I wish people would help. I need two of those damn things.

vosarnath wrote:Evening all

Stupidly I put a bid on a Temple of Elemental Evil book on ebay after I'd had a couple of glasses of vino collapso, and didn't spot that the map booklet was missing. Sure enough I won it.

Does anybody know of a way that I can get hold of the maps?

Sorry if this has been asked before - I did a search but got a zillion results.

Thanks

The maps in Temple of Elemental Evil are black and white and could possibly be printed out and sent to you.

I'm not sure of the legality of that act.

If we both own hardcopies of the publication, is it illegal to print out the maps you might be missing and send them to you?

Anyone know if that is kosher?

FormCritic wrote:If we both own hardcopies of the publication, is it illegal to print out the maps you might be missing and send them to you?

I assume you know you can own backup copies of your own originals, so implicitly the source of those copies shouldn't matter. However the realpolitik is that fair use laws haven't held much weight in the last 10-15 years.

One ruling that's plagued copy shops is that even if you're making legitimate copies, the copy shop itself cannot profit from it. If you buy your own copier, theoretically the manufacturer of that copier may be held in fault due to fair use copies made by you, which you yourself are not in fault for making.  

I wish I could sum this up in a way which makes sense, but it doesn't make sense so I can't.

A Word file with pictures of all 16 pages in the map booklet is 18 MB.

I don't think it can be emailed....?

This started an interesting conversation at work earlier today.  Since I was still up I thought I might relay some info.

So long as the maps are not used for a sale or resale and you dont purchase a copy but rather have someone give it to you, you and the copier are in the clear.

You will note that WoTC puts many a disclaimer about allowing photo copying for personal use in the D20 products.

I thought I might chime in on this one as a good friend of mine here at work is married to a lawyer.  Yes you can pity him =)  She said this is her "best guess" as her practice revolves around business ethics and criminal behavior, not property.  Shes pretty sure though.

MadMaligor wrote:This started an interesting conversation at work earlier today.  Since I was still up I thought I might relay some info.

So long as the maps are not used for a sale or resale and you dont purchase a copy but rather have someone give it to you, you and the copier are in the clear.

You will note that WoTC puts many a disclaimer about allowing photo copying for personal use in the D20 products.

I thought I might chime in on this one as a good friend of mine here at work is married to a lawyer.  Yes you can pity him =)  She said this is her "best guess" as her practice revolves around business ethics and criminal behavior, not property.  Shes pretty sure though.

I had only one copyright class in law school but I don't see a problem with copying the maps (as long as you own the module or you are copying to send to someone who you know owns the module) nor do I see a problem with reselling the module at some later date with the copied maps (something that I am doing right now on ebay with a different module that was also missing a map page when I bought it)  -- as long, of course, that that is cleaer in the advert for the module.  

The only thing you can't do, AFAIK, is try to make a profit off of selling just the copied maps (e.g. someone can't go into the business of providing missing map or booklet pages).   Arguably you could charge for actual copying costs -- but easiest and safest thing (and considering black and white copies cost what 2 cents) is to provide the copies for free.

Thanks for the information everyone (and thanks Sauro for directing me to this interesting forum).

I'm not a dealer, nor even a collector really, though I do have tons of books. The maps I am looking for are purely and simply for playing the module in my 1st edition AD&D group.

Thanks again for the offers of help.

ExTSR wrote:Hm, I wonder...

If I redrew the maps by hand, and sold those originals as "Art":
Would that be legal? (Drat, prolly not...)


Frank

Well there is the guy who sells hand drawn dollars/twenties/hundreds as art...

bclarkie wrote:
I don't see why not. Just 'cause you drew the originals the first time should not  preclude you from doing so again.

As devil's advocate I should note that the copyright holder not only has things like the right to prevent someone from duplicating the IP (i.e. no selling photocopies of ToEE) but rights in derivative products based on the IP.   For example EGG/FM couldn't independently produce a Temple of Elemental Evil boardgame, movie, cardgame, play, yo-yo, action figure, comic, or etc.    (Aside -- I think WoTC/Hasbro is brain dead for not co-marketing its products.  It owns Magic and AD&D -- there should have been an AD&D CCG based on the magic system years ago -- thats the whole synergy thing.  Similiarly instead of doing some random D&D movie it should have based it on existing IP e.g. ToEE or something in the FR)

On the other hand, they could sell the original pre-cursor items (e.g. the original maps that TSR used to produce the map booklet, the original dungeon descriptions) unless of course they sold those to TSR in whatever contract existed between them for the production of ToEE.

The 'art' idea is an interesting grey area -- IMHO I'd rather have a interesting dungeon map matted and framed on my wall then say many, many works of modern art.   

A recent well known example are Warhol's various works based on existing IP (campbell soup cans come to mind -- but also the monroe pictures).  

Of course if the map was just the same map -- no difference (via color/contrast -- think Warhol's Mao/Monroe portraits) it'd be hard to argue it was anything other than copying.  On the other hand if it was done in artful way then there is an interesting argument for permitting it (after all we let Warhol abuse Campbell Soup's trademark and copyright).