I've noticed lots of links to dndtools.eu lately. That site seems to have verbatim text from a lot of non-OGL D&D stuff.
Obviously, that's really useful as a reference! But the site itself is presumably violating copyright, and if it ever gets taken down, all those links become useless.
Is this something that needs to be addressed?
I don't offer a position on the ethics or legality of linking to "D&D Tools" – that's amply covered already, and (despite my frequent writing about the legal issues of copyright) my personal feelings about what should be the ethics and legality are complicated and aren't relevant.
There is a practical reason we shouldn't link to that site though. It goes like this:
So, legally, we could leave these links alone, but we are compromising the quality of our site while doing so. This is a case where legality is not the only relevant concern. I think we should, despite the lack of legal liability, proactively replace these links simply as a matter of maintaining the quality of the answers the site generates.
(This is analogous to “you have the protected right to say what you want, but not the right to prevent others from saying you're a terrible person for saying it” principle of freedom of speech: What's legal isn't necessarily smart or useful. Focusing on legality can make people miss the obvious a-legal downsides of a choice.)
They received a cease & desist letter from Wizards of the Coast. That pretty well settles the debate: we shouldn't link to it, because there's nothing there now. SevenSidedDie's predictions came true.
There's some parting words from the owner on the homepage, and an explanation of the situation: http://dndtools.eu/
If that ever goes down too, the same parting words are preserved on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
Legal or moral issues of whether we should link to cached versions entirely aside: those preserved copies of the site's copyright-violating content are going to go away eventually too, and they're broken links simply waiting to be such.
Internet Archive services requests to remove copyrighted works. See their Wayback Machine FAQ, specifically: What is the Wayback Machine's Copyright Policy?
Google Cache has done similar in the past.
So, there's mirrors now.
Wizards of the Coast will catch up with those too, however many pop up, one by one. While they're busy playing whack-a-mole like world governments with the Pirate Bay, we're going to get the same links breaking along the way, which is a pain.
Just say what you have, cite the book, and rely that whoever's reading might have the book (and really, these are the people you want answering your question anyway because they understand the greater context of your thing). Whoever else can go look up an illegal third party site like dndtools, that's their choice.
I contend yes, addressing it would be worthwhile. Even though posting a link doesn't violate copyrights, the posting of a link does endorse a site. This endorsement flows through to copyright violation (even if not by the letter of the law, I'm no lawyer).
Begin rant.
Legally (again, I'm no lawyer but I do know a tiny bit about copyright) I believe it's not punishable to show people where to find copyrighted information. Ethically is another matter entirely. While the material is not hosted by us or by RPG.SE, it's still essentially the same as directing someone to the former MegaUpload for copies of the books they are requesting rules from, instead of to Amazon or Wikipedia.
While the presence of some dead links could be remedied by an hour or two of volunteer work editing (yay for search features) at any time, it's a matter of social responsibility. I paid cash to have my books. I supported the company who published my books. I paid for the right to reference them whenever I'd like. Sites like DnDTools.Eu sidestep this and ultimately detract from the RPG community as a whole. If you like what's in a book, support the friggin' author.
/Rant.
I'm not sure precisely how this should be addressed, but it ought to be. The mods probably have a way for handling links to download illegal content? Things of this nature should fall in line with that. Even if we're not doing the copyright infringing ourselves, gaining unfair/free benefit from another entity doing so isn't right.
NO, unless the presence of the link is a copyright violation by itself.
Having a reference on hand is way better than having to look everything up in a book, so it's either a plain quote from the rulebook (supposedly violating copyright) or a link to a plain quote (which is also violating copyright, but rpg.stackexchange.com is not to be blamed).
In the light of ability to look anything up in the physical book, the potential inaccessibility of the site hosting the plain quote is also a non-issue.
