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| Posted: Fri Jan 29th, 2010 12:13 pm |
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1st Post |
AdamMcLean
Member
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In another thread on this forum someone appears to
encourage people to access a copyright infringing web site
and download for free, copyright material, namely, images
of a complete tarot deck in order to print them out.
It might seem a neat idea to get everything for free or cheaply
on the Internet, but it does have consequences. It destroys
the honest work of artists and publishers. The torrent
companies and sites such as Scribd are making money
using the copyright material of artists and publishers,
from advertising and download charges, and some are making
money by offering to provide prints of pages or cards.
If such pirated free distribution continues, then few small
publishers will be able to survive. Also the price of second hand
decks could fall if people print illegal copies and perhaps even
try and sell these as originals. This dilutes the pool of secondhand
copies and thus erodes the money that collectors have invested
in their collection.
These people are criminals. They might as well have gone into
the house of the artist or publisher and stolen a pile of their
tarot decks.
I will remove people from this forum if they encourage others
to access, download or print out pirated copyright material.
It might seem a harmless activity, but the victims are the artists,
publishers and collectors of tarot, and ultimately the health of
tarot publishing itself will suffer as few people will want to take
the risk of publishing a deck only to have it put up for free on
the Internet.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 30th, 2010 03:09 pm |
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2nd Post |
rylla
Member
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"I will remove people from this forum if they encourage others
to access, download or print out pirated copyright material"
I might be novice, but how do you know which is pirated material and which is not. Even if it says coyright, many authors allow download or personal use. And they are worthwhile reading; just because it is free doesn't mean they have no value. And it would be a pity not to read them just because it's free when they want to share with the world.
Or others allow downloading for a small fee. Those can be stolen material too. And you say they changed your name on your material (yes, VERY ugly, very upsetting). So I wouldn't know is really yours and pirated.
I understand your point of view and agree that those materials that authors don't want to share for free should not be accesses by people. And I'm being honest here I have NO idea how to recognize if it is pirated or not. And I agree NOT to open those file (pirated ones). But those that are not and are shared on the Interned I DO want to access them.
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| Posted: Sat Jan 30th, 2010 08:43 pm |
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3rd Post |
debra
Member
| Joined: | Sun Sep 9th, 2007 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 1115 |
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Offline
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I'm no fan of pirating, having done a book zzzzzzzzzz myself.
There does seem to be a market among collectors for knock-off printed copies of decks, though. Wonder how many here have not only the unauthorized Hello Kitty by Rosales but also photocopied versions....
Last edited on Sat Jan 30th, 2010 09:20 pm by debra
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| Posted: Sun Jan 31st, 2010 01:10 pm |
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4th Post |
AdamMcLean
Member
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rylla wrote: "
I might be novice, but how do you know which is pirated material and which is not. Even if it says coyright, many authors allow download or personal use.
Probably all modern tarot decks designs are still in copyright, as this extends 70 years from the death of the author. So only the works created by an author who died before 1940 are no longer in copyright. This effectively means that it is likely that all modern tarot designs are protected by copyright.
If an author chooses to distribute their material freely then that is their business. They will, no doubt, have their own website and provide details of what restrictions they apply over the use of their material. However, no one else, apart from the copyright holder has the right to distribute such material. Putting someone elses material onto a file exchanging site, does not make this material free of copyright restrictions.
The main culprits as regards tarot are the torrents and file sharing sites.
There are a number of torrents containing many hundreds of full tarot deck images in printable quality. If these continue to be produced it could destroy the publishing of tarot.
If images of the tarot decks I produce were made available in this way, I would give up producing any more decks. These torrents and file sharing sites often charge downloading fees and as they are criminals, it would be unwise to trust them with your credit card details. If I continued to produce decks in the face of them being distributed openly by these criminals, I am merely putting money into their pockets.
I am not going to waste the remainder of my life supporting criminals, and having my income stolen. So I check every week or so to see if images of my decks are being made available on these sites. If they are, I will have no alternative but to give up publishing. I expect most other small publishers would do the same.
So if you are not 100% percent certain that the copyright material is being made available on a web site with the permission of the copyright holder, you should not post links to sites that give access to these images. Fair use is allowed for review and commentary, so one can post links to images on review or commentary sites. These will only include, in any case, a small subset of the cards, usually at a resolution that precludes printing.
Please remember that the Tarot Collectors Forum is a public space. The messages are indexed by Google. It is not a private communication between a few colleagues. If you post a message saying that the Sadly_Ripped_off Tarot can be found on http://www.piratessanonymousssly.com or whatever, and that people can download these and print them out, this will quite quickly be indexed by Google and other search engines, so that people searching for the Sadly_Ripped_off Tarot will find the message on the Tarot Collectors Forum, then go and download the images and print them out.
We members of the Tarot Collectors Forum should not participate in activities that assist people to infringe the copyright of artists or publishers of Tarot, and consequently damage their income.
Already the post on this forum, from a few days ago, that led to my concern over this issue is the fourth find in Google when you put in the name of the tarot involved. So people wanting a copy of this tarot may well find that they can download printable illegal copies through the link to this forum. This dismays me ! I have now replaced the offending postings so that people wont find the links.
I think things are quite clear on this matter. We must protect the tradition of tarot publishing. People who want to help publicise copyright infringing sites, are not welcome on this forum.
Last edited on Sun Jan 31st, 2010 01:47 pm by AdamMcLean
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| Posted: Sun Jan 31st, 2010 02:25 pm |
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5th Post |
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