> As far as I know, you are permitted to photocopy a certain percentage of
> a book for personal use. Most of the Gloranthan material of RQ2 books
> make up a small share of the content. Perhaps this is a way forward?
> Perhaps people will type up the Gloranthan sections of OOP products
> and put them on the WWW where the laws on Copyright have not been
> clarified. I don't know.
It's the "fair use" clause of the copyright laws. Yes, you can make copies of small portions of a work for personal use, or for scholarly purposes. I think you would be well within the law if you copy and enlarge a map and add your own detail, for example.
But publication is not fair use! And the Web is certainly publication. So far as I know, the only murky area of Web law is *linking* -- some people have claimed the right to limit links to them, or to have frames put next to their content. But none of these involve actual copying, which is what you propose. I've heard of quite a few cases where fans post stuff to the web and lawyers ask them to remove it.
And here is a fair use quote: "A recent cross-cultural study finds that among preindustrial societies, those with full-time craft specialists, slavery, and the corvee are most likely to practice human sacrifice. The suggested explanation is that the sacrifice mirrors what is socially important: societies that depend mainly on human labor for energy (rather than animals or machines) may think of a human life as an appropriate offering to the gods when people want something very important." [Ember & Ember, Anthropology: A Brief Introduction].
To me this says Fonrit.
I also think that during the Darkness, most people practiced human sacrifice because times were so awful. These days, very few would. I think the Orlanthi might in desperate times sacrifice a thrall, and while my character objected to Theya's sacrifices of captives to the Earth in the Taming of Dragon Pass campaign, it certainly seemed culturally appropriate.
But I still think Fonrit may be the best place to find it, and only the fact that they do have horses keeps it from being worse.
David Dunham <mailto:dunham_at_pensee.com> Glorantha/RQ page: <http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html> Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein
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