Legality of sharing excerpts of out of print book related to Doom?

[DNSKILL5]

I have two books with some information in them that I think might be useful for a current topic about Doom going on here on Doomworld. While I do have a scanner, I’m not sure if I will scan the page(s) in question, but either take images of the pages, or just type it out and quote it.

I’d only be sharing parts of the foreword of both books. I can’t get to the books until Sunday, so I wanted to know ahead of time if I could do this or not, and what I can actually do without breaking any copyright laws. Books in question are “The DOOM Construction Kit”, and the “Hexen Official Strategy Guide”. 

[seed]

I'm not a legal expert, but I think that as long as it's just a few random scans it should be okay.

 

It would be an issue only if it exceeds that limit by a lot, like half the book or its entirety is uploaded.

[Eurisko]

Pretty Sure you'd be fine and it would come under 'Fair Use'. It wouldn't be like you're charging money for people to view it. 

[DNSKILL5]

Thanks for the responses. That’s all what I was hoping would be the case!

[xvertigox]

I've gotten confirmation that posting the whole book(s) are fine. I'd have to look through my post history to find exactly where but I know that it has been confirmed. The books are OOP and fair game at this point.

I'm planning on posting all of the editing books in their entirety when I can figure out how to efficiently digitize them.

[DNSKILL5]

That’s good to know. I have quite a few besides these two books, but these two just happen to have info that I found worth sharing on the “Is Doom really 3D” thread. 

[Nikoxenos]

1 hour ago, xvertigox said:

I've gotten confirmation that posting the whole book(s) are fine. I'd have to look through my post history to find exactly where but I know that it has been confirmed. The books are OOP and fair game at this point.

I'm planning on posting all of the editing books in their entirety when I can figure out how to efficiently digitize them.

 

If you are willing to destroy the books, take them to a copy shop and get them to cut the bindings with a cutting press and scan them with an auto feeder on a pro copier. Should take a few minutes and give you the best result.

 

If you can't destroy them, then just take the clearest, best lit pictures you can of the relevant sections, doing the whole thing would be a huge grind. People can help you clean it up or OCR/transcribe it later.

[xvertigox]

22 minutes ago, Nikoxenos said:

 

If you are willing to destroy the books, take them to a copy shop and get them to cut the bindings with a cutting press and scan them with an auto feeder on a pro copier. Should take a few minutes and give you the best result.

 

Originally I had planned to preserve the books but after seeing how good the results are via scanning and how arduous setting a photo rig is I think I'll have to sacrifice them. It's a real shame cause they make a great piece on my bookshelf and they're super fun to flip through. That being said preservation is more important than me having some really nice books so I'll look into copy shops today. I'd called around to a few different places in NZ that deal with document preservation but no one was able to help.

 

Edit: Just called a print shop and organized to bring the books in so he can see if his machine can cut the binding. I imagine it should be able to, they're not especially thick. @Nikoxenos Thanks heaps for the copy shop suggestion! Libraries gave me no joy. I was planning on making a thread asking for suggestions but you preempted that :) Now I'll (hopefully) be able to make a thread soon and dump all the editing books!

Edited December 3, 2020 by xvertigox

[smeghammer]

2 hours ago, xvertigox said:

I've gotten confirmation that posting the whole book(s) are fine. I'd have to look through my post history to find exactly where but I know that it has been confirmed. The books are OOP and fair game at this point.

I'm planning on posting all of the editing books in their entirety when I can figure out how to efficiently digitize them.

 

Don't forget that legally speaking, out of print doesn't necessarily mean out of copyright - There's generally 70 years before out of copyright comes into force. See e.g. https://answers.library.uhd.edu/faq/243965. This article references the 'fair use' exception, but is unclear what 'fair use' actually is. You are probably fine citing and quoting, but you might be on risky ground uploading the whole text of an out of print but not out of copyright book. The Librivox page about this is pretty good too.

 

Another exception of course would be if you have permission from the copyright holder to disseminate copies.

[xvertigox]

5 minutes ago, smeghammer said:

 

Don't forget that legally speaking, out of print doesn't necessarily mean out of copyright - There's generally 70 years before out of copyright comes into force. See e.g. https://answers.library.uhd.edu/faq/243965. This article references the 'fair use' exception, but is unclear what 'fair use' actually is. You are probably fine citing and quoting, but you might be on risky ground uploading the whole text of an out of print but not out of copyright book. The Librivox page about this is pretty good too.

 

Another exception of course would be if you have permission from the copyright holder to disseminate copies.

 

That is an important distinction, OOP doesn't imply out of copyright. I would have to look into the copyright holders and see if the associated companies are defunct but my stance is these books should be preserved and copyright be damned. There is a near zero chance of any repercussions of me uploading 20 year old Doom editing books that are basically irrelevant now. That's a risk I'm willing to take, preservation supersedes copyright in this case.

[DNSKILL5]

Also, some of these books have CDs with them, particularly what comes to mind are Doom: The Hacker’s Guide and The DOOM Construction Kit. I know some of the CD’s have been shared online, but are there any that are missing? Most of the content on these discs would be found elsewhere online I’m sure (like idgames database), but there’s so many classic early content found on these discs that if any aren’t available online, I think they’d be worth documenting, too.

[xvertigox]

21 minutes ago, Gerolf said:

Also, some of these books have CDs with them, particularly what comes to mind are Doom: The Hacker’s Guide and The DOOM Construction Kit. I know some of the CD’s have been shared online, but are there any that are missing? Most of the content on these discs would be found elsewhere online I’m sure (like idgames database), but there’s so many classic early content found on these discs that if any aren’t available online, I think they’d be worth documenting, too.

 

I think the only disc I have is Doom Hackers Guide which is already on archive.org. Any other discs I have I'll make ISOs of and post them too.

[smeghammer]

11 hours ago, xvertigox said:

 

That is an important distinction, OOP doesn't imply out of copyright. I would have to look into the copyright holders and see if the associated companies are defunct but my stance is these books should be preserved and copyright be damned. There is a near zero chance of any repercussions of me uploading 20 year old Doom editing books that are basically irrelevant now. That's a risk I'm willing to take, preservation supersedes copyright in this case.

 

Don't get me wrong - it is certainly a good thing to want to preserve these. I for one would certainly be appreciative if these books became available. I love that there are things like archive.org, librivox, the wayback machine etc. and the many abandonware sites that preserve all kinds of stuff.

 

 

"preservation supersedes copyright in this case"

 

Absolutely.

 

This comment regarding the books is common sense, but unfortunately sometimes legal restrictions fly in the face of common sense. I was just thinking of the Doom 2016 remake in Doom that was killed. I know that's somewhat different though.

[Matias]

@smeghammer Doom remake 4 by vasyan777 actually had nothing to do with newDoom. And to my knowledge the biggest issue was the name "Doom Remake 4" since it makes it seem like this is a remake of Doom 4. If he would have called it "low poly doom" like i think it originally was called there would have never been any issues. Bethesda let's modders get away with using their copyrighted material because they know it's benefitial for them, but when you have something so blatantly misleading and possibly taking away their customers it's not a suprise they would use their weight to make it go away. I actually still have DR4 istalled, it sucks.

 

As for the original question by @Gerolf sharing parts and quoting should be fine. Sharing the entire book probably infringes on some copyright but to get into any trouble would require the copyright holder to actually care. When you are talking about a book that barely sold more than 5 units you most likely won't get sued out of existence. 

[smeghammer]

5 minutes ago, Matias said:

Doom remake 4 by vasyan777 actually had nothing to do with newDoom. And to my knowledge the biggest issue was the name "Doom Remake 4" since it makes it seem like this is a remake of Doom 4. If he would have called it "low poly doom" like i think it originally was called there would have never been any issues. Bethesda let's modders get away with using their copyrighted material because they know it's benefitial for them, but when you have something so blatantly misleading and possibly taking away their customers it's not a suprise they would use their weight to make it go away. I actually still have DR4 istalled, it sucks.

 

Ah - didn't realise the distinction - thanks for clarifying.

[Bauul]

16 hours ago, Gerolf said:

That’s good to know. I have quite a few besides these two books, but these two just happen to have info that I found worth sharing on the “Is Doom really 3D” thread. 

 

Something to bear in mind with the Doom Construction Kit is that it was written entirely by (as far as I can tell) someone who was just a student at the time with no official links to id Software at all. As such, there are a lot of technical inaccuracies in it. I would take any 'conclusions' about the nature of Doom in terms of something as nuanced as "Is it 3D?" from it with a pinch of salt. Unless you're simply using it to show what people thought Doom was back in the day.

 

I did a small post on some of the more interesting level design guidelines it had here. It's fascinating how trends have changed over time. 

[bfredric]

It's not Doom-related, but I have already "published" like 10 copies of a book I wrote using the websites below. I wasn't trying to make money, but make a "real" looking book the size I want, with the cover I want, in full color (so I could add pictures). My next project will be a more mainstream subject (still not Doom-related!), but I don't want to deal with actually trying to sell it and make money, so I like the idea of printing 20 books for friends and family and giving them away. Anyway, after reading your post about "destroying the books" I thought you might consider making them again for your bookshelf! (see below)

 

https://www.blurb.com/trade-books

 

http://getmyguide.xulonpress.com/bing/?msclkid=daa833d8e7bb16c574736cfaeabda923&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand&utm_term=xulon%20press%20com&utm_content=Xulon%20Press

[DNSKILL5]

6 hours ago, Bauul said:

 

Something to bear in mind with the Doom Construction Kit is that it was written entirely by (as far as I can tell) someone who was just a student at the time with no official links to id Software at all. As such, there are a lot of technical inaccuracies in it. I would take any 'conclusions' about the nature of Doom in terms of something as nuanced as "Is it 3D?" from it with a pinch of salt. Unless you're simply using it to show what people thought Doom was back in the day.

 

I did a small post on some of the more interesting level design guidelines it had here. It's fascinating how trends have changed over time. 

There are two “Doom Construction Kit” books apparently. I am not sure which I have. My intention is just to share what some people were thinking at the time, directly prior to Quake’s release. I’m pretty sure the author of the version I have is the same author that wrote the official Hexen guide. The reason I want to share both excerpts is Doom Construction Kit is an older book, and when it referred to Quake, it was still assumed it was going to be a medieval-fantasy game. The Hexen guide was written much closer to Quake’s release. So it’s definitely not me trying to put out false info, more just to document some things people were saying about that subject back in the 90s, and how most of the arguments and talking points about Doom being 3D or not have been the same exact arguments for the most part since then. Though, this idea that Doom is 2D merely because you can’t jump or crouch, look up and down, is downright silly. The author definitely didn’t say anything like that though. 
 

As for the rest of the book that goes over making levels and whatnot, there’s definitely going to be poor or just outdated advice. That seems to be the norm back then, because of how more challenging it was to get true documentation when these games were still fairly fresh to the world. 
 

edit: saw your link, yep, that’s the same book and author I am talking about. 

[Nikoxenos]

Just out of curiosity I checked out the Doom Construction Kit on archive.org and it is a torrent with no seeds. I’ve been waiting a few days with no change. If it is possible to rip that disc with others it would help preserve it. 

[DNSKILL5]

@Nikoxenos if nobody beats me to it, I will be back home tomorrow. I was supposed to come home today, but plans changed. When I get back, I can send you a copy of the disc perhaps? My book isn’t where I’m at now. 

[Andromeda]

4 hours ago, Nikoxenos said:

Just out of curiosity I checked out the Doom Construction Kit on archive.org and it is a torrent with no seeds. I’ve been waiting a few days with no change. If it is possible to rip that disc with others it would help preserve it. 

If you hover the mouse pointer where it says "5 Files" like in the image below, it will show a download button that you can click to get the files without having to mess with torrents. Not very intuitive I know, but hopefully this helps.

 

[Nikoxenos]

32 minutes ago, Andromeda said:

If you hover the mouse pointer where it says "5 Files" like in the image below, it will show a download button that you can click to get the files without having to mess with torrents. Not very intuitive I know, but hopefully this helps.

 

 

Hey, that solved everything in a whole 30 seconds. Thanks!

[Dark Pulse]

I actually wish I could read the Doom Construction Kit book, and all sorts of other Doom books of that ilk from back in the day. To me they're a dharma preserved - or a zeitgeist, if you prefer.

[DNSKILL5]

@Dark Pulse they do turn up for sale from time to time, but since the pandemic, just about anything you could think of when it comes to vintage Doom stuff has been inflated in price. It’s mainly because a lot of people are desperate for some money right now, and selling off their collections is what they think is the best choice, but they often ask for very unreasonable (and often unrealistic) prices. I imagine once things settle down again, the prices will go back down. I see a few on eBay right now for $60! That is definitely not even close to the price I paid for any of the books I have. We’re talking like under $20 is what I remember paying when I bought it, so I definitely suggest playing the waiting game if you do decide to purchase a copy in the future. 

 

Besides, if xvertigox is able to scan his books, then nobody will have to stress themselves on collecting these books anymore. They’re going to get harder and harder to come by so having them digitally preserved would not only be useful for people who want to read these books, but it will help preserve the information within them. It’s also a great time capsule back to when Doom was a lot more fresh in everyone’s memories. 
 

If he cannot do this for whatever reason, I personally refuse to damage my books. I just don’t like the idea of tearing up a book, no matter the reasoning, but if someone were to do that, they’d definitely be doing something very good for historical preservation.

 

If it turns out he is unable to do it as he described earlier, I would be willing to try to scan or take images somehow, but I just don’t want to damage the books themselves. I’ve had them for over 15 years, so there’s some sentimental value behind them for me. 
 

With that said, I will update this thread when I get home later this morning (it’s 2am here) when I share the actual exerts I was mentioning in the first post. If there’s anything in particular you’d like to see beyond what I’ll be sharing on the “Is Doom 3D” thread (I don’t think that’s the actual name of the thread but can’t remember), I’d be happy to get an image in or two. Though Bauul did share a thread that has some of the images used to explain map design theory. 
 

Also, didn’t mean for this to turn out so long, but I didn’t want to forget anything. 

[DNSKILL5]

I just posted the excerpts in question here.