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

[rgard]

The downloads aren't working for me in any case. Right mouse click, save as, and Adobe won't open it. I look in explorer and the file has 0 bytes.

 

[Jester David]

Well, it's sort of like Youtube and Google books and even that Sribd thing. People put up copies of stuff and if the author objects, they have to file a complaint to get it taken down.

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.

 

[Morrus]

Huh. I pretty much assumed this was a "with permission" type deal. Are we assuming it's not?

 

[Nikosandros]

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.

The more recent issues are available as PDF from Paizo.

 

[Nikosandros]

Huh. I pretty much assumed this was a "with permission" type deal. Are we assuming it's not?

Well, I'm not assuming anything, but, as I wrote, I'm skeptical. If WotC has released that content, I think it likely that they would have made a public announcement about it.

 

[Jester David]

Well, I'm not assuming anything, but, as I wrote, I'm skeptical. If WotC has released that content, I think it likely that they would have made a public announcement about it.

Because no one every scoops WotC, spotting things prior to official announcements.

Hey, have you seen this Amazon listing for the second Sundering adventure:
http://www.amazon.ca/Legacy-Crystal-Shard-Sundering-Adventure/dp/0786964642

 

[mach1.9pants]

Can't be legal it even has copies of 4E era mags, very naughty as you should be paying for DDi to get them!

 

[Torg Smith]

I do not know but I think they would be touting this hard if they had released them for free. They announced the PDFs for sale on DriveThruRPG before they released them.

I originally heard about Archive.org through Amazon when I purchased my Kindle. I thought Archive.org was a special book project that they setup the files that were legal. After looking into it some more today, they are just a file share outfit. Anybody can upload to their servers. I am thinking the files are not legal.

 

[MythosaAkira]

I just downloaded a couple of the Dragon issues (#74 and #172) and compared them to the PDFs I still have from the old CD-ROM that WotC put out years ago. The file sizes were identical, down to the byte, and a side-by-side visual comparison looked the same - even blemishes from the scanning, or where the cover was slightly cut off from the scan process. My guess is that issues 1-250 are from the CD-ROM collection, and the rest are gathered from other sources. I'm guessing it ain't legit.

 

[Echohawk]

Huh. I pretty much assumed this was a "with permission" type deal. Are we assuming it's not?

I'm afraid that I am now assuming it isn't legit. The original post over on RPGGeek (which claimed that the archive had been added with WotC's permission) has now been deleted, and I've removed the links from my original post here. I'm not convinced now that Archive.org has permission to host those archives