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Niccolo wrote:
GW could salvage this. Say that they felt obligated to officially complain, and they dindt mean for the whole sites to get blown up. Make a backroom deal with Natfka and BoLS that if they do less of the stuff they don't like, they would help them do more stuff they do like. I think what upsets so many is that we would all want, or at least understand, if this were to happen, but with GW, we know it won't. They can make any situation a bad one.

The thing that things like this always drive home to me is how much of the content we use on a daily basis is under a Google label. Throw in how much business is done through Amazon and its associated brands. That is so much traffic, information,and commerce that relies on just a few companies, especially for ones not always know as bright bastions of benevolence and bravery.

Why would GW do this? They've already shown that they will blindly pursue cases where they are clearly in the wrong simply in the hopes of bullying the "offender" into backing off. The *only* time they've "backed down" was when a group with much much deeper pockets than them (EFF) threatened action and they realized the expense of pursuing it. There will not be a "backroom deal" here and GW will not "help them" in any way shape or form. That's not how they work. Given that BoLS and Natfka serve a very limited market this is unlikely to garner the type of press necessary to bring the big guys in to help.

I'm not on GW's side, nor am I on Natfka/BoLS. I think GWs stance here is moronic but is certainly understandable given their wider "marketing" crap. Natfka crossed the line many many times and I have no doubt that people have lost their jobs simply due to leaking information they shouldn't have; right or wrong that is sad in and of itself. BoLS is collateral damage (guilt by association) and will likely return within another day or two.

Does this impact me? Not too much yet. I rarely visited Natfka's blog and couldn't care less about the elves release. I did visit BoLS daily, but I'm sure I'll survive until they are back online. As a GW gamer, I'm disappointed. But no more so than I have been given their normal operations. In short, this behavior is expected so don't be surprised when it continues to happen.

Right of reply!

 Janthkin wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The blog is based in the US and a US law, the DMCA was used against it.

The problem with this is that the DMCA does not protect magazines, so it cannot legally be used. The GW legal people have technically perjured themselves by invoking the DMCA.

The second problem is that normal copyright does not prevent people from using pieces of material for the purpose of reporting news, comment, review and so on. This is called "fair dealing" or "fair use".

The use by the blog could be said to fall into the category of "fair dealing".

I don't know if there is a law that would enable a company to prevent a private individual from showing low quality pictures of stuff. GW could of course avoid this happening very easily by doing what most other companies do and releasing high quality information and pictures in a timely way as part of a marketing strategy.

"Fair Use" is a general defense to copyright infringement allegations. However, the DMCA created a new category of copyright issues, which don't map cleanly into traditional "fair use" space - basically, there are activities forbidden by the DMCA that would likely have been permissible under traditional copyright law.

Also, "fair use" is an assertive defense against allegations of copyright infringement, and involves weighing a number of factors. While newsworthiness and/or critique may factor into a fair use analysis, so too do questions like "how much of the copyrighted work was reproduced," and "is this a commercial use?" If your site has ads, and posting leaked pages from WD drives traffic to your site, it's hard to argue against commercial use.

That said, we still don't have definitive statements about what's going on with BoLS. Coincidence or conspiracy?

When it comes to fair use, commercial use and copyrights, much leeway is granted to journalistic enterprises...the courts are very careful in making sure that a statutory law do not overreach and limit a constitutional right. Since most news and review is commercial in nature, the courts weigh that as less important than they might weigh it in a regular case...say using music as a background for kittens wrestling on YouTube.

Regarding the fair use issues and the DMCA, that was largely rectified when the FAIR Act was passed (2007...IIRC). It ammended the DMCA to include traditional fair use exemptions, some feel that they extend even further than the regular ones too. I linked to (or quoted) the pertinent section 7 or 8 pages ago now I guess. The FAIR Act goes through and restates those exemptions that some had argued were stripped by the DMCA. It has already been applied in courts as well, which provides case law that can be drawn upon that show comparisons to this situation.

Also, just a point of clarity. While the DMCA does not apply to magazines in general, when you take a picture of a magazine and upload it to a website...the DMCA then comes into play. So, while the actual use of the DMCA in this case was wrong (for reasons stated previously) it is in fact the proper tool for the job...if, for example they were dealing with someone who was scanning full rulebooks or otherwise involved in pirating GW products.

BoLS seems to be back up again: http://www.belloflostsouls.net/

If not, remember to clear your cache.

EDIT:

A mod on their lounge also mentions this: http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?31206-BOLS-frontpage-and-Faeit-gone/page20

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Noone steps on a church in my town.

Stepping on churches is a bad idea anyway - they're pointy!

The Auld Grump, why, no, I've never gone rampaging through a model village.... why do you ask?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
When it comes to fair use, commercial use and copyrights, much leeway is granted to journalistic enterprises...the courts are very careful in making sure that a statutory law do not overreach and limit a constitutional right. Since most news and review is commercial in nature, the courts weigh that as less important than they might weigh it in a regular case...say using music as a background for kittens wrestling on YouTube.

You still have to deal with the amount copied. A critic's review of a new book doesn't have to reprint significant portions of the book; a "news" post announcing the contents of next month's White Dwarf doesn't need to post pictures of every page.

Regarding the fair use issues and the DMCA, that was largely rectified when the FAIR Act was passed (2007...IIRC). It ammended the DMCA to include traditional fair use exemptions, some feel that they extend even further than the regular ones too. I linked to (or quoted) the pertinent section 7 or 8 pages ago now I guess. The FAIR Act goes through and restates those exemptions that some had argued were stripped by the DMCA. It has already been applied in courts as well, which provides case law that can be drawn upon that show comparisons to this situation.

We'll have to agree to disagree on how much the FAIR Act actually fixed.

Also, just a point of clarity. While the DMCA does not apply to magazines in general, when you take a picture of a magazine and upload it to a website...the DMCA then comes into play. So, while the actual use of the DMCA in this case was wrong (for reasons stated previously) it is in fact the proper tool for the job...if, for example they were dealing with someone who was scanning full rulebooks or otherwise involved in pirating GW products.

I'm not sold on how "wrong" a DMCA request was in this case. The portion you cite to addresses anti-circumvention, and exceptions to the restrictions on anti-circumvention, which certainly isn't at issue here ("Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures").

Could Faeit make an argument that it's journalistic fair use? Sure. But fair use is an affirmative defense; just because Faeit could claim it, doesn't mean that the copyright holder is "wrong" or that the DMCA request is illegal.

Well, glad to see BOLS is back up. It seems no one give concrete explanations of what actually happened.

 Gorlack wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
GW Board of Directors Found Murdered.
GW Stock Leaps 75% on NYSE....

The Auld Grump

Dakka finally arrived at the final station of the Hate-Train: Murder City.

Congratulations on wishing the deaths of complete strangers - a classy move indeed.

[Que Godfather Theme]
They shoulda listened to Tony.

He tried to tell him 'Kirby, all you gots to do is pay a little money, to ensure... safe operations.'

But Kirby? He don't listen too good.

Besides, it wasn't murder, it was... a series of unfortunate accidents.

Involving machine guns and explosives.

But, hey, they're in the wargaming business, right?

They shoulda been more careful with their stock. Who knew that someone might accidentally leave a Meltabomb under Kirby's chair?

The Auld Grump, just when they thought I was out....

BigRed (owner of BoLS) just posted this on the BoLS lounge:

UPDATE:

We are back up and running - full steam ahead! We are working with google to determine exactly what occurred over the last 24 hours with the BoLS frontpage, but I would like to clear up a couple of things for the record:

1) BoLS was never targeted by any DMCA, IP, or any other violation notices. While other 3rd party sites on blogger may or may not have been targeted by Games Workshop and/or Google, BoLS never was.

2) We take our security and availability seriously. Steps are being taken to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again. BoLS job is to provide you with wargaming news, opinion, and entertainment day in and day out - and we will do exactly that.

On a personal note, I would like to thank each and every one of you who showed up during the frontpage outage and got to see and explore the BoLS Lounge. We are very proud of our great wargaming forum community and hope many of you return.

Look for regular posts, columns and commenting as usual on the frontpage as of now.

Best regards and my deepest thanks,

-Larry Vela

Link here: http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?31206-BOLS-frontpage-and-Faeit-gone&p=301175&viewfull=1#post301175

So... This is strange. I don't think BigRed is lying, but it is a freaky coincidence that two large 40k fokused blogs go down on the same day without any other blogs being affected... Strange indeed...

@Auld Grump

I smiled when I read that cheers to you.

And games workshop main website was also down till bols came back mins ago

Akirakill wrote:
And games workshop main website was also down till bols came back mins ago

Perhaps their legal department served a DMCA request to the Games Workshop site administrator, fulfilling their unwavering ouroboros-like appetite.

 Janthkin wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
When it comes to fair use, commercial use and copyrights, much leeway is granted to journalistic enterprises...the courts are very careful in making sure that a statutory law do not overreach and limit a constitutional right. Since most news and review is commercial in nature, the courts weigh that as less important than they might weigh it in a regular case...say using music as a background for kittens wrestling on YouTube.

You still have to deal with the amount copied. A critic's review of a new book doesn't have to reprint significant portions of the book; a "news" post announcing the contents of next month's White Dwarf doesn't need to post pictures of every page.

Regarding the fair use issues and the DMCA, that was largely rectified when the FAIR Act was passed (2007...IIRC). It ammended the DMCA to include traditional fair use exemptions, some feel that they extend even further than the regular ones too. I linked to (or quoted) the pertinent section 7 or 8 pages ago now I guess. The FAIR Act goes through and restates those exemptions that some had argued were stripped by the DMCA. It has already been applied in courts as well, which provides case law that can be drawn upon that show comparisons to this situation.

We'll have to agree to disagree on how much the FAIR Act actually fixed.

Also, just a point of clarity. While the DMCA does not apply to magazines in general, when you take a picture of a magazine and upload it to a website...the DMCA then comes into play. So, while the actual use of the DMCA in this case was 8wrong (for reasons stated previously) it is in fact the proper tool for the job...if, for example they were dealing with someone who was scanning full rulebooks or otherwise involved in pirating GW products.

I'm not sold on how "wrong" a DMCA request was in this case. The portion you cite to addresses anti-circumvention, and exceptions to the restrictions on anti-circumvention, which certainly isn't at issue here ("Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures").

Could Faeit make an argument that it's journalistic fair use? Sure. But fair use is an affirmative defense; just because Faeit could claim it, doesn't mean that the copyright holder is "wrong" or that the DMCA request is illegal.

It is true that the ammount posted matters, but so does the nature of what is posted. Because the majority of information is information that GW subsequently makes available for free on their website, that is a mitigating circumstance. Since, by all accounts, the first 10-20 pages of each WD are copies of the images from the GW website, if that is the core of the copying...it is not likely to be judged as beyond the scope of "news" as the news in question would be what new releases are coming, and more impotantly what they look like.

Regarding the FAIR Act, most likely there will be disagreements on how much it fixed or did not fix the DMCA. However, it did restate fair use in regards to the DMCA and related filings.

The crux of the issue really ends up being can this be considered journalism and would that it might be journalism impact whether or not GW would be guilty of illegally using the DMCA. For this, the laws matter, but so does the case law. In particular, you have the OPG v. Diebold case. In that case, OPG published large portions of the email archive from Diebold regarding their voting machines, without any commentary at all.

That applies here for several reasons. First, the issue of public interest was addressed. While a company has a copyright, the public has a right to know things as well. In particular when dealing with consumer products, new and upcoming releases inform consumers and allow them to make decisions on what they might purchase, when and from whom. The second issue addressed is the sworn statements. The court used the simple legal definitions of the takedown notices sworn statements. In particular the issue of "knowingly" and "materially" misrepresenting their sworn statement as defined in 512f of the DMCA. Because the statements are effectively swearing that their is no reasonable defense to the use of a copyrighted material, if their is a question of a fair use exemption, that violates the knowing aspect of the clause. Materially is defined as the actual misrepresentations made to Google regarding the nature of the materials copied.

Like in the Diebold case where they claimed the right of first publication...the first publication of the images in question are not normally the White Dwarf magazine...rather the website. The claim though implies that the leaked images are of significant value to the magazine itself which is a misrepresentation of material facts.

All of those factors would likely lead to the same outcome as the OPG case. The court would likely find that GW violated section 512(f) and would have to pay the legal fees.

 AgeOfEgos wrote:

Akirakill wrote:
And games workshop main website was also down till bols came back mins ago

Perhaps their legal department served a DMCA request to the Games Workshop site administrator, fulfilling their unwavering ouroboros-like appetite.

The schadenfreud in me hopes that someday happens.

And yet, I'd feel sorry for the website operator, who is probably hamstrung in what they can actually do.

Okay.

First off, a serious mistake people keep making is laying every decision made at the feet of this 'GW'. GW this, GW that, GW is terrible, blah blah blah.

Games Workshop isn't some monolithic hive mind, it was originally a small gaming company of a few 20-somethings in a basement that ballooned into a much bigger business employing thousands of individual human beings all doing very normal human things like being stupid, short-sighted, greedy, and selfish.

So with that where everyone can see it, who exactly at Games Workshop is hurt by an internet site showing pictures from an upcoming issue of White Dwarf? Hmm.

Exactly, the people at GW who run White Dwarf magazine, that overpriced dinosaur around which a large number of concessions have already been made at their company. I'm gonna say it's pretty much a 90% chance that this entire dumb situation is the fault of someone or a small group whose paycheck and position at Games Workshop is entirely dependent on the success of this magazine, and who feel threatened by these newfangled 'internet picture shows' cutting into their relevance.

I'd reckon that half the management at GW has no idea any of this is even happening. Some executive is scratching his head at numbers and wondering why people aren't buying kit #13253, then sending a junior executive to find out what's up (who has his own agenda and plans to stay relevant). Does anyone know how well the various parts of the company even communicate? From what has been written about Games Workshop and the way they do business, for all intents and purposes they seem to have the communicative network of a 1970's startup gaming company crawling out of the basement, with the employees, responsibilities and profit margin of a modern successful company.

GW is many things. Incompetent, archaic, double-minded. But don't make them out to be some sort of Collective seeking the Death of Fun.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
It is true that the ammount posted matters, but so does the nature of what is posted. Because the majority of information is information that GW subsequently makes available for free on their website, that is a mitigating circumstance. Since, by all accounts, the first 10-20 pages of each WD are copies of the images from the GW website, if that is the core of the copying...it is not likely to be judged as beyond the scope of "news" as the news in question would be what new releases are coming, and more impotantly what they look like.

We can go back on forth on this one for a while, I think. Given that the only source for those images was the (as-yet-unpublished) WD, regardless of what eventually shows up on the website, copying them in their entirety is going to start affecting the market for the original (another of the Fair Use criteria). If they were already published on the website & freely available, it changes the facts & possibly the outcome.

Regarding the FAIR Act, most likely there will be disagreements on how much it fixed or did not fix the DMCA. However, it did restate fair use in regards to the DMCA and related filings.

It added some fair use exceptions to the "no cirumvention" restrictions (e.g., a teacher can use circumvention technologies to access protected content that they could otherwise make fair use of), but it left a gaping hole - there's no legal way for the teacher to GET those circumvention technologies, as it's still illegal for anyone else to "traffic" in them.

The crux of the issue really ends up being can this be considered journalism and would that it might be journalism impact whether or not GW would be guilty of illegally using the DMCA. For this, the laws matter, but so does the case law. In particular, you have the OPG v. Diebold case. In that case, OPG published large portions of the email archive from Diebold regarding their voting machines, without any commentary at all.

That applies here for several reasons. First, the issue of public interest was addressed. While a company has a copyright, the public has a right to know things as well. In particular when dealing with consumer products, new and upcoming releases inform consumers and allow them to make decisions on what they might purchase, when and from whom. The second issue addressed is the sworn statements. The court used the simple legal definitions of the takedown notices sworn statements. In particular the issue of "knowingly" and "materially" misrepresenting their sworn statement as defined in 512f of the DMCA. Because the statements are effectively swearing that their is no reasonable defense to the use of a copyrighted material, if their is a question of a fair use exemption, that violates the knowing aspect of the clause. Materially is defined as the actual misrepresentations made to Google regarding the nature of the materials copied.

Like in the Diebold case where they claimed the right of first publication...the first publication of the images in question are not normally the White Dwarf magazine...rather the website. The claim though implies that the leaked images are of significant value to the magazine itself which is a misrepresentation of material facts.

All of those factors would likely lead to the same outcome as the OPG case. The court would likely find that GW violated section 512(f) and would have to pay the legal fees.

I draw a factual distinction between "emails relating to the security of voting" and "beating the official announcements of new toys." The former is likely going to get more protection than the latter. (Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.) Also, the OPG court's reasoning doesn't seem to apply here:

OPGvDiebold wrote:No reasonable copyright holder could have believed that the portions of the email archive discussing possible technical problems with Diebold's voting machines were protected by copyright,

as we're talking about photographs, which are definitely copyrighted material, rather than technical details, which often aren't.

 Farseer Faenyin wrote:

 Timmy149 wrote:
OT: Wow. only a few hours and this thread already has 10 pages!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

Really, these sites really hype up GW products and I’m sure help sales. IMO I would go as far as massively helping sales - In the case of Tau how many less pre-orders would there have been if people didn't hear rumors about how good/ bad they could be? I would not preorder a expensive model with no idea on potential (Unless it looked really awesome).

Exactly. Faeit/rumour blogs actually HELP geedubbs. Without them, few people buy their new releases

As much as I am NOT siding with GW in this situation, their reasoning might sounds something like:

"We have lost the sales of old models for the (Insert Infringed Army Here) because somebody leaked that new models were on the way and provided hard evidence. Because of this, we lost $X of average models sales for this range. We need to shut it down!"

GW has a terribly bad habit of not thinking long term, as shareholders do not care about long term gains if it means short term losses.

Thats point that most people are making. They seem to think only about their short term profits rather than their long-term profits.

In other words, they're a corporation.

Actually, more like they have a modern western CEO.

 Civik wrote:
Actually, more like they have a modern western CEO.

Same thing, nine times out of ten.

 Civik wrote:
Actually, more like they have a modern western CEO.

If it was a western CEO all production would be in China right now instead of England.

 Badablack wrote:
Exactly, the people at GW who run White Dwarf magazine, that overpriced dinosaur around which a large number of concessions have already been made at their company. I'm gonna say it's pretty much a 90% chance that this entire dumb situation is the fault of someone or a small group whose paycheck and position at Games Workshop is entirely dependent on the success of this magazine, and who feel threatened by these newfangled 'internet picture shows' cutting into their relevance.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. Bravo.

I don't think it's a matter of short term profits versus long term profits, more a matter of traditionalism, vanity, holding to a status quo and preserving in still life a "magazine" that for the good of the company shouldn't have survived into the 2010s.

 Janthkin wrote:
(Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.)

I think it's absolutely clear-cut. Nobody buys WD to get access to the same pictures they can get for free from GW's own website, so there's no plausible impact on WD sales. The only possible case for commercial harm would be that seeing a preview before release day might hinder impulse buys as people realize they don't really want what GW is selling if they're given a week to think about it, but good luck making the "our product sucks, we can only get people to buy it if they don't know what they're about to buy" argument in court.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Janthkin wrote:
(Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.)

I think it's absolutely clear-cut. Nobody buys WD to get access to the same pictures they can get for free from GW's own website, so there's no plausible impact on WD sales. The only possible case for commercial harm would be that seeing a preview before release day might hinder impulse buys as people realize they don't really want what GW is selling if they're given a week to think about it, but good luck making the "our product sucks, we can only get people to buy it if they don't know what they're about to buy" argument in court.

People buying WD has nothing to do with the takedown of Faeit.

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:

 Badablack wrote:
Exactly, the people at GW who run White Dwarf magazine, that overpriced dinosaur around which a large number of concessions have already been made at their company. I'm gonna say it's pretty much a 90% chance that this entire dumb situation is the fault of someone or a small group whose paycheck and position at Games Workshop is entirely dependent on the success of this magazine, and who feel threatened by these newfangled 'internet picture shows' cutting into their relevance.

This pretty much sums up my thoughts on the matter. Bravo.

I don't think it's a matter of short term profits versus long term profits, more a matter of traditionalism, vanity, holding to a status quo and preserving in still life a "magazine" that for the good of the company shouldn't have survived into the 2010s.

I disagree, if other companies miniatures were featured, and it used advertising as part of its revenue stream, it would still be a successful magazine, the issue is that its focus is too narrow for todays wargaming market.

 CaptainLoken wrote:
Holy cow....

GW is evil/greedy/stupid/mean/crazy/insert other complaint....

All of this hate and venom...on a FAN SITE!

I know that I’m in the minority here, but I just have to say this…people have been ripping off GW for years, and try in every way to do it every day…

No? How about all of the “bitz makers”? Don’t think that they should be punished for making Shoulder Pads that “GW doesn’t make”?

They are ILLEGALLY using someone else’s COPYWRITTEN material to make money. Guess what? THAT’S ILLEGAL.

How about putting COPYWRITTEN material up without the owner’s CONSENT? Guess what? THAT’S ILLEGAL.

All of you twits can whine and moan all you like, but the truth is GW is the biggest player out there, so everyone tries to take everything that they can out of them.

I know that some of their directions/policies don’t make sense to us…but guess what? YOU ARE NOT IN THE BOARD ROOM. YOU DON’T KNOW WHY THEY ARE DOING WHAT THEY DO.

You can guess. You can assume. You can use your sources/diploma/insider information/magic to try and understand what GW does, but unless you are IN THE BOARD ROOM when these policies are determined, all you are doing is shooting your mouth off about something that you know nothing about.

So, if you want to “spend your money” on something else, then go do it. PLEASE, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. I, for one, am so SICK AND TIRED of reading nothing but “GW IS EVIL” posts on a FAN SITE. I might as well go get my daily fix of 40K stuff on PRIVATEER PRESS’ website, for all the hate and complaining I see here.

Ironically, you only capitalized the parts of your argument that were incorrect.

All I'll say that COPYRIGHT is the right to copy a work.

A COPY WRITER is someone who writes blurbs of text to communicate an idea, usually for advertising purposes.

A job I had once forbade us from accessing the Internet for the purposes of downloading copywritten material. The head of IT got a pretty embarrassing scolding from Legal when I pointed out in front of a large annual orientation group that the new policy made seeing Ads online a terminal offense but promised no repercussions for the otherwise illegal streaming of movies. Even if they had corrected Copywritten Copyrighted (not even a real word) they would've made it so you could be fired for looking at anything at all on the Internet as, according to the US IP law, you own the copyright to any written work the moment you write it down, making pretty much all of the Internet copyrighted (still not a real word) by someone.

This is funny....

 Timmy149 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Janthkin wrote:
(Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.)

I think it's absolutely clear-cut. Nobody buys WD to get access to the same pictures they can get for free from GW's own website, so there's no plausible impact on WD sales. The only possible case for commercial harm would be that seeing a preview before release day might hinder impulse buys as people realize they don't really want what GW is selling if they're given a week to think about it, but good luck making the "our product sucks, we can only get people to buy it if they don't know what they're about to buy" argument in court.

People buying WD has nothing to do with the takedown of Faeit.

That's exactly the point. The post I quoted was saying that it's up for debate whether or not GW would be able to demonstrate financial harm from posting the WD scans, since a key element of the "you can post this" precedent case was that no financial harm was done. And my point was that GW can't demonstrate financial harm because the released material wasn't something that anyone was going to buy.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Timmy149 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Janthkin wrote:
(Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.)

I think it's absolutely clear-cut. Nobody buys WD to get access to the same pictures they can get for free from GW's own website, so there's no plausible impact on WD sales. The only possible case for commercial harm would be that seeing a preview before release day might hinder impulse buys as people realize they don't really want what GW is selling if they're given a week to think about it, but good luck making the "our product sucks, we can only get people to buy it if they don't know what they're about to buy" argument in court.

People buying WD has nothing to do with the takedown of Faeit.

That's exactly the point. The post I quoted was saying that it's up for debate whether or not GW would be able to demonstrate financial harm from posting the WD scans, since a key element of the "you can post this" precedent case was that no financial harm was done. And my point was that GW can't demonstrate financial harm because the released material wasn't something that anyone was going to buy.

In fact, Faeit releasing the WD pics was probably helpful to GW, the hype about the tau and all...

EDIT: BoLS going down is reputed to be a server outage, not a GW attack.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Janthkin wrote:
(Also, a good chunk of that case came down to a finding of "no commercial harm," something I don't think is as clear-cut in this case.)

I think it's absolutely clear-cut. Nobody buys WD to get access to the same pictures they can get for free from GW's own website, so there's no plausible impact on WD sales. The only possible case for commercial harm would be that seeing a preview before release day might hinder impulse buys as people realize they don't really want what GW is selling if they're given a week to think about it, but good luck making the "our product sucks, we can only get people to buy it if they don't know what they're about to buy" argument in court.

One element of the fair use analysis is "(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Now, we all may have opinions on the actual value of WD, but it's difficult to argue that if the entire magazine were scanned & posted online, in a location frequented by some portion of the likely audience for the magazine, that it would not have some impact on the potential market.

Obviously, it didn't usually rise to the level of posting the entire magazine, but it was certainly some portion. Which way would a court view that particular element, under these facts? Not sure; I just don't find it as open-and-shut as some of you seem to.

Hi Everyone,

First time poster here.

As a banking professional (sorry about the GFC guys, our fault we know) there MAY be some point to what GW is doing and they may even be obliged to do so.

As you would know GW is a publicly listed company. Although its relatively small, it still answers to shareholders. A part of that responsibility involves keeping their company's business private so that the shares are traded fairly on market.

Imagine a Mining Exploration company whose business was to find gold. Now lets say they found a substantial amount of gold in Africa somewhere. If someone was to leak that information onto the market before the company made an official announcement - the share price will shoot up due to all those people with access to that information buying the shares - in this case the people who read the equivalent of Faeit212 and BOLs in the mining world.

On a much smaller scale - lets say Faeit212 posted rumours (substantiated by leaked photos, etc) that SPESH MARINES was getting massive new releases, followed by a plastic thunderhawk, SOBs, etc in 3 consecutive months prior to the end of a financial year.

That has the same effect (on a much smaller scale) as someone leaking the "gold found" info for a mining company.

GW is obliged as a listed company to prevent that from happening...

Just food for thought.