Printing PDFs

[roguerouge]

I tried that with Staples. I received a phone call telling me that they would not print my order unless I could provide proof of permission from the copyright holder. For a freeware gaming book. Written in Brazil. So, no printing for me. The word "free" seems to shutdown the corporate mind.

If this kind of thing bothers you, or other readers of this thread, might I suggest an alternative to the private ownership of culture:

http://creativecommons.org/

It provides enforceable options for authors, allowing your choice of :

Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

You can also mix and match these options to make your conditions as finely tuned as you would like.

You don't have to get sucked into the either/or dynamic of the current copyright debate.

 

[Flynn]

Roguerouge:

Unfortunately, the Creative Commons license cannot be applied to works that has already been published by another person. That decision must be made before the PDF is created, not at the time when the OP is wondering how he can get the PDF printed and bound. You might be better off trying to present that to the publishers.

Just A Thought,
Flynn

 

[roguerouge]

You're certainly correct. Since publishers do come here, it's the reason why I added it to this thread.

 

[BV210]

My wife and I own a small publishing company and are willing to print and bind PDFs. I have spoken to a friend of mine who is a lawyer and he didn't see any problems with printing copies for someone who purchased the book. We do, however, add a little caveat on the back page along the lines of "We are not making any claim as to the copyright of this work. We are merely providing a printing service."

If you are interested, go to our website - www.vaughan-instant-publishing.com. All I would ask is have some reasonable proof that you are the purchaser (i.e., if the personalization tags show a different name, I won't be printing it).

Mods, if this post is a no-no, I apologize and ask that this post be deleted.

 

[justinbot]

You don't pay until you pick it up. If they have already printed it, I doubt the manager is going to turn you away - he'd have to suck up the cost.

A) You'd be surprised what we eat in the printing industry sometimes.
B) Print Online you often have to pay when you set it up, depends on if you have special instructions or not.

Mostly however I couldn't imagine you having a problem printing a PDF that the PDF itself says you have a legal right to reproduce. I've had a couple customers doing things like that in the past.

Of course, it probably helps a lot that I'm a gamer too so I know a little more about how the industry works than your average Kinkos employee.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Regarding Lulu, there have been discussions on their boards about printing up purchased PDFs and their official statement is that (1) You have to have the legal right to print it - this means you have to have bought it if you are not the content creator, and (2) If you are not allowed to distribute the product, you must keep the project private - meaning not for sale.

There is nothing illegal about using their service (provided that you keep your project private) and it will produce the best print for the lowest price that I am aware of.

 

[WhatGravitas]

By the way, any advice for non-US people (e.g. UK and/or Germany)? Besides the obvious university print shops, of course.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Flynn]

Regarding Lulu, there have been discussions on their boards about printing up purchased PDFs and their official statement is that (1) You have to have the legal right to print it - this means you have to have bought it if you are not the content creator, and (2) If you are not allowed to distribute the product, you must keep the project private - meaning not for sale.

There is nothing illegal about using their service (provided that you keep your project private) and it will produce the best print for the lowest price that I am aware of.

Any links to such discussions? I would be very interested to know, since that contradicts what I was told last year by their staff.

I Would Appreciate It,
Flynn

 

[bento]

FYI - this afternoon I went to a brand new Kinko's and had another book bound that I bought from RPGNow last year, Collectabeasts! by Octavirate.

The counter person didn't bat an eye and $5.40 later I had a spiral bound copy.

Maybe those of you having problems are forgetting to take off your "I 'heart' IP pirates" t-shirts before you walk in the store.

Just another reason for moving to Texas I guess - not getting hassled by the copy-monkies.

 

[Flynn]

Regarding Lulu, there have been discussions on their boards about printing up purchased PDFs and their official statement is that (1) You have to have the legal right to print it - this means you have to have bought it if you are not the content creator, and (2) If you are not allowed to distribute the product, you must keep the project private - meaning not for sale.

There is nothing illegal about using their service (provided that you keep your project private) and it will produce the best print for the lowest price that I am aware of.

Whisperfoot:

Just curious. Have you found the links to those Lulu discussions as yet?

When you didn't respond to my previous request for links a couple of days ago (and there's no obligation that you had to, anyway), I did some digging around myself but I couldn't find anything like what you'd mentioned. When I searched for "publish PDF online" (all words reasonably related to purchasing a PDF online and then publishing it on Lulu for personal reasons) in all of the Lulu forums for posts made in the last year, I got no results.

Removing the time limit criteria of one year, I found over 35,000 matches, but let's face it, those words can point to a lot of different topics. I searched through the first eleven pages of returned results, and only found the following two posts as relevant to this discussion.

http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=40914 (June 12th, 2006)
http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34135&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20 (third and second posts from the bottom, July 14th, 2006)

All of these posts indicate that an individual cannot publish a PDF they have purchased online, because they do not own the copyright. However, they're all two years old, so I didn't find anything like what you had mentioned above.

So, I think I obviously missed the discussions you had mentioned. I'm sure it's my bad, as my quest was not as thorough as it could have been. So I ask again, could you please provide links to the discussion you mentioned in your post above?

Oh, and I have started a new thread over on Lulu asking this question, just to make sure I have the latest word from Lulu themselves (just in case you couldn't find those links and the discussions had become lost somewhere):
http://www.lulu.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=407198

I'm happy to be wrong on this matter. I just want something to back it up when I tell people what you've told us here. Thanks in advance for your help with this!

With Regards,
Flynn