Friday, September 17, 2010

The Great Migration

After yesterday's revelation that Scribd was charging for access to the material at their site I was a bit taken aback. Everything uploaded there was clearly designated as freely available, non-commercial content. Despite that, they were charging "subscription" fees for material that had been "archived".

The reason this makes me so angry (and believe me, I was livid when I discovered what was going on) is that it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Creative Commons. In particular, one of the primary rationales of the Arkham Sanitarium project is that everything gets released under a Creative Commons license. It's yours to do with as you please, forever, with three trivial conditions: you give attribution, you don't make money off it, and you share anything you create with it in the same spirit.

I have no problem with a "free" service making money. I was cool with Scribd placing ads on the pages serving up my content because I thought it was a fair trade for the service they provided. I was a little annoyed with their attempts to turn a document hosting service into some kind of social networking site, but even that I could put up with. But taking content that was freely given, placed under a Creative Commons license that they themselves acknowledged, and then putting it behind a paywall? That's where I jump off.

All the files currently hosted at Scribd will be moved to Google Docs. I'll keep a running tally of the transition here, providing links to both the files and the original post where they appeared. I'll also be editing all of the original posts to remove every single link to the soon-to-be-deleted content at Scribd.

The "Shadow Out of Time" relief map of Australia is available here. The original post is here.

The massive 17.5" by 22.5" map of Antarctica from the "At the Mountains of Madness" project is available here. The original post is here.

The scan of the article from the July 1979 "Starlog" magazine regarding the ill-fated "Cry of Cthulhu" move is here. The original post is here.

The basic Miskatonic University specimen labels are here. The original post is here.

The Miskatonic University sports pennant is here. The original post is here.

Raven's Cthulhu Mythos Prop Labels are over here. The original post is here.

Raven's generic Miskatonic University specimen labels are here. The original post is here.

Raven's Miskatonic University specimen tags. Front face is here, rear face here. The original post is over here.

The 1912 British Postal Telegram is here. The original post is here.

The Hellraiser Elysium Configuration is here. The original post is here.

Raven's Miskatonic University Hazard Labels are here. The original post is here.

The Classic Era Map of Egypt is here. The original post is here.

The 1920's Map of Antarctica is here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Death Certificate is here. The original post is here.

The interactive Tramp Steamer Ticket is over here. The original post with the PDF is here, and the JPG version here.

The 1922 encyclopedia article on Australia is over here. The original post is here.

The blank Radiogram Telegram with customizable form fields is here. The original post is here.

The Medical Certificate of Insanity from the Arkham Sanitarium Project is over here. The original post is here.

The Commitment Warrant from the Arkham Sanitarium Project is here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium Clinical Chart is here. The original post is here.

The Massachusetts Department of Mental Diseases letterhead is here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium General Record File Card is here. The original post is here.

The interactive Arkham Sanitarium Patient Admission Form is here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium Admission Questionnaire is here. The original post is here.

The Interactive Arkham Sanitarium Letterhead is available over here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium Electroshock Treatment Record is here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium Patient Transfer Form is over here. The original post is here.

Alex Pearson's Lovecraftian Pharmacy Labels are here. The original post is here.

The Arkham Sanitarium Patient Record with Photo is here. The original post is here.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

I applaud your decision :) Thank you for creating some of the most stunning props, and licensing them under CC. It's amazing. As an Australian, I've got to say, he Miskatonic Australian exhibition gear looks so period-authentic, it's straight out of my high school Modern Australian History class. So thanks - your work is very appreciated :)

Kristian said...

Thank you!

Unknown said...

It ~does~ violate the letter of the licence. You are not allowed to accept money for the publishing of Non-Commercial CC material. All the fancy wording in the world can't disguise that that's exactly what they're doing.

Anonymous said...

I am impressed with your resolve to offer the items under the CC license.

I somehow didn't see the scribd thing. I hadn't gone back to the older files, though. That's a dirty trick.

Propnomicon said...

@ Anonymous

Thank you for the kind words.

Oh, and please keep on eye on the Yithian city. It's just a matter of time till you nice folks down under are plagued by swarms of Flying Polyps.

@ Kristian

It's my pleasure.

@ Daniel

Which is why I think they came up with the insane "archiving" idea in the first place- they wanted a semi-plausible way around open content and CC licenses.

Tóbal said...

Thanks!
I think it is a matter of time that Scribb will dissapear.This kind of things anger people and all uploaders will stop posting there due to this...
Your work of reposting them is very kind!
Cheers!

Unknown said...

Actually if you look at Scribd for the "archived" items you can either pay for the subscription or upload your own content. If I decided to upload say my photographic lighting diagram template, the All Things Zombie Campaign I am working on or the Call of Cthulhu scenario I wrote from my group I wouldnt have to pay a cent to download the "archived" items.

Doug

anniv111701 said...

Thanks so much for making all these props available! (and sorry for the massive amount of work you're being put through correcting Scribd's ethical "lapse"...)

Um, er... *looks down, shuffles feet* Given that, I hate to say this, but it looks like the link to the 17.5" by 22.5" map of Antarctica from the "At the Mountains of Madness" isn't working. Sorry. Thought you'd want to know.

Propnomicon said...

@ anniv111701

Could you check again? There's no preview avialable because the file is so large, but it downloaded fine for me.

If anyone is still having problems just drop me a note and I'll take a closer look.

christian lehmann said...

Dear friends

I applaud your decision. You seem to be under the illusion that you're at fault. You're not. I think all those who follow your site are grateful for the talent and patience of your craft. I only missed the Sanitarium bandwagon because I was on holiday ;-)
I will send you photos of the french BTMOM collector box as soon as I can. It's nice, but... how can I say it... you could teach these guys one or two or twenty things about props, believe me. You're in a league of your own, and I, for one, await the day you ask us to commit financially to an ATMOM ( or, let's be mad, a BTMOM) prop-galore thingie

anniv111701 said...

Hmm... Anybody else?
I tried with both Firefox and IE and instantly got just a blank pane tagged "Done". I waited 10 minutes on each (overkill on Comcast high-speed broadband) to be sure, but never got a progress bar on the browser pane, a download box or the file loaded into Adobe PDF.
Both browsers work fine on all other files posted.
(Not trying to dog you; I know how much hard work you've poured into this & really am just trying to be helpful rather than The Not-So-Fun-Guy From Yuggoth... ;)

Alex Kaeda said...

"I, for one, await the day you ask us to commit financially to an ATMOM ( or, let's be mad, a BTMOM) prop-galore thingie"

I'll second that. I can remember back to Junior High, working as the Librarians Assistant, when the Librarian first suggested that I read "At the Mountains of Madness". I really should thank her for getting me started down this road to madness.

@ anniv111701 - I just re-downloaded it successfully using firefox. :-\ when did you last restart your computer? perhaps a quick restart and reload will solve the download problem?

anniv111701 said...

Thanks for the advice Alex! I tried that and still had no luck, so I looked at what the links pointed to; you guys had no problem, so obviously it's not an issue across all browsers/computers, but when I click the link I get:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B2AQOdKD2T1nNGM2ZjNlODgtMWJkOC00MDYyLWE4NGUtNDE3MTM3MDVjNjY0&hl=en

whereas all the other links come up with
"https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=" etc.
rather than
"https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=" etc.

So I copied & pasted the link location into the URL field, changed "leaf" to "fileview" and it worked like a charm against the Great Old Ones... ;)

Andres Federico Cuiñas Kellendonk said...

THIS IS PURE GOLD!!!