You can't seriosly be trying to tell the forum that this had anything to do with 'research' and had nothing to do with making money. Whilst there may be one or two people who have genuine interest in the historic minutiae of these products and printing, who do not have ability to purchase the originals, the overwhelming majority are buying them for profit, and when you printed them you can't seriously be telling us you did not know you were specifically engineering a collectable with considerable value.

It's not like we don't already have a precedent. Authorised PoVQ reprints sell for ten times their purchase price on eBay a year after they were printed, and DG will do the same.

Is this not nepetism and profiteering from illegal photocopies? It seems as though the use of 'research' and 'donation' are being used as political spin to justify a position that previously was condoned by the majority of board members.

Where is the difference between selling illegal photocopies, and selling pirate movies, xbox games or fake Rolex watches? Except that there is far more money in the illegal photocopies for the 'donars'. As Steve has pointed out, what is the difference between you selling and profiting from illegal photocopies at conventions (with the tacit approval or active support of the attending Acaeum community), and me selling photocopies of Orange B3 and Tsojconth on a desk at the same con'?

I suspect if someone had a desk at a con and was selling colour photocopes of OB3, they would be encouraged to stop or asked to leave.

lawrenson wrote:Hi,

you were going to put all the Beast Entz stuff out on DVD for "research purposes" or similar, werent you? Or am I mistaken in that?

Cheers,
Malc

If I was going to, I would have done so by now (the most lucrative marketting window has passed), but the illegal use of copyright is something I have been discussing on the forum for years. I can see the arguements on both sides, and I have no moral issue with doing so. What I am asking is, has the moral position of the community as a whole now shifted becasue some members have taken the lead to breach copyright and those involved know they are able to profit from it?

If the moral position has moved, then I no longer see a stigma attached to copyright theft on Acaeum. So the door has been opened.

But, persoanally I have an issue with knowing BB is contactable and has opinions and I persoanlly would not wish to stiff him. Some of that is because he is an individual (beast entz. was never a company). I suppose it is difference between stealing a company's IP and stealing from a person.

Well, the latest on that is now about 12 months old. I had discussed commissioning artwork with the original artist to give the product a new images with the original distinctive Beast Entz pen and ink feel about it, a piece for the cover and a disk ingraving. I had also got to a point with Basil where he was going to put forward a price for a one off licence to print a limited quantity of disks and we were to discuss exactly what was going to be on the disk.

CDM1-4(5) were out, because GW have licensed that portion of the campaign world. TS 1 & 2 (the 70's fanzine) were hopefully going to be on the disk as a precursor, and I was hoping for additional materials (background or whatever) for the archive.

Sadly the project is currently stalled. I know BB has interests elsewhere also with this materials, and is keeping his options open, and I suspect he has reservations about the wisdom of PDF release. I suspect this is something I'll pick up and prod every 18 months or so, but I can see it being a long slog.

Beholder - Nada. I'd welcome publishing an archive disk, but I have neither the complete collection, nor the contact details of the coppyright holder.

Diff Worlds - I have had a couple of e-mails and passed a few sample files to Tadashi, but he is a busy man and I suspect he has issues with either the exact copyright conditions of the content of DW, or the wisdom of putting PDFs onto the market.

Authorised is a completely different ballgame. An authorised PoVQ is as legitimate a product as the authorised Zocchi photocopies of PoVQ, and should be acknowledged as such in the Acaeum record, because it remains OD&D. Same goes for DG.

Kingofpain89 wrote:It's when people turn around and try to profit from them is where the line usually gets drawn.

Kingofpain89 wrote:Mainly because I consider them to be completely worthless due to their illegality.

I doubt these will ever be worthless. They were worth well over the cover price the moment the left the convention, and they will never be worth less. In fact, if some are destroyed, lost, whatever, they remaining copies continue to escelate in value. It was a sure fire winner from day 1. The only resistence you will encounter in reselling is your own consceince and the flakey nature of whether eBay will or will not accept a listing. In fact, this very thread is generating interest in the product, as the Acaeum discussions often focus some collecting trends.

I don't know. I can see there being a huge swathe of the collecting community that cannot afford $1500 for an original but would be willing to drop $100 on a very limited edition reprint, and eBay are very flakey. They don't screen listings at all. They leave it up to the buyers to protest to have things removed, and even then, maybe 6 times out of 10 they don't act at all. When I bought my stock of White Dwarf Archives back in 2005ish, I listed them on eBay and after a few weeks they were pulled by eBay and I received a cease and desist e-mail from Games Workshop.

I entered into a dialogue with GW at the time, and they would not clarify the nature of their objection to my listings, or whether or not the items breached their copyright, all they would do was say they would rather they were not sold. This seemsd to concur with the info I was getting from my supplier at the time. Regardless, the contentious itesm have been sold many times by many resellers on eBay, and very few get pulled.

I reckon I could sell a copy of GT on eBay one way or another within a few months because I don't think the copyright holder cares, and eBay couldn't give a hoot so long as they make their %.

I will make a final post to cover some various info/questions that may have been posted here or in the Con thread.

Deleted per multiple requests by other parties asking me to do so

Ref the the DG reprint

I believe "Faro" asked as have others about printing more of it etc. First off, I have to determine how many to print to begin with since I have to pay for these things. Last year when I printed the PotVQ I chose 100 as an arbitrary number and after the Con had about 70 left over... took 6+ months to get rid of them. In my book, not a good thing, I want to print these things and be done with them in 30 days (heck I'd rather they all be gone at the Con). So when this year rolled around I decided that 100 would again be the total limit, but I'd only print 50 to have at the Con, and to make it different, they'd be 1st prints and whatever I could sell after the Con within 30 days would be 2nd prints... up to the maximum 100. At the Con, knowing that we would have more people, I figured we'd sell 30-40 copies, maybe a few more. I really expected to shred a few of the 1st prints. Well, we sold 56 so I actually have to order 6 more 1st prints to fill these orders and of course there will only be 44 2nd prints. I am not printing more than 100 since that's what I said I would print maximum to begin with. In 2010 we did the write down the name as they buy one thing, and it was pain to keep tabs on the list, look it over since it wasn't in any order etc. and it didn't prevent someone else buying a copy for someone else. So the easier solution this year was to issue tickets, take them at time of purchase and tear them into at that time. That's how we did it for the authorized reprints and will most likely do it in the future.


Ref remaining Digest Reprints:

Again for these, we have come to an agreement with the authors to cap the prints to 75. Now some have said we can print as many as we can sell to help the Con, but I don't want to have lots of extra booklets laying around I need to sell... so 75 it is. In the case of Dennis Sustare's adventure, his didn't sell well in 2010, no clue why, maybe people didn't know who he was, but I notice not everyone buys all the digest reprints we make. Some only buy Tim Kask's, some only buy Steve Winter's so it's harder to predict. That being said, I decided to print 50 of each as "1st prints" hoping to sell them all at the Con. Reality is, I wound up with anywhere from 11-18 copies of these 4 digest reprints (well over 40+ in all) and decided I didn't want to waste the money shredding these to in turn sell 2nd prints. So I put them online hoping they'd sell out, and they did. Since they did, I created new "auctions" for up to 25 2nd prints of all of these. Currently as of this post and with about 25 days to get rid of them we have 16 of Dennis' module, 13 of Tim's Acaeum Dinner module, 4 of Tim's NTRPGCon 2010 module, and 9 of Steve's 2010 module. The numbers are all over the place on those, but in 25 days when the auctions end, I'll have the total extra 2nd prints to have printed.

For now, that's all I have left to update on this matter. I just spent a ton of time yesterday having to hunt down Peter Kerestan since someone reported John's sale of DG on eBay and a "friend" of Peter claimed he had recently spoken to Peter and that Peter had given no one permission to reprint his stuff. I spoke to Peter after hunting him down again (he lives in Arkansas now days and had I known I'd have brought him to the Con this year). And now he remembers our emails and conversations and is again "okay" with the reprints we have done or want to do (he just wants a copy of them... so good luck to me to find a PotVQ and DG to send him, I'll have to give up my personal copies). So even having permission via phone calls and emails (can't get him to sign something and fax it yet) doesn't mean I don't have to jump through hoops later.

Whoever said it was going to be easy

Hey guys, I got a new Planescape cover!!

Hey guys, I got a new Brom!

mbassoc2003 wrote:Can a thread be deleted from a forum?

Used to happen to me all the time at DF.