Staples refuses to print my PDFs....

[Dannyalcatraz]

This is the reason that I think both copyright and patent law simply needs to be done away with completely. <snip>

Some of my associates in the music biz who have had pirated copies of their albums outsell their legit ones- to the point that they never recouped their studio time costs, let alone pressing costs- would beg to differ.

Strongly.

As far as either is concerned the original creator should get a share of profit from use of their material, but not necessarily have any ability at all to control how others use that material so long as they aren't making a profit.

If someone takes my Microsoft Word file for a novel and distributes it online to half a million people for free without my permission, I'm going to have problems selling it.

Again, no go.

 

[Mark CMG]

What you're trying to do is protect your copyright while ensuring that your end users get the kind of full utility out of it they expect, all while operating in a slightly paranoid environment.

By putting that permission in as much of an up-front position as possible, you make it easy.

Great. And by putting my copyright notice and the permission for a personal copy in the same place I make it largely difficult for someone to remove one or the other, or to miss one or the other, unless they go to some particular lengths to do so. Thanks.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My law school profs always said you serve your clients best by keeping them out of court- they felt that if you're in court, you've probably done something wrong.

The next best thing you can do is make their journey through the court system as easy as possible.

And if Page 1 of your PDF is all your legal stuff (oh yeah, and your title!), it will be tough for someone to argue they didn't see it.

Easy street.

 

[Cergorach]

You might as well just burn your own money.

KLF is gonna rock you! ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_K_Foundation_burn_a_million_quid

btw. Have you tried to fill out the form yourself? Don't know if that's illegal or anything, you'll probably know better then I do...

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

So a content creator should have no control over how their intellectual property is used by others? Ridiculous. Ludicrous, even.

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.

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.

And we are probably getting too close to the politics of the issue. So I'll pull back and deal with the OPs concern more. Unfortunately corporations aren't really responsive at that size and there's probably nothing a person can do. I just print it out myself because I have a duplexing printer and can always get decent bindings.

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.

 

[the Lorax]

As someone who works in a "copy shop", and has for well over 10 years, I'll try to shed a little light on this. I appologize in advance for those subscribed to this thread and are getting all this again in an email, but here goes...

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?

Copyright protection does indeed apply to .pdf (or any other file types), in exactly the same way as they would to a printed book. Without some indication, along with the copyright notice that prints can be made for personal use, the permission of the copyright holder (or their agent) would be required to make reproductions of their work. This would even include burning a copy of the file onto another disk for you.

Were these free downloads or purchased pdfs?

If they were purchased you can always print out the receipt. I know for RPGNow and Paizo.com they have a page where all your purchases are listed.

If it was free, then Staples are being nimnulls.
Maybe for free downloads you can print out the link page to show where the file came from?

Just like a book, a receipt for the purchase of the .pdf does not mean you own the reproduction rights to the material.

Perhaps they do not like to print PDFs for someone who tells them someone else sent them in with someone else's PDFs? Have you been back personally and spoken to someone who you have dealt with before?

That actually would make no difference. Typically there would be some type of form to fill out, a copyright release or permission form of some sort, if the copyright holder of a .pdf sent in someone to get work done, that person would in fact be an authorized agent of the copyright holder

By "they" you mean that several people confirmed this policy? I've been in situations where a single individual goofed up a customer service situation and when the establishment was phoned, this same person happened to also be the person to catch the phone call. You should ask for a printed copy of the policy to send to the publishers when you request their permissions. Anyone should know a publisher isn't going to send out a an official permission slip that could be abused in countless ways. If there were a real written policy, I suspect it would only require a receipt of some sort as suggested above.

A reciept of purchase does not give you the right to make copies of copyright material. A professional photographer owns the right to reproduce any of his works in the same way - just because you purchased your wedding photos and have a reciept does not automatically give you the right to make reproductions of those photos, however you provide them, even as scanned images that you made. And if you purchased the rights to the photos from the photographer, the photos would STILL be protected by copyright, but now YOU would be the copyright holder and could grant yourself permission to make reproductions of them.

My gf called me on her cell from the store. A couple of clerks who were behind the counter said that was the policy and she asked to speak to the store manager and got the same thing. If the manager doesn't know, then they have a lot more problems on their hands then not printing a couple PDFs for me. I work in Customer Service, so yeah I've seen some people at Network Solutions relay some pretty ridiculous information to our customers.

Got one. Their brochure actually has a permission form on it that I would need to fax to the copyright holder. Funny thing is it seems like the brochure was written for the photocopying of physical documents and doesn't say anything about PDFs. I usually don't get mad and vent my frustrations on a forum, but this has me uber annoyed.

Anything you write is copyrighted the minute you write it down. So if someone wanted to take a copy of this post to Staples and get it printed, they would need permission from all of us. I hope they do that with kids high school reports too.

I'm a publisher and if I knew people were having problems I'd certainly include a statement in the PDF that states a single copy of the product could be made for personal use. They don't want a simple receipt, they want a form filled out. It sucks for all of the small PDF companies out there. I only buy larger PDFs with the intention of printing them out. I won't waste my money anymore as there is just no way I can read a 224 page PDF on my computer. Staring at a computer screen 8 hours a day is bad enough...

Yep, it is indeed an inconvenience to customers, and that sucks. If .pdf publishers would simply include some text in the copyright notice that included the right to make one copy for personal use, the issue with copy shops would be resolved.

Regarding store policies on copying stuff:

The policies are there to make sure store employees aren't breaking copyright laws left and right. It's not to treat customers like criminals. Generally, such policies are there to prevent employees from getting the business in trouble. The store doesn't have the option to just shine the law.

Given how easy it should be to get the ok to print one copy of these kinds of things, it should be a non-issue. Again, though, some companies will not allow a third party (i.e. Staples, Kinkos) to charge you money to print their work. Don't blame the copy guy- that's like saying, "Aw, man, I really wanted to eat some dog today, but it's against the law for my favorite restaurant to serve it in my city. DAMN YOUSE, FAVORITE RESTAURANT!!! HOW COULD YOU FAIL TO SERVE ME DOG?! I'M A LEGITIMATE CUSTOMER!!!1!!"

The policies on reproducing protected material is also to protect the staff of the copy shop from any potential legal action.

Nobody is complaining that the store won't print things that are illegal to print.

They're ocmplaining that the store won't print things that are legal to print.

The main problem here is that you are asking a worker at the copy shop, who probably has no background in the legal profession to make a judgement on Fair Use and Copyright ownership, something, that has already been pointed out, that can only be done by the courts.

REALLY it is absolutely in the .pdf publishers best interest to include an authorization to copy the material in the copyright notice.

Yeeeees..... completely true, yet somehow competely nothing to do with the subject at hand! We're talking about printing a copy of a PDF for personal use. Anyone who prints copies and starts selling 'em - well, I'm a PDF publisher. I'm sure you can guess my opinion on that.

Part of the problem here is:

[Title 17, Sect. 108f]:
NOTICE: The U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17 U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The person using this equipment is liable for any infringement.

This happens to put the copy shop in a bit of a bind - as you can no doubt tell. The copy shop worker is not printing the material for personal use, they are printing it for sale.

How many copies of the material would you be comfortable with being printed out? 1? 2? 17? 153?

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Staples (nor anyone else) shouldn't be playing detective. Their job is to print what you bring them. Period. Not printing it without proof of purchase is just calling you a thief until you prove otherwise. In the USA, it is supposed to be the other way around.

 

[Glyfair]

Staples (nor anyone else) shouldn't be playing detective.

I'll agree with the Staples part of that statement. They shouldn't have to assume that they aren't opening themselves up to a lawsuit from printing infringing material.

Their job is to print what you bring them. Period.

No. Staples provides the service, they determine the job. Their policies state they won't print copyrighting material without permission from the copyright holder. Their job is to follow the policies of the company, and communicate that with the customer.

Not printing it without proof of purchase is just calling you a thief until you prove otherwise.

I don't buy that argument. It's merely admitting that their are "thieves" (probably not the right word) out there and they need to protect themselves from them. 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.

 

[danzig138]

If .pdf publishers would simply include some text in the copyright notice that included the right to make one copy for personal use, the issue with copy shops would be resolved.

I doubt it. The SO has also been working in a copy shop for 10 years or so, and from everything I've heard, seen, and dealt with, it really depends on which wage slave happens to be running the counter at the time. You're going to run across employess who won't print it even if it has a huge disclaimer stating they can print and will, in fact, receive free sex or tickets to a ball game or something for doing so. Of course, in my experience, most of them also don't give a rat's behind about store policy or copyright law - they frequently just don't want to do it - like that far too accurate Dave Chapelle skit.

Some stores frown on it because they prefer big jobs, and think that little dinky jobs like printing your pdf aren't worth their time - that's why the self-serve machines are there.

My recommendation is to hit the store up during the graveyard shift - those guys will, again in my experience, print just about anything, assuming you can get them to get off the computers long enough.

 

[dcas]

It's those two little words Intellectual Property. I find the concept that anyone can own an idea heinous.

Ideas are not copyrightable. The expression of ideas is. I suppose an idea might be patented, but patents are pretty limited in duration compared to copyrights.