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So they've gone after Dark Reign?

They've gone bat gak insane.

I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

M.

Kilkrazy wrote:Many entertainment companies have eagerly embraced the Internet as a means of two-way communication with fans, building supportive communities around their brand, providing User Generated Content (which costs the company nothing and enhances its offerings.)

This failure to communicate is their largest problem, regardless of the current spree of alleged legal threats. They simply don't have any desire to talk to the community as people, and even less so to listen.

Agamemnon2 wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Many entertainment companies have eagerly embraced the Internet as a means of two-way communication with fans, building supportive communities around their brand, providing User Generated Content (which costs the company nothing and enhances its offerings.)

This failure to communicate is their largest problem, regardless of the current spree of alleged legal threats. They simply don't have any desire to talk to the community as people, and even less so to listen.

And that arrogant detachment, coupled with their pricing greed, is why I will be exploring PDF possibilities, alternative miniatures companies, second hand minis and other games.

I urge my fellow dakkites to express your ire with your green. Source your armies from other places, other companies and second hand.

Let them go without your money for a while.

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

See the "Streisand Effect".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Balance wrote:

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

That makes sense, really.

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

M.

What, that they were too lazy to remove a trademark that doesn't belong to them from the website URL?

I can't say I'm surprised that they did this at this point in time, though. The Blood Bowl game makes it 'important' for GW to throw their weight around and ensure that people know that those sites aren't official.

Again, it's the wrong way to do it but the webmasters aren't blameless in this either.

Kanluwen wrote:

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

M.

What, that they were too lazy to remove a trademark that doesn't belong to them from the website URL?

I can't say I'm surprised that they did this at this point in time, though. The Blood Bowl game makes it 'important' for GW to throw their weight around and ensure that people know that those sites aren't official.

Again, it's the wrong way to do it but the webmasters aren't blameless in this either.

Your confusing resigned with lazy.

If you created a website for fans of a game as a community, since the creators of the game had given up on supporting it and then...After 9 years... you received a letter from the corporation telling you if you didn't comply with X, Y and Z they would shut you down, then I think it's fairly understandable to sigh and fold, how much enthusiasm for the game could you sum up after the makers behaved like such total witches.

daedalus wrote:

R3con wrote:GWS please bring it, I'll shut down my small club forums when

1) I have a court order from a court who has jurisdiction over my servers.

2) They buy it from me..

www.mi40k.com

Won't even take that much. The term "40k" is a registered trademark of Games Workshop LLC, and as a result of you using it to discuss miniatures, you are causing confusion on who and what the term is supposed to denote, and as such dilluting GW's brand power. As a result you have to take down any and all content related to wargaming, miniatures, or LotR. You can have the domain though, but you are limited to using it for things not related to wargaming, including war, gaming, space, mechs, guns, humans, or aliens.

See how easy that was?

See how easy what is, I have no certified letter from the 53rd district court so I could care less...and I am the ISP.

Via Tabletop Gaming News...

linky

Fans of Blood Bowl once again can enjoy the wild and wooly nature of the now closed TalkBloodBowl forum at its new domain name; http://talkfantasyfootball.org/

..might want to change the logo on the top there though eh ?

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

M.

What, that they were too lazy to remove a trademark that doesn't belong to them from the website URL?

I can't say I'm surprised that they did this at this point in time, though. The Blood Bowl game makes it 'important' for GW to throw their weight around and ensure that people know that those sites aren't official.

Again, it's the wrong way to do it but the webmasters aren't blameless in this either.

Your confusing resigned with lazy.

If you created a website for fans of a game as a community, since the creators of the game had given up on supporting it and then...After 9 years... you received a letter from the corporation telling you if you didn't comply with X, Y and Z they would shut you down, then I think it's fairly understandable to sigh and fold, how much enthusiasm for the game could you sum up after the makers behaved like such total witches.

And if you created that website with a trademarked name, deep linked to articles/content from the site, and basically did everything possible to restrict your actual involvement--yet still asked for donations?

I'm okay with you getting shut down. I really am. You barely did anything in that regard, and ignored the fact that while getting away with it at the time--you used trademarked material, didn't credit it anywhere, and accepted money for it.

Kanluwen wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Miguelsan wrote:I say that the targeted fansites make it public. Like the Ralph Lauren photoshop disaster thing if this gets out of the gamer comunity and spreads GW will have to come to its senses if only because the shareholders might force the board to rein in the stupid C&D letters due to the amount of bad publicity generated.

M.

What, that they were too lazy to remove a trademark that doesn't belong to them from the website URL?

I can't say I'm surprised that they did this at this point in time, though. The Blood Bowl game makes it 'important' for GW to throw their weight around and ensure that people know that those sites aren't official.

Again, it's the wrong way to do it but the webmasters aren't blameless in this either.

Your confusing resigned with lazy.

If you created a website for fans of a game as a community, since the creators of the game had given up on supporting it and then...After 9 years... you received a letter from the corporation telling you if you didn't comply with X, Y and Z they would shut you down, then I think it's fairly understandable to sigh and fold, how much enthusiasm for the game could you sum up after the makers behaved like such total witches.

And if you created that website with a trademarked name, deep linked to articles/content from the site, and basically did everything possible to restrict your actual involvement--yet still asked for donations?

I'm okay with you getting shut down. I really am. You barely did anything in that regard, and ignored the fact that while getting away with it at the time--you used trademarked material, didn't credit it anywhere, and accepted money for it.

Some words to conjure with: HOBBY, COMMUNITY, FAN, CUSTOMER BASE, PUBLIC MUTHAFRELLING RELATIONS.

It's a fansite being told it can't mention in it's address what it is a fansite of... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

Donations are CLEARLY for the website and not for the continued production of the game.

There was no conflict of interests here and no danger to GW, they applied a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut. EVEN if they felt an overriding need to do all this, they could have sent a polite request to the owner instead of a threat.

A threat to a guy running a website designed to support their product as a hobby, because they had not done so.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

insaniak wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

Ah, well I'll concede that certainly, their website is entirely dedicated as a shopping facility and anything that slowed that might affect a sale...

Wonder if we'll see sites like 40k Radio getting letters next.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:Some words to conjure with: HOBBY, COMMUNITY, FAN, CUSTOMER BASE, PUBLIC MUTHAFRELLING RELATIONS.

It's a fansite being told it can't mention in it's address what it is a fansite of... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

Donations are CLEARLY for the website and not for the continued production of the game.

There was no conflict of interests here and no danger to GW, they applied a sledgehammer to crack a wallnut. EVEN if they felt an overriding need to do all this, they could have sent a polite request to the owner instead of a threat.

A threat to a guy running a website designed to support their product as a hobby, because they had not done so.

You see, your problem is that you have too much commen sense, which is probably why you don't run a corporation (I'm assuming).

insaniak wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

Its not unreasonable for a 9 year site that pretty much keept a dead game going and gave how many gold coins to GW? To leech... In fact who wants to bet that the money the site generated in GW behalf is SOOOOO huge that moaning about bandwidth pennies is silly!
Thats the big picture GW seems to be ignoring IMO.

agnosto wrote:
You see, your problem is that you have too much commen sense, which is probably why you don't run a corporation (I'm assuming).

Nope, I don't run a corporation, I do adjudicate complaint cases for a large multinational financial company and ensure that it remains compliant with UK financial regulators.
The first thing we teach is that complaints are free feedback, that they can show you areas for potential process improvement.
Doing things like closing down your own forums, cutting back on your 'meet n greet' events days and then attacking fanmade forums with CnDs is only alienating and distancing yourself further, you lose communication with your customer base.

NAVARRO wrote:

insaniak wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

Its not unreasonable for a 9 year site that pretty much keept a dead game going and gave how many gold coins to GW? To leech... In fact who wants to bet that the money the site generated in GW behalf is SOOOOO huge that moaning about bandwidth pennies is silly!
Thats the big picture GW seems to be ignoring IMO.

And alot of people seem to be ignoring the much larger trademark and copywrite issues where GW has to basically "use it or lose it" the their Intellectual Property- Its not a case of being evil as some seem very vocal in saying, its more a case of protecting the IP that has been built up that would otherwise be lost and no-longer belong to GW. And since that is one of the things that kinda makes GW work, they probably don't want to lose that.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

agnosto wrote:
You see, your problem is that you have too much commen sense, which is probably why you don't run a corporation (I'm assuming).

Nope, I don't run a corporation, I do adjudicate complaint cases for a large multinational financial company and ensure that it remains compliant with UK financial regulators.
The first thing we teach is that complaints are free feedback, that they can show you areas for potential process improvement.
Doing things like closing down your own forums, cutting back on your 'meet n greet' events days and then attacking fanmade forums with CnDs is only alienating and distancing yourself further, you lose communication with your customer base.

Unless you're Apple, which GW seems to be trying to emulate in so many ways.

Bignutter wrote:
And alot of people seem to be ignoring the much larger trademark and copywrite issues where GW has to basically "use it or lose it" the their Intellectual Property- Its not a case of being evil as some seem very vocal in saying, its more a case of protecting the IP that has been built up that would otherwise be lost and no-longer belong to GW. And since that is one of the things that kinda makes GW work, they probably don't want to lose that.

Easily complied with if they asked the sites to carry a caveat clearly stating that they confirm that 'Blahbowl, x, y and z are all the intellectual property of GW PLC and this site in no way challenges that, this site is a fan operated/owned and is not a business or division of GW but has kindly been allowed to use the images and names by permission of the owners, GW etc etc blah blah'...

Piece of piss to set up, GW legal could have emailed the site owners, reached agreement and had that caveat up in a text box within minutes.

fething easy to do, instead they chose to issue hatemail. The manner in which GW has carried this out is terrible. There is a fundamental disconnect between the corporation and it's customerbase.

Wait, how the hell do we know that they DIDN'T send the mentioned sites things like that beforehand?

We only know that they received C&D letters. That's when we got informed.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Bignutter wrote:
And alot of people seem to be ignoring the much larger trademark and copywrite issues where GW has to basically "use it or lose it" the their Intellectual Property- Its not a case of being evil as some seem very vocal in saying, its more a case of protecting the IP that has been built up that would otherwise be lost and no-longer belong to GW. And since that is one of the things that kinda makes GW work, they probably don't want to lose that.

Easily complied with if they asked the sites to carry a caveat clearly stating that they confirm that 'Blahbowl, x, y and z are all the intellectual property of GW PLC and this site in no way challenges that, this site is a fan operated/owned and is not a business or division of GW but has kindly been allowed to use the images and names by permission of the owners, GW etc etc blah blah'...

Piece of to set up, GW legal could have emailed the site owners, reached agreement and had that caveat up in a text box within minutes.

easy to do, instead they chose to issue hatemail. The manner in which GW has carried this out is terrible. There is a fundamental disconnect between the corporation and it's customerbase.

And how do you know that they had not already done this?
Heck is that even enough to provide the protection for the IP when it is the URL in question?
I don't think that really is classed as hatemail- it wasn't being mean and nasty and didn't require swearing to get the message across- what was hateful about the notices or indeed the reply?

Is this just another excuse for some people to have a dig at GW showing they have a fundamental disconnect with how a corporation is run?

Bignutter wrote:
And how do you know that they had not already done this?

Fairly self evident given that would have been a reasonable request and several of the cited fansites would have immediately complied, they can't all have been hostile behind closed doors, this CnD was out of the blue and blanket mailed given the information presented so far.

Bignutter wrote:
Heck is that even enough to provide the protection for the IP when it is the URL in question?

Yes. In fact it would have provided additional supporting evidence if GW were ever challenged since the site fully recognised GW's rights of ownership and acknowledges publicly that it sought and was granted permission to use 'x,y and z' which supports the ownership of them.

Bignutter wrote:
I don't think that really is classed as hatemail- it wasn't being mean and nasty and didn't require swearing to get the message across- what was hateful about the notices or indeed the reply?

It threatened further action if not complied with, it.carried.a.threat.

Bignutter wrote:
Is this just another excuse for some people to have a dig at GW showing they have a fundamental disconnect with how a corporation is run?

Possibly, for those who don't, it is most certainly an example of how a corporation can be run poorly. I personally am very familiar with how a multinational corporation is run, I work in financial compliance and broker conflict resolution between corporations to ensure fair play is employed.

MGS, I thought the GW statement Reds8n quoted seemed pretty reasonable. If they did indeed give the site owners clear and simple instructions for alterations to make, it's really not so ogrish. Dakka manages to be successful while carefully adhering to those same guidelines.

NAVARRO wrote:Yet internet is GW only publicity tool, since they rely on word of mouth to spread the brand.

Not only they dont understand the internet but they are clearly against it... GW closed their forums and their answer to legit costumers debates and critics is to simply close down things...

Actually I think that was just a cost thing. Their forums were a godawful mess of unpleasant noise and spam. If it were my company I wouldn't want that spew to be seen on my website. And I don't think they could afford to pay a dedicated full-time moderation team.

Bignutter wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:

insaniak wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

Its not unreasonable for a 9 year site that pretty much keept a dead game going and gave how many gold coins to GW? To leech... In fact who wants to bet that the money the site generated in GW behalf is SOOOOO huge that moaning about bandwidth pennies is silly!
Thats the big picture GW seems to be ignoring IMO.

And alot of people seem to be ignoring the much larger trademark and copywrite issues where GW has to basically "use it or lose it" the their Intellectual Property- Its not a case of being evil as some seem very vocal in saying, its more a case of protecting the IP that has been built up that would otherwise be lost and no-longer belong to GW. And since that is one of the things that kinda makes GW work, they probably don't want to lose that.

you mean like how pretty much everything that GW has ever written is available through various soruces for free?

oops

Bignutter wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:

insaniak wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:... That it can't use images of the game it was set up TO PROMOTE.

From what's been posted so far, GW aren't saying that fansites can't use images of the game. They're just saying that fansites can't hotlink images from the GW website.

Whatever you think of the rest of this sorry mess, it's not unreasonable for a company to object to people leeching their bandwidth.

Its not unreasonable for a 9 year site that pretty much keept a dead game going and gave how many gold coins to GW? To leech... In fact who wants to bet that the money the site generated in GW behalf is SOOOOO huge that moaning about bandwidth pennies is silly!
Thats the big picture GW seems to be ignoring IMO.

And alot of people seem to be ignoring the much larger trademark and copywrite issues where GW has to basically "use it or lose it" the their Intellectual Property- Its not a case of being evil as some seem very vocal in saying, its more a case of protecting the IP that has been built up that would otherwise be lost and no-longer belong to GW. And since that is one of the things that kinda makes GW work, they probably don't want to lose that.

And you keep missing what I'm trying to say mate...
If it wasnt for these BB sites there would be nothing relevant to protect besides a name no one would care about. Thats the real deal.
Any smart corp would get all the free publicity they can get, not the other way around... Instead of antagonizing people why not show some apreciation and say give some t-shirts or someting...
What do BB fans and people that worked for years from their pockets, just to keep things runing, have to say about GW now? Ungratefull and rude corp.

If they only used a bit of brains instead of just hunting and closing down fansites they would offer something back and ask if they could change name yadadada... People would do that and even say thanks for free merchandising...

NAVARRO wrote:If it wasnt for these BB sites there would be nothing relevant to protect besides a name no one would care about. Thats the real deal.
Any smart corp would get all the free publicity they can get, not the other way around... Instead of antagonizing people why not show some apreciation and say give some t-shirts or someting...
What do BB fans and people that worked for years from their pockets, just to keep things runing, have to say about GW now? Ungratefull and rude corp.

See, here's the thing, though...

Yes, you can argue that these Bloodbowl sites have 'kept the game alive'... Although if it was a game that GW weren't interested in actively supporting in its miniatures-based format any more, that's not really doing so much for GW. Particularly if that same site is (as was apparently the case with at least one of these sites) promoting other companies' miniatures for use with the game.

The computer game is going to be targeted at a different crowd entirely. I frankly doubt that the existence or lack thereof of a few fansites dedicated to the original miniatures game would really have any noticable effect on the sales of the computer game.


On a related note, though... GW have had their legal policies up for as long as they've had a website. The bit about not including GW-owned trademarks in your domain name has likewise been there for as long as I can remember.

If your neighbour has a sign asking people to keep off his grass, and you walk across his front lawn to take him his mail, is he being unreasonable to be grumpy about you trampling his lawn, because you did him a favour?


To be clear: I'm not arguing the fact that GW appear to have been a little heavy-handed about the whole thing. Nor am I arguing the legality of any of GW's claims... that's for lawyers to sort out. But the fact is that these sites ignored GW's stated rules, and now GW is complaining about it. On the surface, that in itself doesn't seem that unreasonable. The fact that they're only complaining about it now that they are interested in marketing that particular property in one form or another is really their option as the owner of that property.

Am I the only one to think that some DakkaDakka members are missing the point of some the posts in this debate? From what I've read, nobody is saying that GW are in the wrong for wanting to protect their Trademarks or IP.

The anger and confusion is about how they've gone about it and what they want done to fix it. If MGS is correct, and my feeling is he is due to other legal comments made, then a simple disclaimer provided by GW would of covered the whole IP mess. If the affected websites had been given this chance and not taken it, then a C&D order is a valid follow up. Bandwidth stealing is a seperate issue.

It would seem to me that either GW's legal team is 100% right over the IP issue (various comments make me think that they might not be), they don't really know and are being paranoid / over the top, it could be that they are getting ear ache from 3rd parties who are being paranoid / feel threatened or it simply could be GW having a control freak moment (is that really likely, given it's a handful of sites?)

Yes, "how it's done" is at least as important as "why it's done."

But the "why" isn't totally clear, either. I'm not sure how sites like Bloodbowl and Dark Heresy are hurting GW. I think that's what most people who hear about this think of right of the bat and then they get angry, right? We could defend GW by saying "it doesn't matter why the do what they do with their IP, it's theirs and that's reason enough" but that hardly going to deal with the anger. And that anger is just fanned by the attitude people can (and are) assuming GW takes: "We don't care if you're angry."

Wolfstan wrote:It could be that they are getting ear ache from 3rd parties who are being paranoid / feel threatened or it simply could be GW having a control freak moment (is that really likely, given it's a handful of sites?)

Legal teams are answerable to MDs who are not legal eagles. I have certainly seen with my own eyes threats and hostile stances taken by companies on the orders of overzealous and poorly informed company directors instead of considering taking the less conflict intensive paths. Too many directors see their legal team as a sword to be swung at people instead of a scalpel to perform careful surgery that can help both doctor and patient.

A clearly written caveat, legally watertight, posted on the website's front page, would have alleviated the problem. Instead they applied their jackboots to it. As I mentioned in a previous post, such a written statement, showing the site's recognition of GW's ownership of IP and GW demonstrating their benevolence to anyone who 'asked nicely and didn't present a threat' would even have supported GW's ownership for any future REAL conflict over ownership.

Taking an open and willing path to conflict resolution would have been the honourable thing, the demonstration of professionalism by the corporation and clearly showing a care for their customer base.
Instead we, the wargaming community got crass, arrogant and bullying. They really don't deserve your money whilst they consider you not the customer but more akin to a serf to be dictated to.