This is probably rantish. Feel free to ignore; I'm less than rational on the subject of ebooks & copyright.
The author (of Azo & Qutub) is deceased. The books are out of print (including Viridarium). The authors/heirs aren't losing any money and aren't losing market share, because there is no market share & no royalties to be had. Nobody's being stolen from; there aren't any unsold copies available from the publisher. (Potentially, resellers are losing their opportunity to sell more thousand-dollar books. I don't believe they have any moral right to a profit.)
There is a (admittedly thin) legal argument for distributing free digital copies of content that's not otherwise available digitally.
As far as talismans goes--those who want physical talismans can pay $1200 for them; those who separate the object from the lore it contains can scrounge the torrents for that lore. (FWIW, I don't upload them; they're too big.) Either the physical objects are important to truly understanding the contents, in which case, the PDFs are irrelevant & not worth worrying about, or the PDFs are a somewhat-reasonable substitute for the paper version, in which case, the publisher should notice the market demand & sell to it.
Distributing free copies of *out of print* books doesn't cut into the authors' profits. It may lessen the collectible value of the originals, but there's no legal right to collectibles that increase in value. It potentially lessens the value of reprints--but there's no intention of reprinting. It may lessen the elitist-obscure-occult rep of the originals, but I'm not willing to accept that as a reasonable argument. If the lore is real & valuable, it's valuable even if it's well known. If part of its value is based on only being available to a wealthy or lucky few people, it's a scam.
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Date: Jun. 17th, 2010 05:08 am (UTC)From:The author (of Azo & Qutub) is deceased. The books are out of print (including Viridarium). The authors/heirs aren't losing any money and aren't losing market share, because there is no market share & no royalties to be had. Nobody's being stolen from; there aren't any unsold copies available from the publisher. (Potentially, resellers are losing their opportunity to sell more thousand-dollar books. I don't believe they have any moral right to a profit.)
There is a (admittedly thin) legal argument for distributing free digital copies of content that's not otherwise available digitally.
As far as talismans goes--those who want physical talismans can pay $1200 for them; those who separate the object from the lore it contains can scrounge the torrents for that lore. (FWIW, I don't upload them; they're too big.) Either the physical objects are important to truly understanding the contents, in which case, the PDFs are irrelevant & not worth worrying about, or the PDFs are a somewhat-reasonable substitute for the paper version, in which case, the publisher should notice the market demand & sell to it.
Distributing free copies of *out of print* books doesn't cut into the authors' profits. It may lessen the collectible value of the originals, but there's no legal right to collectibles that increase in value. It potentially lessens the value of reprints--but there's no intention of reprinting. It may lessen the elitist-obscure-occult rep of the originals, but I'm not willing to accept that as a reasonable argument. If the lore is real & valuable, it's valuable even if it's well known. If part of its value is based on only being available to a wealthy or lucky few people, it's a scam.