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 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The problem I have is the following.

GW used the law with numerous C&D letters to shut up BOW, since fair use makes them ineffective and denying them the legal means to censor Beasts of War, they updated their contracts to specifically do what the law does not allow them to.

Is that unethical? yes it is, does it look to my eyes as means to sidestep law and achieve what the law is designed to prevent? yes, it does.

Maybe to a professional in the field it looks different, to me as an untrained individual it looks as what I describe above.

"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

 azreal13 wrote:
[

Just going to switch the hyperbole drive on a minute.....

Ah, yes, here we go...

Murder, rape, child abuse, arson, embezzlement, tax fraud, adultery and genocide are simply things that (some) people do.

That means we aren't allowed to be upset, angry or outraged by it?

Yes, we should indeed get upset by murder, child abuse, tax fraud and genocide. We should recognise that this is in a different category than charging too much for toy soldiers.

For the avoidance of doubt, GW has pulled some incompetent, exploitative tricks, in terms of attempting a retrospective copyright grab on freelance artists. But... controlling news about your own product, whether or not you agree with their reasoning, is completely ethical. As mentioned before, if BoW are going to publish, they need to read up on Fair Use (or, in UK terms, Fair Dealing), and stick to it - then they will always be able to tell GW where to stick it.

Other than this, this is really a non-story about a business contract.

Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
[

Just going to switch the hyperbole drive on a minute.....

Ah, yes, here we go...

Murder, rape, child abuse, arson, embezzlement, tax fraud, adultery and genocide are simply things that (some) people do.

That means we aren't allowed to be upset, angry or outraged by it?

Yes, we should indeed get upset by murder, child abuse, tax fraud and genocide. We should recognise that this is in a different category than charging too much for toy soldiers.

Not a different category at all, just a different order of magnitude. Murder is, of course,, a much worse thing than price gouging or heavy handed business practices, but the mechanism at work is the same, people are upset, perhaps outraged, by something they perceive as a "wrong" or an injustice. Just because it's somehow less "bad" doesn't invalidate people's reaction to it.

For the avoidance of doubt, GW has pulled some incompetent, exploitative tricks, in terms of attempting a retrospective copyright grab on freelance artists. But... controlling news about your own product, whether or not you agree with their reasoning, is completely ethical. As mentioned before, if BoW are going to publish, they need to read up on Fair Use (or, in UK terms, Fair Dealing), and stick to it - then they will always be able to tell GW where to stick it.

Other than this, this is really a non-story about a business contract.

They couldn't touch BoW through copyright law, precisely because they were sticking within the remit of the law, hence the manipulation of the trade terms to pressure Wayland. If you see this as ethical behaviour, rather than a futile, and ineffective, attempt to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted, found a nice horse, settled down and had a couple of foals, I can only conclude you were molested by a large company as a child and it has distorted your view of right and wrong...

EDIT I also can't help but notice you didn't address the self confessed more grounded part of my point in the post you quoted....

 Bull0 wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The problem I have is the following.

GW used the law with numerous C&D letters to shut up BOW, since fair use makes them ineffective and denying them the legal means to censor Beasts of War, they updated their contracts to specifically do what the law does not allow them to.

Is that unethical? yes it is, does it look to my eyes as means to sidestep law and achieve what the law is designed to prevent? yes, it does.

Maybe to a professional in the field it looks different, to me as an untrained individual it looks as what I describe above.

"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Precisely, what GW is doing falls into the category of "Being a dick," as I explained on page one.

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
[bafflingly compared GW's trade terms to genocide]

Those others things are all crimes.

We are talking about GW practices but yet we buy stuff from China where the labour laws are even worse, and still having child labour producing things. Buildings not made up to codex, where 100's die due to poor conditions, etc etc.

We all buy toys, clothes, electronic gadgets, tv's, cell phones, all made buy people who make less than $12 a day, 12 hours a day and yet we are outraged by GW instead.

Just flabbergasted.

Davor wrote:
We are talking about GW practices but yet we buy stuff from China where the labour laws are even worse, and still having child labour producing things. Buildings not made up to codex, where 100's die due to poor conditions, etc etc.

We all buy toys, clothes, electronic gadgets, tv's, cell phones, all made buy people who make less than $12 a day, 12 hours a day and yet we are outraged by GW instead.

Just flabbergasted.

Because somewhere somehow worse things happen, we should not complain when other things happen?

Or

Because we buy unavoidably things coming from the nation that has concentrated the vast majority of manufacturing we should not complain about anything?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

And what GW did was suppressing free press, in either case there is nothing illegal about the way they do it technically at least.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

And what GW did was suppressing free press, in either case there is nothing illegal about the way they do it technically at least.

Really? "Suppressing free press"?

Last I checked GW isn't a government--which is really the only entity which can "suppress free press".

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

Davor wrote:
We are talking about GW practices but yet we buy stuff from China where the labour laws are even worse, and still having child labour producing things. Buildings not made up to codex, where 100's die due to poor conditions, etc etc.

We all buy toys, clothes, electronic gadgets, tv's, cell phones, all made buy people who make less than $12 a day, 12 hours a day and yet we are outraged by GW instead.

Just flabbergasted.

Because somewhere somehow worse things happen, we should not complain when other things happen?

Or

Because we buy unavoidably things coming from the nation that has concentrated the vast majority of manufacturing we should not complain about anything?

No, just some people are acting like this happened all of a sudden or are high and might and was complaining about people complaining about GW standards.

Just guess tired of people complaining about people complaining about GW.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

And what GW did was suppressing free press, in either case there is nothing illegal about the way they do it technically at least.

Really? "Suppressing free press"?

Last I checked GW isn't a government--which is really the only entity which can "suppress free press".

BoW released information about GW, be it prereleases, comparing them to other stuff or anything GW didn't like it and flexed their legal muscle to make them stop, they were unable because press is legally protected.
Since they could not legally arm wrestle them to submission, they used their contracts and position in the market to suppress them.

Yes, I think it counts as suppressing the free press.

Won't somebody please think of the children! Help, help, I'm being suppressed!

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

Tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is the illegal one

 Baragash wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

Tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is the illegal one

You're right. I used both (tax minimisation's synonymous with tax avoidance, at least in the UK) because I'm no expert on tax law, and don't know whether or not the tactics described are legal.

 Bull0 wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

Tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is the illegal one

You're right. I used both (tax minimisation's synonymous with tax avoidance, at least in the UK) because I'm no expert on tax law, and don't know whether or not the tactics described are legal.

Let me cut this right back to what you originally said, you said "Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing.

You are wrong, sidestepping or working to bypass a law is entirely legal, it's why rich people hire skilled money advisers, to find the means to bypass or escape the laws via loopholes and chicanery.

Continuing to argue against that or pretend it's not what the poster was saying is pedantry.

 Bull0 wrote:
Won't somebody please think of the children! Help, help, I'm being suppressed!

What an infantile outburst

 loki old fart wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Won't somebody please think of the children! Help, help, I'm being suppressed!

What an infantile outburst

Surely you recognise the pattern, when you try to defend the indefensible, there is only one place ultimately to go?

 Bull0 wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:

 Daedleh wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
"Sidestepping the law" while continuing to act completely within the law isn't a thing. You don't like what they did; fine; neither do I, really. You're not actually adding anything to that with these sorts of bizarre claims.

Moving all profits off shore to avoid paying taxes is sidestepping tax law. Declaring that your wife (conveniently) lives in a country with extremely low income tax (despite her spending very little time there) and paying your entire salary to her out of the goodness of your heart is conveniently sidestepping income tax.

Sidestepping the law is a thing.

What you just described is tax evasion / tax minimisation.

Tax avoidance.

Tax evasion is the illegal one

You're right. I used both (tax minimisation's synonymous with tax avoidance, at least in the UK) because I'm no expert on tax law, and don't know whether or not the tactics described are legal.

You realise that it's the exact same thing right? Those with power can afford to sidestep the law and use other laws to dowhat they weren't originally intending. Tax leeches can't decide not to pay their taxes under regular law so use another law to get their way, using it in a way that wasn't originally intended.

GW can't shut down BoW using the law since what BoW doing constitutes free speech. So they use another law (contract law) to get their way.

Whether you think that what BoW was doing was "right" (hint: it was), GW had absolutely no grounds to shut them down for it. So they abused another law to get their way.

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Minis...