Electronic copies of Dragon and Polyhedron now available from Archive.org

[delericho]

Damn. Not so awesome after all.

 

[radja]

there's still nothing known about it being legit or not, so for now it's legit. innocent until proven guilty and all that.

 

[Alzrius]

Gupta's Law of Creative Anomalies: If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

In other words, download them fast?

It is a not-for-profit archive. Old magazines are no longer in print and there is no legal way to obtain them, thus digital archiving is allowed under many copyright laws to preserve access, to prevent the information from being destroyed and lost.

That means if i write a book and don't have the money to reprint it people are free to scan it and upload it to the net? That would be news to me.

 

[Morrus]

there's still nothing known about it being legit or not, so for now it's legit. innocent until proven guilty and all that.

"Innocent until proven guilty" is a legal term applied in courts of law. This is just a conversation. The term doesn't apply here.

 

[Jester David]

That means if i write a book and don't have the money to reprint it people are free to scan it and upload it to the net? That would be news to me.

Yes and no.
institutions such as libraries and archives that own a copy are free to make a digital backup if no legal means of procuring a new copy exists and the original is in danger of becoming unusable or is in a format that is in danger of becoming obsolete.

Again, this might vary depending on country.

 

[TerraDave]

hmm...well I am happy to see it!

Now I have some...perfectly legal stuff to do.

 

[LeStew]

Two things occur to me in this topic:

1. Archive.org is a great resource to "find" materials. It is up to the end user to prove the copyright or not. I've used them in the past to find primary documents (specifically video) for educational documentaries. Once we found the "thing" we were looking for it was up to a team of researchers to track down who owned it and if they still held the copyright to it.

2. If most but not ALL of the issues are up there, then I'm inclined to believe a user has violated the "no distribution" portion of the EULA no one reads. BUT if ALL of the issues are up there, then this feels very stunty to me, and WOTC tried to get it under the radar. Which, considering they just made stuff available on drive thru, wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.

Anyway that's my two cents

 

[delericho]

Actually, on reflection, I've thought better of this post. I'll leave up the bit that's sensible:

IANAL.

 

[talien]

It's not legit: http://www.examiner.com/article/is-every-issue-of-dragon-and-polyhedron-magazines-really-free-online

EDIT: I was asked to say that was "off the record," sorry -- but yes, Wizards is "looking into it" which is a far cry from "oh sure, we totally planned that."