The Shadowrun Situation

[Stahlseele]

heads up, this here seems to come directly from bull, which i can't really prove, seeing how dumpshock is down again:

DS is up again (our hosting blows goats), and it did come from me. Unless you mean you can't prove that what *I* said was true, in which case... Well, neither can I. I didn't record the conversation or anything.

But, to reiterate, according to Brent Evans and Tara Bills, as discussed during the public CGL Seminar at Origins, CGL has been operating under a temporary license extension since it ran out last month (or beginning of this month, or whatever), and that they now have a full 6 month extension that runs through the end of the year.

Bull

i meant proving that it is something you wrote.

[Clutch9800]

Probably because no one had called shenanigans on what was going on until the Wildfire guys got sick of not being paid, at which point all hell seems to have broken loose.

It's easier to chime in than to be the first to raise his voice.

There seem to be a lot of people that want to make this into a very Black/White, Good/Evil situation.

What if it was known by certain entities that things were as screwed up as they are. What if those people were perfectly happy to let things develop to the point that they are, in order for them to make a play for the licenses.

If these persons were willing to let the current situation fully develop, all the while knowing the the Freelancers, WildFire, and Posthuman were being boned, but willing to use them as pawns to develop leverage by letting the hole get dug deeper and deeper, wouldn't they bear a percentage of culpability?

This wouldn't excuse the initial malfeasance, but it surely would give us a few more bad guys to put a spotlight on.

Clutch

[martian_bob]

Probably because no one had called shenanigans on what was going on until the Wildfire guys got sick of not being paid, at which point all hell seems to have broken loose.

It's easier to chime in than to be the first to raise his voice.

There seem to be a lot of people that want to make this into a very Black/White, Good/Evil situation.

What if it was known by certain entities that things were as screwed up as they are. What if those people were perfectly happy to let things develop to the point that they are, in order for them to make a play for the licenses.

If these persons were willing to let the current situation fully develop, all the while knowing the the Freelancers, WildFire, and Posthuman were being boned, but willing to use them as pawns to develop leverage by letting the hole get dug deeper and deeper, wouldn't they bear a percentage of culpability?

This wouldn't excuse the initial malfeasance, but it surely would give us a few more bad guys to put a spotlight on.

Clutch

This is just more water-muddying. Is it possible that people were going with the flow so they could go after the licenses? Sure. Is it possible that they were secretly experimenting on a race of super-badgers to take over the Ohio State Fair? Sure! So far it seems to me that we have as much proof for the one as we do for the other, aspersions from Loren Coleman notwithstanding.

I'm certainly willing to accept shades of grey here. Just give some evidence, then we can move on to wild speculation based on it. Right now, there's no "there" there.

[Clutch9800]

-Major Edit-

On second thought maybe it's better if I keep my half baked conspiracy theories to myself.

Clutch

[Crissa]

Clutch gets a cookie.

-Crissa

[Username17]

Would you like to collude in IP theft!?

You can. It's easy. CGL is working to bring out e-book versions of more of the "classic" Shdowrun and Battletech books. Because they don't have to pay author royalties on those things.

Problem: they don't actually own copies of a lot of the old books. So rather than buy copies off of E-Bay or something, they are asking people to fork over copies so that they can be e-bookified. So if you'd like to assist Jason Hardy in selling intellectual property without paying for it, you can send in a copy of an old SR novel. It's that easy. And now you know.



-Username17

[virgil]

The owners of Shadowrun and Battletech don't own the rights to books under the same IP?

[kzt]

Electronic game rights, paper game right, novel rights, movie rights, stuffed animal rights etc can all be separated and sold to different people with different terms. Not sure how the SR rights are handled (like can IMR produce stuffed Drop Bears?), but I know that electronic game rights are not held by IMR.

[Stahlseele]

No, the electronic game rights are held by Microsoft . . and/or Smith and Tinker . .

[Blasted]

Held by Microsoft, licensed to Smith and Tinker.
I'm not sure of the clauses, but it would be unlikely that Smith and Tinker can grant a license to anyone else.

[Username17]

The owners of Shadowrun and Battletech don't own the rights to books under the same IP?

They have the license to the rights to the books, yes. The thing is that Robert Charrette's contract for the book entitles him to royalties for copies printed and sold. Not for virtual e-book copies sold, because such a thing didn't exist at the time. So the plan is to start selling e-books of Never Deal With a Dragon because they don't have to pay any money to the author in order to do that.

However, actually selling copies of it would require actually having copies of it to sell. It was published in 1990, and they don't have a physical copy of it anymore, let alone some sort of master electronic typesetting record. So they needed one of the current freelancers to send in a pirated pdf of the book so that they could use it to make an e-book file out of it.

They are in that situation with a number of classic books. If you have a bootleg electronic copy of an old Shadowrun book, then you can help the folks at IMR sell electronic copies of it without paying any money to the original creators. Just email Jason a pirated pdf. And while you are doing that, you can puzzle with yourself about what the moral difference between what Jason is doing (taking pirated copies of books, ceaing them up a bit and then selling them for money without sharing any of that money with the authors) and what Torrentparty is doing (taking physical books they purchased for money, making pdfs of them, and distributing them for free).

Is it right for Torrentparty to pay for artists' work and then put in their own work to transfer them to another medium and distribute them in the new medium for free? Is it right for Jason Hardy to take the work of artists and Torrentparty and then put his own stamp on it and then sell it for money without giving any of that money to the artists or Torrentparty? Why?

-Username17

[BeeRockxs]

CGL has previously themselves created PDFs by cutting up old books and scanning and OCRing them, and that is perfectly legal for them to do, as they have the license to the rights to those books.
I don't see the problem here whatsoever.

[TheFlatline]

CGL has previously themselves created PDFs by cutting up old books and scanning and OCRing them, and that is perfectly legal for them to do, as they have the license to the rights to those books.
I don't see the problem here whatsoever.

It's still a slimy thing to do. They caught shit for it when they cut up the old books too.

It also reflects the corporate culture of CGL. Anything for a buck.

It's nice to know that CGL would gleefully cut out a kidney and leave me in a bathtub filled with ice if it was legal, all the while explaining to me what a wonderful service they were providing me.

[Fuchs]

Authors should be paid royalities, e-book or paper copy should not matter.

[knasser]

CGL has previously themselves created PDFs by cutting up old books and scanning and OCRing them, and that is perfectly legal for them to do, as they have the license to the rights to those books.
I don't see the problem here whatsoever.

I guess because they found a loophole by which they can profit from someone else's work without paying what they'd otherwise owe. Robert N. Charrette sells them his work on the condition that he is paid for each copy printed. CGL turns around and says "actually, we can sell it without printing it and you didn't know about that, so you don't get paid".

I have an old copy of the book. Certainly no-one is cutting that copy up without my say-so. I really like that book (apart from the atrocious line-art some muppet decided that it needed).

On the question of legality, I don't know about the US, but are we certain that this is legal in the UK? It seems very odd if so. They might have rights to the material, but finding a new way to sell it seems unlikely to fall under the original contract which I would expect to be more along the lines of: "we retain rights to create derivative works, exclusive rights to publish, we will pay you X per copy printed." A PDF sale wouldn't be covered by those.

Also, is Robert N. Charrette aware of this? NDWAG was one of the best Shadowrun novels written, and not just because it was the first I read. It was a very well constructed plot.

K.

[Crissa]

The right to make books that are sequels does not include the rights to print or sell books previous, without a contract with the prior writers and artists.

So yes, they have rights to the intellectual property without having the copyright, which is what printing PDFs of books printed before they licensed the IP would be.

Of course, not all the writers or artists would care at this point, as the value of that past work would be so low. But if IMR can sell it, that demonstrates a price.

Remember the writer's strike a year or so ago, halted all the tv programs and whatnot? It's because the big studios were doing exactly what IMR is doing: soliciting money for prior works online they hadn't paid for copyright to sell in this manner. (Then of course they told YouTube the works were worth 50 billion dollars while telling the writers the works weren't worth anything to sell.)

-Crissa

[Username17]

On the question of legality, I don't know about the US, but are we certain that this is legal in the UK? It seems very odd if so. They might have rights to the material, but finding a new way to sell it seems unlikely to fall under the original contract which I would expect to be more along the lines of: "we retain rights to create derivative works, exclusive rights to publish, we will pay you X per copy printed." A PDF sale wouldn't be covered by those.

Well, IANAL, and I don't live in the UK. But something similar happened to Prowse over Return of the Jedi. The actors don't see a dime from digital rereleases and shit. And he lives in the UK I think. Isn't he Welsh?

So my guess is that these sorts of shenanigans do work in the UK. Not that I think it matters, because I would think digital sales would count as being from their servers in Washington State rather than wherever people were downloading to.

-Username17

[BeeRockxs]

Someone should probably ask Charrette himself what he thinks about this.
http://www.charrette.parroom.net/index.html says his email adress is bob@parroom.net

[Clutch9800]

If this is an issue wouldn't ROC/Penguin have a problem with it? Or are they completely out of the SR/BT game?

Clutch

[Stahlseele]

What happened to not wanting to scan and publish older works because they would only be scanned works and not shiney new stuff that would meet their criteria about being a good product? . . oh well, free money equals good product it seems . .

[Starmaker]

What about "No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher"?

[Username17]

What about "No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher"?

They are the publisher. Note: Publisher. Not Author.

-Username17

[adamjury]

CGL has previously themselves created PDFs by cutting up old books and scanning and OCRing them, and that is perfectly legal for them to do, as they have the license to the rights to those books.
I don't see the problem here whatsoever.

It's still a slimy thing to do. They caught shit for it when they cut up the old books too.

What? It -- scanning a print book to produce an electronic copy -- is not a slimy thing to do at all. It doesn't produce as good of results of having the original electronic files, but those files simply don't exist for a lot of old Shadowrun books.

[knasser]

CGL has previously themselves created PDFs by cutting up old books and scanning and OCRing them, and that is perfectly legal for them to do, as they have the license to the rights to those books.
I don't see the problem here whatsoever.

It's still a slimy thing to do. They caught shit for it when they cut up the old books too.

What? It -- scanning a print book to produce an electronic copy -- is not a slimy thing to do at all. It doesn't produce as good of results of having the original electronic files, but those files simply don't exist for a lot of old Shadowrun books.

I think he was referring to the specific case of finding a way to avoid paying the author, rather than the technical process.

Regarding actors in Star Wars, I don't know what happened - normally actors are not paid on a royalty basis, but a fixed fee for their work. It's an entirely different model to a writer giving a publisher rights to sell their work in exchange for royalties.

Anyway, I still would be surprised if CGL is legally able to do this in the UK. A contract with an author for a work where he or she is the sole author, will normally be the granting of specific rights (i.e. printing copies) in exchange for royalties on printed copies, not carte blanche to do anything they like in exchange for royalties on printed copies.

It's possible at some point that RNC sold all rights to the work and that therefore the licence holder can do what they please with it legally, but if they are doing this in part because they would have to pay royalties on print copies, then that suggests very strongly that they do not.

[kzt]

So my guess is that these sorts of shenanigans do work in the UK. Not that I think it matters, because I would think digital sales would count as being from their servers in Washington State rather than wherever people were downloading to.

Typically you can sue under either argument. It's been used for porn convictions by the feds filing the case in a community where they could convince a jury that "community standards" were violated.