Staples refuses to print my PDFs....

[Psion]

So a content creator should have no control over how their intellectual property is used by others? Ridiculous. Ludicrous, even. And how, exactly would you determine the extent others are using it, if there's no laws regulating it. In an ideal, utopian society, where everyone is honest, this idea might work. In the real world, it's hogwash.

Indeed. There are many worthwhile human endeavors that nobody would do simply because they would starve doing them.

 

[tylerthehobo]

The problem is that many of the older books that are available as PDFs predate digital piracy concerns. Since there's nothing explicit protecting Staples when they go to copy this stuff, they can't risk having some attorney at a publisher decide to interpret the "Do not photocopy" clause as "do not print PDFs" just because there is not clear, delineated permission to do so. Gotta say, I can't blame 'em.

Buy a printer and paper. Decent ones are cheap enough now, and as long as you don't print the whole dern book, you probably won't blast too much toner.

Part of the deal is that PDFs sure can be printed out, but part of their benefit is that you can have a hard drive full of PDFs, and not have to worry about all of these taking up space in your apartment/house.

 

[Morrus]

That's like saying that airport security is calling you a hijacker because they run you through a metal detector before you are ready to board a plane.

No, it's like saying they're calling you a hijacker when they refuse to let you on the plane. Big difference.

 

[Biohazard]

So I had my girlfriend take a couple of PDFs that I bought to Staples and they refused to print them. They said they need a written document from the publisher which states that they can be printed.

Does anyone else have these problems? Can I even get something written from Mongoose and Morrigan Press that says its okay to print the PDFs? Do other publishers not intend for PDFs to be printed? What's the dilleo with this? I think its insane and never had problems with this before.

Anyone else?

Welcome to the Brave New World of the Digital Initiative, folks . . . these kinds of posts are a harbinger of things to come, I fear.

 

[Jim Hague]

It's those two little words Intellectual Property. I find the concept that anyone can own an idea heinous. The problem is that the idea is being tangled up with the product which is a result of the idea. Hell I've got a considerable amount of written material floating around the net, which has been copied twisted, mangled and abused. Most of it isn't suitable for these boards I'll admit but the point stands. If someone else made money off a product which was mine(the text itself) and didn't send me a share I'd be somewhat aggravated. But even looking at my own work I can't reasonably say how I own the idea because of the nature of ideas. No idea could exist without the ideas already present and is almost guaranteed to have been independently oringinated somewhere else sometime. That universality means the ideas can't truly be owned by anyone, the particular product(a specific written work) yes but not the idea. The only question should be if they're misusing a product you created. Not the idea, but the thing itself which should be explicitly separated.

I'm not speaking on the idea, but the end product, to be perfectly clear. Here's an example - Chad Underkoffler is out there working on a very cool swashbuckling pirate game right now. I've been following its progress, primarily because I dig on pirates but also because I am also writing a swashbuckling game set in a weird world. Lo and behold, some things I've thought up and taken notes on in development look strikingly similar to Chad's own ideas. Am I going to scream that he used mind rays to steal my ideas? Heck no! We happen to have had similar ideas, that's all. In the end, he'll write his product (which everyone should go buy), and I'll write mine (which you should also buy, because you can never have enough swashbuckling goodness), and everything's copacetic.

However, if I or he went out and used each others' trade dress, or directly copied concepts specific to our games whole cloth, that'd be another matter entirely. So to be clear - when I speak of IP, I'm talking things like trade dress, direct concepts and the like linked to specific creators and works.

To be perfectly honest I'm willing to compromise on copyright law because we're dealing with written works and there should be some form of law to ensure equity. My major problem is patent rather than copyright law.

I'll agree that patent law is way, way out of whack right now, especially here in the U.S.

My problem is with the cost of printer ink, which is really way off the chart. If you extrapolate out the cost of printer ink you're paying in the range of $1000US per gallon of printer ink. There's no possible way they can justify that sort of unit price on a commodity so easily produced.

Dude, go laser. The initial investment has dropped to former inkjet prices, and even my own $100 Samsung has cranked out over 5000 pages on a $30 toner cartridge.

On a semi-related note - who out there knows about good, inexpensive home binding techniques or materials? I know thermal is hideously expensive, and comb binding tends to shred the paper eventually. Why not cut the problems entirely out of the loop and take a cottage industry approach? Sell the PDFs, and folks can self-bind. Hmm...

 

[the Lorax]

Welcome to the Brave New World of the Digital Initiative, folks . . . these kinds of posts are a harbinger of things to come, I fear.

This is an unfortunate side effect as well, here is the Copyright Notice from the bottom of a (fairly recent) .pdf intended print, provided for free by WoTC, the Revised White Plume Mountain.

This material is protected under the copyright laws of the United
States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the
material or artwork contained herein is prohibited
without the express written permission of
Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
©2005 Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Made in the U.S.A.
This product is a work of fiction.
Any similarity to actual people, organizations, places,
or events is purely coincidental.
This Wizards of the Coast game product contains no Open Game Content.
No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without
written permission. To learn more about the Open Gaming License
and the d20 System License,
please visit www.wizards.com/d20.

Printing out a .pdf is a reproductive process, and it is not purely a "service" (for those of you who brought that up earlier).
The "Any reproduction..." portion of that copyright notice includes printing it out. Yes, copyright restrictions are a HUGE consideration whe talking about Wizards new Digital Initiative. That copyright notice includes no authorization to make any reproductions of the material, in fact it expressly forbids it.

 

[Jim Hague]

However, we're not talking the Digital Initiative. We're talking about PDFs in general. Whatever form the DI takes, it's irrelevant to the thread right now.

 

[jdrakeh]

Printing out a .pdf is a reproductive process, and it is not purely a "service" (for those of you who brought that up earlier).

In this case, the reproductive process is a service. The service. Its the whole reason that the copy center exists. They aren't selling books, they're providing the service of reproducing or printing documents. It's still only a service under both legal and dictionary definitions. In this instance, the text that you've cited simply forbids the service. This is not always the case, as mentioned earlier.

[Edit: Also, note that forbidding the pratice of reproduction is not the same things forbidding the resale of reproduced product. One closely follows the other, but they are not at all the same thing in the eyes of the law. Hence why an author/rights holder can grant permission to copy/print something, but this doesn't necessarily make it okay to sell that thing for profit.]

 

[the Lorax]

In this case, the reproductive process is a service. The service. Its the whole reason that the copy center exists. They aren't selling books. Check your receipt sometime. You're billed for the process (i.e., the service) and the individual material used to facilitate the process. You aren't charged for "Book X by Author Y". In this instance, the text that you've cited simply forbids the service. It's still only a service under both legal and dictionary definitions.

They are selling a printed work which they have made. You are charged a sales tax on the copies.

 

[jgbrowning]

Dude, go laser. The initial investment has dropped to former inkjet prices, and even my own $100 Samsung has cranked out over 5000 pages on a $30 toner cartridge.

Just got a laser myself and am very happy about it. My toner is a bit more expensive (it's a $400 printer/scanner/copier/fax), but even then it's much, much cheaper than ink.

joe b.