IMPORTANT! Posting WotC articles wholesale...

[Boarstorm]

Oh certainly, and I agree (as I intended to relate in my first paragraph or two), I just wonder what the future holds, and there didn't seem to be a better thread in which to ponder.

 

[billd91]

Oh certainly, and I agree (as I intended to relate in my first paragraph or two), I just wonder what the future holds, and there didn't seem to be a better thread in which to ponder.

There have been debates about the nature of the web and that fact that caching means that a copy is, in fact, being made. That, however, is (or at least should be) fairly easily handwaved away when you realize that posting on the web implies the right to copy the work as part of browser caching.
But ultimately since any work of art/intellect has always been copyable in some way (though often in fairly difficult, non-cost effective ways), the ease of copying something has nothing actually to do with the right to do so and then redistribute.

But excerpt away if you're debating a particular point. US copyright law recognizes fair use. So, use fairly.

 

[Boarstorm]

It's not so much the ease of reproduction I'm curious about as what constitutes the introduction of thoughts into the public domain. Certainly, if these articles were printed on pamphlets and handed out by folks at your local grocery store free of charge, there wouldn't be the same debate, except insofar as claiming said work for you own(bad!), or using it to make money against the wishes of the distributing entity(worse!).

I suppose what it boils down to, in my mind, is what constitutes advertising and what constitutes product (when both are offered freely and take similar form), and where do you draw the line between the two?

 

[Graf]

deleted unhelpful comment

And, lets be clear, anything that takes pressure off the enworld servers is a good thing.
Honestly, having the Latest 4E Update: box point directly at the Wizards.com link would probably be the best thing.

Discussion threads and news threads running in tandem and talking about the same thing is not efficient.
(not that our goal is efficiency...)

 

[Morrus]

I suppose what it boils down to, in my mind, is what constitutes advertising and what constitutes product (when both are offered freely and take similar form), and where do you draw the line between the two?

Eh? You can't freely distribute other peoples' adverts, either. Intellectual property is intellectual poperty, wheever the owner chooses to use it for; that's what makes them the "owner" - the power to choose what to do with it.

 

[Boarstorm]

Eh? You can't freely distribute other peoples' adverts, either. Intellectual property is intellectual poperty, wheever the owner chooses to use it for; that's what makes them the "owner" - the power to choose what to do with it.

Well, to be fair, what company wouldn't WANT there advertisements to be freely distributed? Greater market saturation is always a good thing when you're trying to get the word out about your products and services.

Still, that's obviously (barely) tangential to the discussion at hand, and your point is well taken.

Alrighty, then. Moving on.

 

[amethal]

These two articles from the Publishing Law Center - publaw.com - are germane to this conversation.

http://www.publaw.com/work.html
http://www.publaw.com/fairuse.html

As well as the entry on Fair Use from the US Copyright Office and a supplementary article also from the US Copyright Office.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107
http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

I'm sure that reprinting an article in its entirety is always a violation of copyright law.

I'm having trouble with the links. Could someone please post the entire articles on fair use here.

 

[Bagpuss]

This is due to the fact that those articles are supposed to be a perk for only those with DDI accounts, as oppsed to ENWorld staffers being horrible human beings, correct?

Nope the excerpts are not actually part of D&D Insider.

You do not need an account to access them either.

For example

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/4ex/20080514a


Excerpts are under the Products menu on the left and features in the middle, only stuff under the Dragon and Dungeon tabs needs a DnD Insider account*.




*actually even that isn't true you just add "&authentic=true" onto the end of a link and it logs you in anyway.

 

[arscott]

It's not so much the ease of reproduction I'm curious about as what constitutes the introduction of thoughts into the public domain. Certainly, if these articles were printed on pamphlets and handed out by folks at your local grocery store free of charge, there wouldn't be the same debate, except insofar as claiming said work for you own(bad!), or using it to make money against the wishes of the distributing entity(worse!).

I suppose what it boils down to, in my mind, is what constitutes advertising and what constitutes product (when both are offered freely and take similar form), and where do you draw the line between the two?

A work is entered into the public domain under three circumstances:

The copyright holder specifically releases it into the public domain. (This basically doesn't happen. Nowadays, folks who want their works to be shared or modified by others tend to use things like open licenses instead.)

The work belongs to some specific category that makes it automatically part of the public domain under copyright law (Most otherwise copyrightable works created by the US federal government are part of the public domain under US law.)

The copyright expires (under current law, the 4e preview articles will expire in 2128).

 

[Cabled]

Well, to be fair, what company wouldn't WANT there advertisements to be freely distributed? Greater market saturation is always a good thing when you're trying to get the word out about your products and services.

Still, that's obviously (barely) tangential to the discussion at hand, and your point is well taken.

Alrighty, then. Moving on.

But it's not for you to decide, unless you own it. Your guess to the motive of the owner might be right, wrong, or indifferent, but it's still not your choice. Doing something with someone else's property..real or intellectual...is one of the fundamental challenges to ownership under law, and the whole reason you see the little blurb sometimes about something "being used should not be construed as a challenge to ownership" or somesuch.

And while I feel D&D is far from this point, greater market saturation might be good, but greater advertising saturation isn't always. Anyone else here tired of hearing Willie Mays yelling at you about buying OxyClean, or some silly mop-broom-thing?