Ah, I see. When Freehold DM said "THEIR novels," I took that to mean "novels they wrote and to whose rights they haven't sold." I guess the intended meaning - or, at least, Matthew Morris' interpretation - is "novels someone bought and whose rights are owned by someone ELSE." If that's what Freehold DM meant - and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is - then yes, that's obviously against the law. I retract my statement.
I guess I was just trying to make the point that putting one's material on the web for free and selling a dead-tree edition is not necessarily financial suicide (although I'll admit it is very risky.)
Actually no, I meant the Pathfinder novels that aren't up yet. A third party putting those up for reading would be different from what I was originally insinuating, which was that Paizo/Pathfinder was a bad example for the evils of htmlcomics.com because of the existence of the two wikis for it that encapsuled the rules(with updates) and just enough information on the lands of Golarion to be able to run a game. It's not the same as if Paizo had their own comic(PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, Dabus Brothers would EXCELLENT for this) that this guy was putting up on his site, which would be quite different.
Actually no, I meant the Pathfinder novels that aren't up yet. A third party putting those up for reading would be different from what I was originally insinuating, which was that Paizo/Pathfinder was a bad example for the evils of htmlcomics.com because of the existence of the two wikis for it that encapsuled the rules(with updates) and just enough information on the lands of Golarion to be able to run a game. It's not the same as if Paizo had their own comic(PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, Dabus Brothers would EXCELLENT for this) that this guy was putting up on his site, which would be quite different.Ah, I see. When Freehold DM said "THEIR novels," I took that to mean "novels they wrote and to whose rights they haven't sold." I guess the intended meaning - or, at least, Matthew Morris' interpretation - is "novels someone bought and whose rights are owned by someone ELSE." If that's what Freehold DM meant - and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is - then yes, that's obviously against the law. I retract my statement.
I guess I was just trying to make the point that putting one's material on the web for free and selling a dead-tree edition is not necessarily financial suicide (although I'll admit it is very risky.)
Actually, I think Paizo is a great example because it crushes arguments that one can't easily access it.
If you can pay the money, you can get the PDFs here legally.
If you can't/won't pay the money for a product, there are several places where you probably will be able to get the information you desire legally (although with less pictures and such)
Given his goal (or at least one of them) to provide all books for viewing online, he would have still come along and, not really caring about what he was putting online, would have had scanned the Pathfinder books.
Even though there is free access to the rules and campaign setting, Paizo doesn't just give out the PDFs for those books for free. There is a reason for that.
Despite there being good legal alternatives getting the stuff from Pathfinder, he would have likely still pirated the books. All the excuses for the site vanish unless you really do believe that one should have free access to every single work existence no matter what harm that might bring to publishers, authors, artists, and so on.
Actually no, I meant the Pathfinder novels that aren't up yet. A third party putting those up for reading would be different from what I was originally insinuating, which was that Paizo/Pathfinder was a bad example for the evils of htmlcomics.com because of the existence of the two wikis for it that encapsuled the rules(with updates) and just enough information on the lands of Golarion to be able to run a game. It's not the same as if Paizo had their own comic(PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, Dabus Brothers would EXCELLENT for this) that this guy was putting up on his site, which would be quite different.Ah, I see. When Freehold DM said "THEIR novels," I took that to mean "novels they wrote and to whose rights they haven't sold." I guess the intended meaning - or, at least, Matthew Morris' interpretation - is "novels someone bought and whose rights are owned by someone ELSE." If that's what Freehold DM meant - and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that it is - then yes, that's obviously against the law. I retract my statement.
I guess I was just trying to make the point that putting one's material on the web for free and selling a dead-tree edition is not necessarily financial suicide (although I'll admit it is very risky.)
Actually, I think Paizo is a great example because it crushes arguments that one can't easily access it.
If you can pay the money, you can get the PDFs here legally.
If you can't/won't pay the money for a product, there are several places where you probably will be able to get the information you desire legally (although with less pictures and such)Given his goal (or at least one of them) to provide all books for viewing online, he would have still come along and, not really caring about what he was putting online, would have had scanned the Pathfinder books.
Even though there is free access to the rules and campaign setting, Paizo doesn't just give out the PDFs for those books for free. There is a reason for that.
Despite there being good legal alternatives getting the stuff from Pathfinder, he would have likely still pirated the books. All the excuses for the site vanish unless you really do believe that one should have free access to every single work existence no matter what harm that might bring to publishers, authors, artists, and so on.
Actually, according to what I inferred from his statement for his site, his site was for comics only, not games. If he had Paizo(or even other RPG) stuff up there, your original statement would be correct.
Actually, according to what I inferred from his statement for his site, his site was for comics only, not games. If he had Paizo(or even other RPG) stuff up there, your original statement would be correct.
Well, he could have making stuff up (like when he threatened comic book authors with his lawyers when they said they would have to take legal action against him), but he seems to have said several times that the end goal was not just comics. It was every published work.
Interview with htmlcomics.com creator Gregory Hart
NS: What is your goal with the html site?
[b]GH: If I had the manpower, I calculated that in about 2 years with 8 hour-a-day shifts that the entire Library of Congress can be available to everyone through the internet. Once again, it would be public as a library.
htmlcomics.com creator Gregory Hart, apparently (can't every really 100% sure) on a law site asking for answers to legal questions. Specifically asking for a law (or anything) to make his site "bullet proof" against people who might try to shut down his site.
The end objective is to create an online library, of EVERY book that has EVER been published.
So, there you go.
Actually, according to what I inferred from his statement for his site, his site was for comics only, not games. If he had Paizo(or even other RPG) stuff up there, your original statement would be correct.Well, he could have making stuff up (like when he threatened comic book authors with his lawyers when they said they would have to take legal action against him), but he seems to have said several times that the end goal was not just comics. It was every published work.
Interview with htmlcomics.com creator Gregory Hart
NS: What is your goal with the html site?
[b]GH: If I had the manpower, I calculated that in about 2 years with 8 hour-a-day shifts that the entire Library of Congress can be available to everyone through the internet. Once again, it would be public as a library.htmlcomics.com creator Gregory Hart, apparently (can't every really 100% sure) on a law
site asking for answers to legal questions.The end objective is to create an online library, of EVERY book that has EVER been published.So, there you go.
Then where was everything else?
Then where was everything else?
What do you mean? He said he was going to do it, and I believe he was crazy enough to do it. I'm not sure if he planned to put it on the same site, a different site, or he was not telling the truth.
Well, that's just the thing, isn't it? There's the Pathfinder wiki and pfsrd20.com - While they don't exactly put up stuff scripture and verse they put up enough so I can run a pathfinder game. I don't think Paizo is a very good example for this, because it's a different type of company. Now if someone started putting up their novels up for reading for free, that might be a little bit different.I'm actually glad someone brought up Paizo. Now please correct me if I'm wrong but if someone were to do to Paizo what this fellow was doing to comics putting up entire books art, fluff, Crunch and all most of the people here would be condemning the guy for ripping Paizo off.
Also the other thing is it wasn't just the great big comic publishers the guy was putting comics up from it was from smaller ones as well the ones were the writers cant afford to lose revenue as this thread shows
I suggest reading the comments as she makes some interesting points.
Check out the Baen books free library. It isn't as good as it was when Jim Baen was alive. But you can find some good free SciFi and fantasy still.
Greg