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 Nevelon wrote:
Or that you enjoy the product enough to keep your subscription.

I mean, yes, but the way they are structured is to catch people with that first surprise payment, and the hope that people forget.

Otherwise, like I mentioned earlier, they'd give an option for a non-recurring payment i.e. buy one month at a time. They specifically don't do that because it would lead to catching fewer people out. It's seedy.

If they really just wanted to offer you a free month, they'd just do that: offer you a free month. No credit card sign-up required.

The whole point of the "free trial" is to get your credit card data so they can keep billing you. It doesn't matter a bit to them whether they can keep billing you because you like it, or just because you forgot to cancel.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:
Or that you enjoy the product enough to keep your subscription.

I mean, yes, but the way they are structured is to catch people with that first surprise payment, and the hope that people forget.

I agree that’s a result, but I don’t think it’s the intent.

Just like they know that some people are going to game the system by signing up, entering the contest, and immediately canceling.

This is a marketing ploy to try to get people to look again at a product with a shaky initial launch. Some will stay, some will go. More eyes on the product is what they are after, with as much retention as they can muster.

No malice, just marketing.

(not that there isn’t some intrinsic overlap, but that’s just me being a little bit cynical)

The Newman wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Why does someone need a logical counterargument for piracy? You are literally breaking the law. It might be a law you don't like or don't agree with or whatever but still, you are breaking the law thus you are in the wrong.

All those arguements about 'no study suggesting that piracy harms sales' well guess what? Not worth a damn. If you ever get caught plead it to the court and see how far it gets you.

"When the law is sufficiently wrong, disobedience becomes duty."

I knew someone would pull the Robin Hood claim but in this case it doesn't stack up. Intellectual Property law could hardly be said to operate in a tyrannical way that justifies the theft of a creative work. Trying to pass yourself off as such just smacks of desperation.

You made the totalizing statement that doing something illegal automatically places you in the wrong. He refuted it. You can't really blame him for doing it in the most obvious and quick way.

Also, the whole reason we have IP laws is because it *isn't* theft. Theft involves depriving someone of their property, an element which cannot be met when there is no physical thing to be deprived of.

That doesn't mean that IP laws are moral or immoral, mind you. But it does mean that the metaphor is ill-advised. IP laws exist precisely because the appropriation of someone's idea is not something that would normally be recognized as problematic in the rest of our legal system.

GW can't go against Battlescribe for the same reason the recording company can't go against BitTorrent.

Copyright protect contents, and (correctly) doesn't impact on infrastructure that can be used also to infringe copyright.
That's the reason: I am sure that if GW had a legal hook will sue Battlescribe tomorrow first thing in the morning.

Well, they could try to go after the host of the databases if they really wanted to. It'd be a bit of a waste of time though, because at the very best all they'd accomplish is forcing them to shift the hosting to somewhere else.

It'd also be risky, because there's a non-zero chance that if it ever went to court, a judge would tell them they can't copyright information, and that because the BS databases are just relaying information, not actually copying the works, there's no violation. And they'd rather not have a case like that out there on the books.

The other factor is that Battlescribe generates far more in sales for GW than it costs, and GW is probably self-aware enough to realize that. GW seems to have mostly learned its lesson from the Chapterhouse debacle and moved away from a "sue the competition into the ground" strategy.

yukishiro1 wrote:
You made the totalizing statement that doing something illegal automatically places you in the wrong. He refuted it. You can't really blame him for doing it in the most obvious and quick way.

Also, the whole reason we have IP laws is because it *isn't* theft. Theft involves depriving someone of their property, an element which cannot be met when there is no physical thing to be deprived of.

That doesn't mean that IP laws are moral or immoral, mind you. But it does mean that the metaphor is ill-advised. IP laws exist precisely because the appropriation of someone's idea is not something that would normally be recognized as problematic in the rest of our legal system.

If you're breaking the law you are in the wrong. You might be justifiably in the wrong but you are still in the wrong in the eyes of the law. And yes, comparing illegally downloading copyrighted material to overthrowing some tyrannical regime is a nonsensical counter argument. Nobody who downloads protected content is fighting for any kind of greater good. They are stealing and you can wrap it up in whatever terminology you like but its as simple as that.

Nah, stealing's when I take something from you without your consent. You can't steal some summary data from a book. It'd be like stealing the table of contents. It's unauthorized copying and dissemination if it's anything. Long story short it really isn't as simple as you are making out. You're also using "in the wrong" and "in the wrong in the eyes of the law" interchangeably which is difficult/pointless to interface with

 AduroT wrote:

Danny76 wrote:
The real question is what models to I put in a list for a brand new army I don’t have, and what army do I pick..?
Idoneth? Behemat? Gitz? Maggotkin?
Or maybe a Guard army that doesn’t use any horrible/old Cadian troops..

I might be building a Necron list with the Silent King, Void Dragon, and a Monolith...

Yeah it’s gotta be a list with big pricy models in it!
But I need to pick something I don’t have any models for already, otherwise I’m wasting spots getting repeats or surplus..
Contemplate till end of year, list in, cancel app mid Jan after the last draw (just in case..), win!

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Nobody who downloads protected content is fighting for any kind of greater good. They are stealing and you can wrap it up in whatever terminology you like but its as simple as that.

1) Using Battlescribe isn't "downloading protected content." We went over this already. Copyright applies to expression, not to information. Using battlescribe is no more illegal than asking your friend to tell you the stats and rules of something in a codex he owns but you don't.

2) Even downloading protected content isn't stealing. If it was, we wouldn't need IP laws. We have been over this already too.

It clearly is not "as simple as that." If it was, you wouldn't be continuing to get it wrong.

GW can ask GitHub to take down the repo and Github would do it

problem are not the rules by itself, is they are only under copyright if the same 1:1 sentences are used as in the rulebook

but names and terms are a different story and as long as the 40k Repo uses the original names/terms GW has the possibility to act against it on Github (and any ohter similar hosting side)

I don't think using even the names are really a problem in the abstract. The names may be copyrightable or subject to trade marks, but that doesn't mean GW can stop people from referencing them, any more than Disney can get a fan site taken down if it posts plot summaries for the Star Wars movies and uses the real names.

Now if they could show the repo creators were profiting from GW's rules, that could be problematic, depending on the details - especially if they could show they were profiting at GW's expense. But it doesn't infringe anything to come up with and distribute summaries of copyrighted works.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't think using even the names are really a problem in the abstract. The names may be copyrightable or subject to trade marks, but that doesn't mean GW can stop people from referencing them, any more than Disney can get a fan site taken down if it posts plot summaries for the Star Wars movies and uses the real names.

Now if they could show the repo creators were profiting from GW's rules, that could be problematic, depending on the details - especially if they could show they were profiting at GW's expense. But it doesn't infringe anything to come up with and distribute summaries of copyrighted works.

Whether or not you make money off of it doesn't really matter I think.

yukishiro1 wrote:
I don't think using even the names are really a problem in the abstract. The names may be copyrightable or subject to trade marks, but that doesn't mean GW can stop people from referencing them, any more than Disney can get a fan site taken down if it posts plot summaries for the Star Wars movies and uses the real names

and still it happens that eg Youtube videos about it are taken down because if a small little detail

point is, those are 2 big companies who don't act user friendly, GW ask for it, Github will to it without checking if it would really hold before the court but just if the claim from GW is right (they use Trademarked/Copyright Names/Terms/Expression) and be done

the thing that BS files are still there just means that GW is aware that "free rules" help them and that there is no benefit in taking it down (things might change with progression in 9th and the App, as now those are mostly old rules anyway and the App is not really a competition)

I think as long as no "creative" works are being reproduced, such as lore and artwork (including photos of painted miniatures), GW doesn't really have a strong enough case to build on against BS. This is also why the codexes are full of such creative content; If they weren't, scanned rips of the dexes would be much more problematic regarding copyright law.

GW isn't too bothered about battlescribe, BS is generating mucho revenue for them!

Nah, scanning itself is a issue as somebody has had to arrange the text on the page, select the font etc and that can be protected,

having somebody type in the data again breaks that which is why the (legal) free ebook people only scan in the older versions of books rather than ripping off a more recent printing.

Still, they can just take it all down by following the procedures on github, like kodos has lined out - I actually put some effort in researching this last time they brought it up.

It would then require legal action from the owner of the repository to get it unlocked again.

It's always funny to think that code is protected (at least on Italy, but I think it's pretty widespread as approach) exactly like poetry. We don't have for example the equivalent of "functional" patents that (at least I believe) exist for example in the US.

Also, another important thought is the copyright (at least, as many on this thread seems to mean it) is literally the negation of the foundation of our societies and science: information are free. I could tomorrow create a perfect clone of WH40k with free rules, and none could stop me. I and GE would have to compete on marketing, price and clarity of our manuals. That's how market works.

I don't know the GitHub policies, I won't be surprised if they close everything without a lot of analysis. That said, GW can't legally do nothing about that (exactly like they can't stop us from sharing our manuals without friends or to purchase third party supplies).

Willingness to do is not right to do.

To go back on topic, I'm on board with those who said that ONLY with a FULL access to ALL the rule this app will be evenly remotely considerable for purchase by me. £5 a month aren't peanuts, but considering it's to have all the rules to check my enemies armies... i could consider it

As it is? They're utterly detached from reality.

Another thing is that most companies/hosting services etc. will shut down whatever a suitably large company asks regardless of it's legality (see Youtube removing 100% legal Fair Use content on request), cause they know it's easier to do that than spend money on a case defending the users' rights.

Cronch wrote:
Another thing is that most companies/hosting services etc. will shut down whatever a suitably large company asks regardless of it's legality (see Youtube removing 100% legal Fair Use content on request), cause they know it's easier to do that than spend money on a case defending the users' rights.

This is absolutely true, though we were talking about what's legal and what isn't since the "pirating!!" guy brought it up, not what GW could get away with by abusing its power. I don't doubt GW could cause some headaches for Battlescribe if it really wanted to, at least until they found a host that didn't care about giving GW the finger.

Anyway the fact that GW has not done anything says it all. Nobody should feel the slightest compunction about using Battlescribe. GW is well aware of it and happy enough to let it be, and GW doesn't need champions to defend its virtue when it has no interest in defending that virtue itself.

Look if you want to believe that obtaining the rules contents of a book that costs £30 to buy and is absolutely a creative work protected by intellectual property/copyright law for free isn't piracy then obviously nothing i say is going to change your mind.

However the fact is It is no different to downloading a film or whatever from pirate bay or some other bit torrent site.

Space Marines have BS 3+ and 2W
There we go, according to you, you're now a filthy pirate, you have contents, however small, from a Codex.

Cronch wrote:
Space Marines have BS 3+ and 2W
There we go, according to you, you're now a filthy pirate, you have contents, however small, from a Codex.

Epic takedown.

---------
There is an new advertising article disguised as an MetaWatch article on the WC site: Sad to see that it didn't take more than a couple of entries for the series to deteriorate to this pathetic level. I am not against advertising articles, that's the purpose of the whole blog. But the MetaWatch series was described as a more serious set of articles than the normal GW "tactic" pieces. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/12/17/metawatch-warhammer-40000-mike-brandt-talks-battle-forge/

Is it just me, or is it still not possible to delete once chosen units from your battleforge detachments?
Since this app went live, I am not able to delete units.

Did I miss something?

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Look if you want to believe that obtaining the rules contents of a book that costs £30 to buy and is absolutely a creative work protected by intellectual property/copyright law for free isn't piracy then obviously nothing i say is going to change your mind.

However the fact is It is no different to downloading a film or whatever from pirate bay or some other bit torrent site.

You are simply wrong as a matter of law - and remember, it was you who brought up the law. The fact is that it is *not* the same legally to download a PDF of a codex vs using someone's summary of the rules contained in that codex.

You are free to be objectively wrong if you wish - this is the internet, after all - but people are going to call you on it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Vovin wrote:


There is an new advertising article disguised as an MetaWatch article on the WC site: Sad to see that it didn't take more than a couple of entries for the series to deteriorate to this pathetic level. I am not against advertising articles, that's the purpose of the whole blog. But the MetaWatch series was described as a more serious set of articles than the normal GW "tactic" pieces. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/12/17/metawatch-warhammer-40000-mike-brandt-talks-battle-forge/

Yeah that was pretty disappointing. I mean it's not like there's even anything in there about competitive play. I thought it was going to be about using the app to track games the way BCP does to get data and that sort of thing...but it wasn't. It was just "we made this app and we're really excited to have you use it!" with literally nothing more. Totally content-free.

 DaBraken wrote:
Is it just me, or is it still not possible to delete once chosen units from your battleforge detachments?
Since this app went live, I am not able to delete units.

Did I miss something?

Tap the three dots on the right side of the unit and one of the options should be delete.

yukishiro1 wrote:

Yeah that was pretty disappointing. I mean it's not like there's even anything in there about competitive play. I thought it was going to be about using the app to track games the way BCP does to get data and that sort of thing...but it wasn't. It was just "we made this app and we're really excited to have you use it!" with literally nothing more. Totally content-free.

Well there was one thing, that the writing is pretty clearly on the walls that the app will be mandatory for events getting coverage or run by GW.

 AduroT wrote:

 DaBraken wrote:
Is it just me, or is it still not possible to delete once chosen units from your battleforge detachments?
Since this app went live, I am not able to delete units.

Did I miss something?

Tap the three dots on the right side of the unit and one of the options should be delete.

LOL. I hit the three dots like crazy, but it seems their hitbox is a bit small. Now, after 1 week it worked the first time while zooming in...
Thanks a lot.