Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I think you have their motives wrong. They want the DE to dissappear because the stole from it and don't own the copywrite.

Freakzilla wrote:They want the DE to dissappear because the stole from it ...

... and because it's more entertaining, by far, than anything ever written by The Hiking Hack and The Other Guy.

SandRider wrote:

SadisticCynic wrote:Oh no, I just got it! (need a face-palm smiley)

Hey, I personally think copyright law is seriously fucked and needs a major overhaul. Even the original author/creator shouldn't have exclusive rights decades and decades later. And other than surviving spouses for a very very limited term (10 or at most 20 years?), relatives should not be able to inherit copyrights. (So other than Theresa Shackleford, no one in the Herbert Leech Parade should have ever had any claim to FH's works.) But we don't live in a perfect world, do we?

As for The Dune Encyclopedia, AFAIK McNelly's widow would be the copyright holder. (Anyone know any different?) I know from one of the contributors to the Encyclopedia that when he tried to post some of the content created for the book on the Web, he had to fight McNelly's estate lawyer over it. ("Fight" as in argue it back and forth; the estate lawyer eventually relented and he didn't actually have to go to court or pay any fees, etc., and was able to keep the content online.)

As the law stands, it doesn't matter whether the book is out of print or cultish or some group of stupid asshats has a posse of mean-ass lawyers and some IT company scouring the web for violators: it's still a copyright violation to post the content to the Web. And "everyone else is doing it, too" is a pretty grade-school-level excuse, no? I don't know too much about Scribd, but anyone posting anything there that they themselves did not write is no doubt in violation of the user agreement.

Today, Scribd is the place where you publish, discover and discuss original writings and documents.

If you want to write a commentary on The Dune Encylopedia and upload that, fine. But please stop trying to rationalize something you know is illegal.

This is interesting as well:

http://blog.scribd.com/2009/03/30/what- ... -checking/

2. Scribd takes the concerns of copyright holders very seriously. It’s why we created our industry-leading copyright management system, which goes above and beyond requirements set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Every time Scribd receives an official take down request from an author, publisher, or copyright holder, we remove the copyrighted document and add the reference file to our copyright database. If someone tries to upload a document that our system identifies as one of the tens of thousands of works in our copyright database, the document is automatically removed from Scribd. While the technology is not yet perfect, we are constantly working to improve it. And as our reference database grows over time, our system will become even smarter and faster.

Besides, it's not as if there's a shortage of places to download the DE. AFAIK the russians still have it up. Good luck with that one, HLP.

If you can live with the scan errors.

And there are used (paperback) copies on Amazon starting from around $37.00.

I got mine for about that back in December 2007.

SandChigger wrote:If you can live with the scan errors.

Those don't bother me much. A small price to pay for a bookmarked and cross-referenced DE.

SandChigger wrote:And there are used (paperback) copies on Amazon starting from around $37.00.

Seriously, anyone here who doesn't have this book ... why not?

Hell with scans and digital nonsense. Suck it up, put a crowbar in your wallet, and find an actual physical copy somewhere.

I bought the large paperback edition when it came out. It fell apart. I wouldn't buy it again unless it was hardcover. I hardly ever read print anymore, anyway.

Print is dead.
Egon ~ Ghostbusters

Yeah, there's some truth there — my copy has seen better days, too. It seems like a fairly delicate book.

SandChigger wrote:This is interesting as well:

http://blog.scribd.com/2009/03/30/what- ... -checking/

2. Scribd takes the concerns of copyright holders very seriously. It’s why we created our industry-leading copyright management system, which goes above and beyond requirements set forth in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Every time Scribd receives an official take down request from an author, publisher, or copyright holder, we remove the copyrighted document and add the reference file to our copyright database. If someone tries to upload a document that our system identifies as one of the tens of thousands of works in our copyright database, the document is automatically removed from Scribd. While the technology is not yet perfect, we are constantly working to improve it. And as our reference database grows over time, our system will become even smarter and faster.

wonder how their system goes about that, if it's simple file type and size comparison or do they meta tag the content and use that as a comparison point.

Good question. Probably a combination?

It's probably just a file name thing.

I'd bet you'd be ok uploading the "Dnue Encyclopedia" if you didn't take the piss or publicise it.

And here was me thinking they were taking the issue seriously. Silly me

SandChigger wrote:.. And "everyone else is doing it, too" is a pretty grade-school-level excuse, no? .

No Sandchigger, this was never my reasoning and I never mentioned it. I was arguing that they delete this but they do not delete that. And I didn't know of that database that scribd is readying either.

SandChigger wrote:Yea! Someone got it!

You get me, you really really get me!

I got it Chig, but I tend to get a little overly excited in the scat areas.

cmsahe wrote:

SandChigger wrote:.. And "everyone else is doing it, too" is a pretty grade-school-level excuse, no?

No Sandchigger, this was never my reasoning and I never mentioned it. I was arguing that they delete this but they do not delete that. And I didn't know of that database that scribd is readying either.

The website clearly states that they have agreements with some publishers, etc., to host certain books and other copyrighted materials. (Maybe those "for Dummies" books you mentioned?) The upload of those books would still be different from uploads like yours of the DE.

I didn't know there was a distinction, which is why I assumed you were using that lame "everyone else is doing it" excuse.