[Sca-cooks] What is the Missing Artes Draconis?

[yaini0625 at yahoo.com]

What is this missing Artes Draconis?
Aelina the Saami

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-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 13:00:14 
To: Cooks within the SCA<sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Missing Artes Draconis

Kiri commented:

  <<< While I won't be at Gulf Wars, I will be at Pennsic...and would  
love to have
a copy of it.  I am assuming that, in order to avoid any future  
copyright
issues, it will be reformatted so that it doesn't look like "Cooks'
Illustrated?" >>>

Copying an entire issue of Artes Draconis even on a private basis  
likely violates copyright law. To republish it, even in a different  
format without permission of the copyright holders almost certainly  
does. I would highly recommend from both a moral and a legal ground  
not to do this.

Even reformatted, you would likely be violating the copyright of the  
Artes Draconis publication. I'm not sure who holds the copyright for  
the wording outside of the articles, whether it is SCA Inc. or a sub- 
unit of the SCA.

However I am pretty sure that the copyright to the articles  
themselves, if the author release is like other SCA publications,  
resides with the original author. So, even to republish individual  
articles without the author's permission violates their copyright to  
their work.

I have been, and still am, quite interested in including any of the  
articles in this Artes Draconis issue in the Florilegium. So if you  
wrote one of these articles and would like to see your work get  
visibility and be out there where folks can use it, please contact  
me.  Even if I had a copy of any of these articles I would not use  
them in the Florilegium without explicit permission from the author,  
which is why you can't read any of these articles in the Florilegium  
at this time.

If you know any of the authors of these articles and they aren't on  
this list, please feel free to let them know of this or forward this  
email to them.

I keep hearing comments of this missing Artes Draconis issue "will be  
published shortly", so I have held off on pursuing this, but "shortly"  
seems to keep growing from weeks into months or more.

<<< This is unfortunate...and, knowing at least one of the individuals  
involved,
cannot believe that plagarism, with all that that implies, was  
intended. >>>

I think plagarism is too strong a word. It is likely trademark  
infringement, perhaps unintentionally though.

<<<  I believe that it was intended as a tribute to the magazine. >>>

Perhaps. It is hard to know from the outside. It could also be read as  
satirical.

<<< Certainly they should have contacted the folks at the magazine and  
asked for their
permission. >>>

Yes, definitely. Unfortunately, the magazine might not have really  
cared had they been approached. They do have their trademarks to  
protect and if they aren't seen to protect these trademarks it could  
cost them in a bigger case later. A simple letter giving a small non- 
profit educational organization the one-time permission to publish a  
similar look-alike issue, with proper notice that it was with  
permission of Cook's Illustrated might have protected both them and  
us. They might have requested some changes. Perhaps a show-stopper.  
Maybe not.

<<< But I don't believe for a minute that it was intended as a
"ripoff".  I do know that BoD has chastised the parties involved to a  
point
that they feel is sufficient. >>>

Have they? Part of the problem here, and there may be legal reasons  
for it, is that the way this has been handled has created a "black  
hole" with little information coming out, and what little is coming  
out is being discounted because it is vague with no follow up. The  
comments about the issue being out soon being a prime example. I  
haven't heard anything from the SCA BoD on this issue. I get the  
feeling that as Jakob suggests, some people in charge think that if  
they just ignore the issue (okay, that's a pun) it will be forgotten  
and disappear. Sort of like the Pennsic Chirurgeon f***-up a few years  
ago.

My opinion is that the SCA is a different group and the people in it  
are different than you will find in many groups. Trying to cover  
things up and hope things will just go away doesn't work. They are  
imaginative and will come up with, often way out there, explanations  
and unlikely, hidden schemes to fill in the void. The best approach is  
one of straight forward information as accurate as you can give, as  
soon as you can give it. This should have been done in the BoD Crisis  
in 1994, the Pennsic Chirurgeon f***-up and this copyright/trademark  
dispute and I don't think it was in any of these situations.

Okay, I'm stepping down off my soapbox.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****


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