Thread: Professional printing of PDF:s...

Hi guys!
I wonder if you could enlighten me on the subject of PDF printing. If I want to take my legally purchased PDF to a POD printer and make, say a hard bound copy of the book, would that be legal? I really can't see the difference from printing it at home and put it in a binder or use ring binding or whatever...

Anyone knows?

Cheers
/a.

Copyright law differs from place to place in the world but with a legally owned PDF you can in most jurisdictions indeed have it professionally printed.

The problem might be (and I think I've only heard about it in the US) is that the printer might want to have some proof that you have the right to print the pdf. This is often as easy as pointing out the statement that if often on pdfs from professional companies that says something like "you have the right to print this for personal use only".

AFAIK that statement, for example, appears on just about every character sheet in most RPG's even where a separate sheet is provided for download from the authors web site.

In the U.S., Kinkos will give you fits about printing a PDF, even if it plainly reads "Permission granted to print and copy for personal use" on the cover page. Office Depot, however, is much more reasonable.

What about Office Max? That would be the closest place to me. I had a map laminated there the other day, it nevered occured to me to ask about PDFs. As many as I have purchased in the last two years though, I really should look into prices, etc. Mainly for the ones with lots of color.

Originally Posted by seneschal

In the U.S., Kinkos will give you fits about printing a PDF

Ha! Still! I remember going to a Kinkos back in 2001 or so and having them grill me about ownership and then refusing the job.

Originally Posted by ORtrail

What about Office Max? That would be the closest place to me.

If they give you a problem, loudly declare that your nom de plume is Steve Perrin, except when you're writing as Gary Gygax. Report back here with the results.

There are some online printers as well. I'm not much help here as I really don't print out pdfs.

I found Office Max to be a pain, but Staples was very reasonable.

I would think part of it would be the Store Manager and part company policy. With the explosion of PDFs they are missing out if they refuse print jobs. I will just have to take a PDF or two in on a thumbdrive to my local Office Max and see what happens.

I need to laminate another map anyway.

So, I actually ended up at an Office Depot, and had no issue getting my PDF of Villains & Vigilantes: Final Fight With The Furies printed out. It was 64 pages (seven of those color the rest B&W) on 28lb paper, spiral bound, with a clear plastic cover and plastic maroon colored back. It was $15.03 which was okay, but they would have wanted close to $100 to print out my PDF of Capes, Cowls, And Villains Foul at 170+ pages in color. Uh, no, I'll just use my Nook or the laptop.

I did expect double-sided printing, but they did each page on a seperate piece of paper. Actually, that gives me plenty of space to write conversion notes to Superworld and plot changes/additions, so I'm cool with it. For an actual gaming book, I would not have been happy.

I also got another map laminated, with no waver to sign -and they gave me a "Why would we ask you to do that?" look.

Originally Posted by ORtrail

I also got another map laminated, with no waver to sign -and they gave me a "Why would we ask you to do that?" look.

Laminating is fine - if you want to ruin a map by covering it with plastic then it doesn't affect copyright.

Copying the map and then laminating it might be different.

Originally Posted by dawnrazor

If I want to take my legally purchased PDF to a POD printer and make, say a hard bound copy of the book, would that be legal?

It depends on your national law, the laws in the various continental European states
differ considerably, and the relevant laws in England and the USA are completely dif-
ferent from those in most continental European states (e.g. their laws have the con-
cept of "copyright", which does not exist in most European laws, where a quite diffe-
rent concept of "intellectual property" is used).

For example, in Germany a Privatkopie ("private copy") for the personal use only is al-
most always allowed, to compensate the owner of the intellectual property we pay a
small fee with every empty CD, printer and other device used to produce copies we
buy, and that money is distributed to the organization of the intellectual property ow-
ners.

So, to be sure what is legal, you have to take a look at the Swedish law.