.

WoTC set what they believe is a fair price for unit sold and sell products into the market. They have, as far as I am aware, no legal right to demand that a buyer destroy a purchased product, or that a buyer only be entitled to buy a single product.

Characterizing this as 'open season on reselling their D&D PDF catalogue' is disingenuous. This would be open season on selling modern WoTC reprints and is no different to NKG selling copies of the latest 5E module purchased from WoTC. The fact that one product is bought in units of maybe 10 and one is bought in units of 100 is no different.

The only possible crime that I could see is if the seller is running these off from his own PDF at a local printshop, but he appears to have made it clear that that is not the case, and the fact that WoTC do license this product for printing would seem to support that hypothesis.


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Post Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:59 am 
 

I agree there's no problem whatever with buying something then selling it later. No problem at all.

I guess because the seller had a bunch of OD&D-related reprints, with multiple copies of each (well... 2x Chainmail and 4x Swords & Spells were the only two I looked at), I wondered whether the seller might have purchased one CM PDF and was then selling many POD hard-copies from that single PDF purchase. That's the part I couldn't imagine WotC or DriveThru authorising.

Apologies if I offended.

  

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Post Posted: Sun Aug 29, 2021 10:18 am 
 

waysoftheearth wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:I guess because the seller had a bunch of OD&D-related reprints, with multiple copies of each (well... 2x Chainmail and 4x Swords & Spells were the only two I looked at), I wondered whether the seller might have purchased one CM PDF and was then selling many POD hard-copies from that single PDF purchase. That's the part I couldn't imagine WotC or DriveThru authorising.


I think this is pretty unlikely, it looks like a legitimately purchased POD from DTRPG that he is reselling. The multiple copies offered is a red flag, but he is selling for more than the DTRPG price, so maybe this is his brilliant plan to get rich. Often these type of listings are sketchy (95% of the listing leads one to believe it is an original), his aren't so bad in that respect.

  

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Post Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 7:38 am 
 

waysoftheearth wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:I agree there's no problem whatever with buying something then selling it later. No problem at all.

I guess because the seller had a bunch of OD&D-related reprints, with multiple copies of each (well... 2x Chainmail and 4x Swords & Spells were the only two I looked at), I wondered whether the seller might have purchased one CM PDF and was then selling many POD hard-copies from that single PDF purchase. That's the part I couldn't imagine WotC or DriveThru authorising.

Apologies if I offended.


No need for apologies here.

What I was getting at was, can I buy a PDF and then get PoD copies printed from it? As in, can I buy a PDF of say, L3, and then send it to a Print-on-Demand company and ask them to print me 50 copies? If so, then both the Printer and the Purchaser are breaking the law, and of course there's no way of knowing exactly what the mechanic is here.

But, if I can buy them at $8 from DrivethruRPG and sell them for $20 on eBay, there's a fair spread there already for a hobbyist reseller, and I doubt the market is too great. The market is really limited to the feckless and the lazy who want something but don't care too much about finding out what they are buying or whether it is good value for money.

I think there is gonna be a lot more of this going forward, and I would imagine in the OSR space (which is probably out with the interests of most on Acaeum), the quality of the PoDs will be almost indistinguishable from official 1st and 2nd print runs of hardcopy products. So until someone starts cataloguing such things and picking apart known hardcopies from known aftermarket purchased PoDs, everything post 2010 will likely remain a giant mess of who knows what.


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Post Posted: Sat Oct 09, 2021 10:38 pm 
 

** eBay auction listing blocked.  Please enable cookies in your browser for this site and for eBay! **

so this is a bit fishy

for all of 29.99 you can own tsr's entire 1st-3rd edition catalog

  


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Post Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 12:51 am 
 

jeffsea wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:** eBay auction listing blocked.  Please enable cookies in your browser for this site and for eBay! **

so this is a bit fishy

for all of 29.99 you can own tsr's entire 1st-3rd edition catalog


I’d say not legit, especially when part of the small print is this

“ You may use our scanned images for research or school projects, all pages are originally scanned at 150 DPI or more. View directly in Adobe Reader - perfect for reprinting in newsletters, magazines or art projects, use as clip art in any graphics program, scale it, edit it, print it to suit your needs. ”


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Post Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:11 am 
 


** expired/removed eBay auction **


I was in doubt if post this here or in the laughable thread... Pls have a read in the description about the 10k pages taken from the web and the NDA the buyer is binded...


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Post Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:54 am 
 

aia wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!: the NDA the buyer is binded...


From the auction: "Purchasing this listing also is a non-disclosure agreement by the buyer to keep secret all information about the Dungeons & Dragons WebGuide and these Extras!! "

Neat trick there. Let's see how well this works - anyone reading my post here is by reading it hereby obligated to send me all of your money, plus your firstborn.

  


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Post Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 12:22 pm 
 

Also from that auction is the legit part he’s selling

“ Except for the White Box being missing this is a complete set of the Original D&D Rules.”

Might as well say, apart from the middle 6 pages, this is a complete set


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Post Posted: Sun Oct 10, 2021 8:06 pm 
 

ashmire13 wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:Also from that auction is the legit part he’s selling

“ Except for the White Box being missing this is a complete set of the Original D&D Rules.”

Might as well say, apart from the middle 6 pages, this is a complete set


That's not the way the logic of this thread works. Here, let the experts demonstrate it for you:

Bomb scare that forced plane to land in NYC was misunderstanding - New York Daily News
"American Airlines Flight 4817 from Indianapolis — operated by Republic Airways — made an emergency landing at LaGuardia just after 3 p.m., and authorities took a suspicious passenger into custody for several hours. It turns out the would-be “bomber” was just a vintage camera aficionado and the woman who reported him made a mistake, sources said. The woman was traveling with her husband and children, sitting across the aisle from her spouse, when she spotted another man in her hubby’s row scrolling through videos and photos of vintage cameras, sources said. She thought he was looking up bomb-making instructions, and when the man pulled out his own camera and adjusted it she was convinced he was setting a timer on a detonator, sources said."

It's not an auction, it's a bomb! Everybody panic!

  

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Post Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 6:23 am 
 

According to Tim Kask OD&D is now out of copyright and free for anyone to do with as they please with it.
If he is correct and that is the case, then no copyright exists that can be infringed upon when it comes to OD&D.
If OD&D has lapsed, D&D and AD&D cannot be far behind.


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Post Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 7:00 am 
 

I believe copyright in the U.S. is 70 years from the author's death.  For corporately-produced material, it's 95 years.  So, in short, D&D won't be public-domain in any of our lifetimes.

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Post Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2021 8:29 am 
 

FoulFoot wrote in Report sellers who infringe copyrights!:I believe copyright in the U.S. is 70 years from the author's death.  For corporately-produced material, it's 95 years.  So, in short, D&D won't be public-domain in any of our lifetimes.

Foul


Interesting that it depends on publishing date…. But you are spot on Scott.  Snippet from current law…

Created and published, or registered before 1978:

This is governed by statutory section 17 U.S.C. 304. Under the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured either on the date a work was published or on the date of registration if the work was registered in unpublished form. In either case, the copyright endured for a first term of 28 years from the date it was secured. During the last (28th) year of the first term, the copyright was eligible for a second renewal term of an additional 28 years. If no application was filed for renewal, the work would enter the public domain after the initial 28 year term.

The current copyright law has extended the renewal term from 28 to 67 years for copyrights that existed as of January 1, 1978, making these works eligible for a total term of protection of 95 years. There is no longer a need to make the renewal filing in order to extend the original 28-year copyright term to the full 95 years. However, some benefits accrue to making a renewal registration during the 28th year of the original term.

In other words, if a work was published between 1923 to 1963, the copyright owner was required to have applied for a renewal term with the Copyright office. If they did not, the copyright expired and the work entered into the public domain. If they did apply for renewal, these works will have a 95 year copyright term and hence will enter into the public domain no sooner that 2018 (95 years from 1923). If the work was published between 1964 to 1977, there is no need to file for a renewal, and these works will automatically have a 95 year term.

Full text here.

Duration of Copyrights (Bitlaw)

-SKA

  
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