Quote from: The Traveller;631155Wizards should release those for free full stop, most of the articles are about unsupported game systems anyway.

Anyone remember the forum?

Ye gods we used to have arguments in a printed publication!

Haha!

It's like clicking on a discussion thread and it taking 30 days to load!

Wow, that's pretty cool. I need to send that link to a few friends of mine who've been looking for rare back issues. Thanks for the tip!

I've got the Dragon Magazine Archive CD set around here somewhere, but ever since we moved, I haven't been able to find it. It's too bad they never did that for Dungeon. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

Since the internet archive is historical record, I'm not going to delete the link; I presume this is stuff that was at least once being freely offered on an official site?

RPGPundit

Since this thread has the go ahead to exist here are links to all the files, sorted by file type (pdf, epub, txt, mobi, etc...) and issue.

Should be easier to find what you want (or just copy all the links into a D/L manager and save a lot of hassle)

-LINK REMOVED by admin-

PDFs start at line 1533

Quote from: RPGPundit;631514Since the internet archive is historical record, I'm not going to delete the link; I presume this is stuff that was at least once being freely offered on an official site?

RPGPundit

I know the Ray Winninger Dungeoncraft articles were once free at the official site, so I believe that the rest were as well.  Of course, it was after the official publication date, since they didn't want to cut into their sales, but still...

Quote from: RPGPundit;631514Since the internet archive is historical record, I'm not going to delete the link; I presume this is stuff that was at least once being freely offered on an official site?

It almost certainly wasn't. But in any case, the link is not pointing to the Wayback Machine (the part of archive.org that archives web pages, but to the "magazine rack" section, which includes some public domain magazines, but also some not-so-public domain magazines, most of which appear to be gaming and SF magazines (Dragon, Polyhedron, Ares.) I see they have copies of Crazy magazine, a Mad magazine knock-off published by Marvel in the '70s.

The Internet Archive is claiming status as a library archiving cultural artifacts; whether the official position includes "archiving" copyright materials, or the Dragon magazines ad others were uploaded illegally by a random user, I don't know.

(Edit to add: Check out the link to the magazine rack and tell me those titles are all legal...)

It kind of bothers me, because archive.org has a lot of public domain and donated copyright materials (like the Prelinger Archive) that we'd lose access to if the website were taken down by legal problems. Whoever uploads the copyright materials without permission is endangering the entire archive.

At least one of the Dragon issues is the same truncated version (no cover, no adds, much of the issue missing) available via torrent.

Probably, these were available from non-official sources and were uploaded.

Holy crap STARLOG!  *yoink*

Quote from: thedungeondelver;631563Holy crap STARLOG!  *yoink*

Yeah, I saw that, too. And even though I worry about how these uploads threaten the site in general, I remember Starlog had a pretty good series on doing your own special effects that I wish I could read again. So I'll probably wind up looking for those.

Hey, I paid for them once, so I'm entitled, right?

Quote from: talysman;631530It kind of bothers me, because archive.org has a lot of public domain and donated copyright materials (like the Prelinger Archive) that we'd lose access to if the website were taken down by legal problems. Whoever uploads the copyright materials without permission is endangering the entire archive.

If they are following the law, they can benefit as a network provider under Safe Harbor provisions of the Digital Millenium Act. Of course, that's a big if. A lot of folks rely on hearsay and then find they opened themselves to a lawsuit.

It used to be quite easy to upload stuff to archive.org, I don't know about now.

I would also guess that these have been illegally posted. I don't see this as any kind of license to help yourself. PDFs and the ability to sell digital goods means stuff like this need never go out of print. Hasbro and Paizo could always come to an understanding about PDFs of stuff that came out later than the 250 Issues CD. Id sure like to get those myself, and Dungeon too.

Quote from: talysman;631682Yeah, I saw that, too. And even though I worry about how these uploads threaten the site in general, I remember Starlog had a pretty good series on doing your own special effects that I wish I could read again. So I'll probably wind up looking for those.

Hey, I paid for them once, so I'm entitled, right?

does Starlog even exist anymore as a magazine or a company though?  if not those might be safe. I wish we could find out one way or the other about the Dragon issues...

Quote from: thedungeondelver;631694does Starlog even exist anymore as a magazine or a company though?  if not those might be safe. I wish we could find out one way or the other about the Dragon issues...

Well, now we're getting into the issue of how the magazine handled rights. Did it buy all rights from the authors of the articles it published, or did it file the copyrights and sign most of the unused rights back to the authors? The latter is the usual procedure, in which case, any of the authors of Starlog articles -- for example, David Gerrold, who wrote a column -- could accuse archive.org of copyright infringement.

If Starlog treated articles as "work for hire" and retained all rights, then the rights would have been transferred to The Brooklyn Company, which currently owns Fangoria (still in circulation, I think.)

While looking up that last detail, I found out that a warehouse fire destroyed all the back issues of both Fangoria and Starlog, so apparently private collections and these illegal PDFs are the only way to get old issues of Starlog. Bummer.

This is how I view this thread:

colwebbsfmc: "Psst.  I found a pot of gold, and I am sharing it with everyone, as long as I don't get in trouble for it."
"Bunch of people: "Cool, thanks!"
RPGPunditCop: "As long as you're cool about it, I'll look the other way"
SJBenoist: "Hey EVERYONE, HE FOUND A POT OF GOLD, AND IT'S TOTALLY ILLEGAL!"
jhkim: "Yeah, TOTALLY ILLEGAL GOLD RIGHT OVER THERE!"
RPGPunditCop: "I said be cool guys"
talysman: "IT'S SO TOTALLY ILLEGAL OH MY GOD, LOOK OVER HERE, ILLEGAL GOLD!"
Mistwell: "Shut the fuck up about it already guys!"
Daddy Warpig: "YES I VERIFIED IT'S ILLEGAL GOLD!"
Lynn: "TOTALLY ILLEGAL GOLD"
talysman: "YEAH LET ME EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHICH LAWS THIS BREAKS".

Fucking nerds, high intelligence, low wisdom, thinking showing off their knowledge is more important than leaving well enough alone!

Quote from: Mistwell;631707This is how I view this thread:

colwebbsfmc: "Psst.  I found a pot of gold, and I am sharing it with everyone, as long as I don't get in trouble for it."
"Bunch of people: "Cool, thanks!"
RPGPunditCop: "As long as you're cool about it, I'll look the other way"
SJBenoist: "Hey EVERYONE, HE FOUND A POT OF GOLD, AND IT'S TOTALLY ILLEGAL!"
jhkim: "Yeah, TOTALLY ILLEGAL GOLD RIGHT OVER THERE!"
RPGPunditCop: "I said be cool guys"
talysman: "IT'S SO TOTALLY ILLEGAL OH MY GOD, LOOK OVER HERE, ILLEGAL GOLD!"
Mistwell: "Shut the fuck up about it already guys!"
Daddy Warpig: "YES I VERIFIED IT'S ILLEGAL GOLD!"
Lynn: "TOTALLY ILLEGAL GOLD"
talysman: "YEAH LET ME EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHICH LAWS THIS BREAKS".

Fucking nerds, high intelligence, low wisdom, thinking showing off their knowledge is more important than leaving well enough alone!

Aren't you a lawyer?  Seems a bit odd to me that a lawyer would encourage illegal activity as long as you don't make a big fuss about it to draw attention.