jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 27, 2016 19:30:15 GMT -6
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EdOWar
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Post by EdOWar on Nov 27, 2016 19:41:49 GMT -6
The picture says it's 3rd Edition Chainmail, which would still have all the LotR references, if I'm not mistaken. So that makes me wonder just how legit those Lulu listings are.
Edit: Looks like there may be a lot of old games up there, such as Boot Hill, Cavaliers and Roundheads and more. Such as 1E AD&D Oriental Adventures for $6.35 printed. The PDF on RPGNow is $4.99, so it's really making me wonder.
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 27, 2016 23:22:00 GMT -6
I don't disagree with you, Ed. I am pretty surprised any of these titles are available on Lulu. The authors are Gygax, Perren and so forth. Some are listed as just Gygax. There is no publishing infos. So it does make me wonder who, exactly,posted the items.
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Post by smubee on Nov 28, 2016 0:19:34 GMT -6
I really want this.. How exactly does Lulu work? I've never done anything like this before. How secure is it?
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EdOWar
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Post by EdOWar on Nov 28, 2016 0:42:28 GMT -6
I really want this.. How exactly does Lulu work? I've never done anything like this before. How secure is it? Lulu is legit. I've ordered plenty of things from them and have never had a problem. It's pretty much like ordering from any online site. It usually takes about a week for them to print the books and ship them. |
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EdOWar
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Post by EdOWar on Nov 28, 2016 0:43:21 GMT -6
I don't disagree with you, Ed. I am pretty surprised any of these titles are available on Lulu. The authors are Gygax, Perren and so forth. Some are listed as just Gygax. There is no publishing infos. So it does make me wonder who, exactly,posted the items. Someone, I suspect, who is playing with fire. =P |
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Post by smubee on Nov 28, 2016 0:45:18 GMT -6
I really want this.. How exactly does Lulu work? I've never done anything like this before. How secure is it? Lulu is legit. I've ordered plenty of things from them and have never had a problem. It's pretty much like ordering from any online site. It usually takes about a week for them to print the books and ship them. How does this place have the legal rights to be hosting this stuff though..? It's not WOTC, is it? That's the only thing that I'm concerned about. |
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Post by foxroe on Nov 28, 2016 6:07:12 GMT -6
They can't spell "Arneson" on Don't Give Up the Ship. While I'm tempted to grab these, I can't help but think as soon as I drop the cash, WotC/Ha$bro will yank the rug out from under Lulu and I'll be down $15.  I'll wait a couple of weeks, and if they're still there, maybe I'll get them. |
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EdOWar
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Post by EdOWar on Nov 28, 2016 7:03:59 GMT -6
Lulu is legit. I've ordered plenty of things from them and have never had a problem. It's pretty much like ordering from any online site. It usually takes about a week for them to print the books and ship them. How does this place have the legal rights to be hosting this stuff though..? It's not WOTC, is it? That's the only thing that I'm concerned about. Technically, Lulu doesn't own the property rights to anything on its site. It trusts that the rightful owners are putting material up. I'm not 100% certain how the process works, but I suspect that it is highly automated, so it is possible someone could scan some old games, do the layouts in publishing software and submit them to Lulu (or something like that). If these aren't legit, Lulu will pull them as soon as they are made aware of the problem. Anyone who bought them may or may not be out their money. And I'm guessing whoever put them up is looking at a lot of legal trouble. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 28, 2016 9:34:25 GMT -6
Seems pretty shady to me. I'm not sure how the Gygax estate has their properties licensed out, but I would be surprised if they picked POD as their format to release older booklets.
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 28, 2016 9:36:30 GMT -6
Seems pretty shady to me. I'm not sure how the Gygax estate has their properties licensed out, but I would be surprised if they picked POD as their format to release older booklets. One thing of note, the Chainmail cover appears to be formatted in a similar style to that of the re-releases of ODD. Not sure what to make of that. |
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 28, 2016 9:37:56 GMT -6
They can't spell "Arneson" on Don't Give Up the Ship. While I'm tempted to grab these, I can't help but think as soon as I drop the cash, WotC/Ha$bro will yank the rug out from under Lulu and I'll be down $15. I'll wait a couple of weeks, and if they're still there, maybe I'll get them. I doubt you will be out money. I think Lulu is a pretty standup company. I've ordered many times from them. They've always delivered. I am not connected in any way to Lulu BTW.  |
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 28, 2016 11:54:18 GMT -6
I went ahead and issued a complaint to Lulu. It just didn't seem right, the more I thought about it. Here's the response I got.
"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are removing the Content in
question from availability and are reviewing the matter further. Please let us know
if we can be of any further assistance."
So, there it is. It seems whomever did this was, in fact, not on the up and up.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 14:20:44 GMT -6
Thanks for doing that. Much as I want that stuff, if those items were posted legally I'm Empress Sophia of Russia.
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arkansan
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Post by arkansan on Nov 28, 2016 14:57:53 GMT -6
Considering I ordered this last night I wonder what will become of the order? More importantly of the money I spent on it.
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 28, 2016 15:02:11 GMT -6
I am sorry to have gotten everyone's hopes up. I actually have all the titles from the list that I wanted. Just wanted to share the love.
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jacar
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Post by jacar on Nov 28, 2016 15:03:15 GMT -6
Considering I ordered this last night I wonder what will become of the order? More importantly of the money I spent on it. You can probably cancel the order if it has not been done for you already. Check your account on Lulu. |
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arkansan
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Post by arkansan on Nov 28, 2016 15:11:21 GMT -6
Considering I ordered this last night I wonder what will become of the order? More importantly of the money I spent on it. You can probably cancel the order if it has not been done for you already. Check your account on Lulu. I didn't order using an account. Hmm, I suppose I will just have to look at the receipt and see if there is a way to get in touch with them. |
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Post by smubee on Nov 28, 2016 15:34:46 GMT -6
I went ahead and issued a complaint to Lulu. It just didn't seem right, the more I thought about it. Here's the response I got. "Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are removing the Content in question from availability and are reviewing the matter further. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance." So, there it is. It seems whomever did this was, in fact, not on the up and up. Ah, so you're the reason I can't get these anymore, after you had already told us about the order? Took out my credit card and was ready to purchase just now but my cart was empty. I then clicked the original link in this thread, but of course, the items are gone now. Oh well. |
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 28, 2016 18:14:28 GMT -6
Does seen a little mean to post and then report them. :-P
Still looked shady.
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Post by smubee on Nov 28, 2016 19:18:35 GMT -6
Does seen a little mean to post and then report them. :-P Still looked shady. Yeah that's all I'm saying! Even I said they looked shady, but still wanted to take advantage of this sweet deal. Coulda got Chainmail, Warriors of Mars, Boot Hill, and DGUTS for $20 + shipping, using the Buy 3 get 1 free Lulu code. I just wanted to read them in a physical copy, not on a PDF (and even then, WOTC still won't release the PDF of Chainmail).. Pretty bummed out about this. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 20:59:40 GMT -6
"Even I said they looked shady, but still wanted to take advantage of this sweet deal."
That's called "piracy."
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arkansan
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Post by arkansan on Nov 28, 2016 22:21:23 GMT -6
"Even I said they looked shady, but still wanted to take advantage of this sweet deal." That's called "piracy." Ehh, it's hard for me to feel terribly bad about this particular instance. The items in question are as of now totally out of print and unavailable besides highly priced secondary market copies. From what I can tell the physical copies were being sold at Lulu's base rate for covering printing meaning the person that put it up likely wasn't making anything from this, it looks to me like someone uploaded these for printing a personal copy and simply didn't set it to private. If it were actively being published I would understand. |
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Post by smubee on Nov 28, 2016 23:35:51 GMT -6
"Even I said they looked shady, but still wanted to take advantage of this sweet deal." That's called "piracy." Ehh, it's hard for me to feel terribly bad about this particular instance. The items in question are as of now totally out of print and unavailable besides highly priced secondary market copies. From what I can tell the physical copies were being sold at Lulu's base rate for covering printing meaning the person that put it up likely wasn't making anything from this, it looks to me like someone uploaded these for printing a personal copy and simply didn't set it to private. If it were actively being published I would understand. Exactly. I don't have thousands of dollars to spend just to READ material from games that I'm never going to play but am interested in looking at from a historical point of view. No piracy intended. It was just paying for publication of something that I would gladly pay for if whoever actually owns the rights was to publish them. And yes you are right from what I can tell as well, the cost was just covering the items being published and they would not be making a profit. |
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Post by Vile Traveller on Nov 29, 2016 1:11:28 GMT -6
Arrh.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2016 2:10:46 GMT -6
"It's not available" does not change the legality of the issue in the slightest.
Thievery is thievery no matter how you try to obfuscate the issue.
As somebody who has had his writing published, yeah, I take this d**n seriously.
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Post by Finarvyn on Nov 29, 2016 9:29:32 GMT -6
As somebody who has had his writing published, yeah, I take this d**n seriously. Which reminds me ... when is your book coming out, Michael? |
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Post by smubee on Nov 29, 2016 10:28:49 GMT -6
"It's not available" does not change the legality of the issue in the slightest. Thievery is thievery no matter how you try to obfuscate the issue. As somebody who has had his writing published, yeah, I take this d**n seriously. So you're against things like eBay then.. A place where people buy something for one price and charge over 100 times its original worth a few years later and make way more profit off of it than the store, or the original creators did? I really don't think that publishing a PDF from what looks to be a personal collection is thievery, considering they wouldn't be making any money off of the sale. People host free PDFs all the time, I really don't see the issue. These are out of print games, ones that likely won't see the light of day in any actual republication. For example the West End Games ghostbusters RPG and all of its supplements are for free online in PDF form. I could download them and get them printed for the same that it would cost me to get the books mentioned in this thread. But that's not thievery. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2016 11:45:51 GMT -6
As I understand it (and I may be wrong) if you legally own the pdf (such as ones purchased over at RPGNOW) there is nothing wrong with uploading it to LULU printing your own copy and then taking it down without ever sharing the link. However, as far as I know, there are no legal pdfs of Chainmail.
It is a shame that people who own copyrights don't have any obligations. I have no problem with Disney keeping Mickey Mouse in copyright forever, because they periodically release Mickey stuff from their vaults for sale. WotC on the other hand has hundreds of products that will never see the light of day, all because of a badly written law to protect Mickey Mouse. It is a shame that the copyright law does not read that you get the first 25 years and after that date as long as it is in print (and POD works great for this) every 7 years for at least a two year period the copyright runs indefinitely. But if you go 8 years past the 25 years and have not put it in print, then the copyright expires and it enters the public domain. That would protect the copyright holder and the customer equally. It would also restore the lost benefits of unused abandoned IP entering the Public Domain. There would of course need to be some corresponding changes to Trademark law. For some odd reason, people maintain trademarks on public domain material.
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Post by smubee on Nov 29, 2016 12:59:43 GMT -6
As I understand it (and I may be wrong) if you legally own the pdf (such as ones purchased over at RPGNOW) there is nothing wrong with uploading it to LULU printing your own copy and then taking it down without ever sharing the link. However, as far as I know, there are no legal pdfs of Chainmail. That's what I've heard as well. I'd gladly do this all myself if someone was to legally host the PDFs. |
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