GDNet CD

Geez.. how many billion times has this come up?
Anyway, I think the main reasons against it were:
Banners don''t get viewed - people just browse them offline - less revenue for site.
Too much of a hassle for someone to go through and get all the articles, organise a CD etc..

I know that I would have enough time to do so. Hell, I already have about 3 months worth of posts from the GDCorner on my HDD. As for articles, just need to update the ones from the last month, so that oughto be easy. I just need to burn them onto CD... And about the banners? Half the time when I am on this site the banners don''t come up anyway - firewall doesn''t allow it. So what is the loss?

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

The biggest obstacle with putting together a CD is that we''d have to get the permission of the author of every article included. We have over 500 articles hosted here, so that would be a huge hassle.

Why would it be a hassle? I mean the authors have voluntarily posted the articles. It has been to the "Open Public" already and is considered by now to be "common knowledge". There would be no copyright/trademark infringement unless one of three things were to (or have) occurred:

1) Acceptance agreement clearly states the purpose of the article is to be used by gamedev for Article posting forum (only via internet - no other media). -> A breach of contract.

2) A profit is made from the sale of the CD's. -> Possible breach of contract and/or copyright infringement.

3) Gamedev claims to be the authors of said articles in a manner that the real credit for the article is removed from the true author. -> Copyright infringement.

As far as number 2 is concerned, you at gamedev can make a disclaimer (as do *ALL* other corporate entities) that any submission becomes the property of Gamedev. In which such a disclaimer would void out item one in the list as well, albiet indirectly.

The third item would be remedial in that all you have to do is provide the authors name (which as I recall, you currently do).

Now I am not a person who can (or should for that matter) give legal advice but I believe that those three instances would be the only gray area for the whole idea.

Just my two-cents worth.

Regards,
Jumpster



Edited by - Jumpster on November 9, 2000 10:20:51 AM

Numerous articles we''ve posted have been done with the condition that we not charge for access to them, which is what a CD would be, even if we''re not making a profit from it. I haven''t exactly been keeping track of which ones those are. In addition, any legalities aside, people who have submitted articles to us did so with the understanding that they''d be posted on the site. No mention of a CD was ever made, and people might be upset about that. Before anyone claims that that is unlikely to happen, I know of a case where a website posted a bunch of articles on a CD without getting the permission of the authors (and they didn''t make a profit by doing so). Although none of them pursued legal action, many of them were upset, and swore to never submit articles to that site again.

I''m gathering articles, and I was about to propose what Dwarfsoft did - I almost have them all. Guess Myopic does have a point though. While I wouldn''t mind any of my articles on the CD, other people might.

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"Need more eeenput..."

- #5, "Short Circuit"
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Then each of us should take an article each, and ask its author if they would mind. That splits the workload. If they disagree, then one of us can read the articles and type up our own ''version'' of them, so that keeps everybody happy (I think ). Anyway.... Just a thought..

I think I will just burn my own lot of articles onto CD anyway. I am getting around to writing up some more tutorials as it goes... Maybe I should just try and bloat the doc to the 650MB for each CD. That oughto entertain everyone (note that it is about 500K at the moment for the W97 ver)

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche