Frabby
01/11/10 09:06 AM
87.164.171.198
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(2nd attempt at posting this - probably forgot to click OK from preview page...)
This was posted on the BattleCorps forum today:
Quote:
I ran across this crap on Amazon today.
This is a book from Alphascript Publishing called "Mercenaries (BattleTech)" -- I loooked them up on the net, and this "publisher" sells print-on-demand copies of Wikipedia articles. Or as they put it on their site "Annually, we publish more than 10,000 new titles and are thus one of the leading publishing houses of academic research. We specialize in publishing copyleft projects." (http://www.alphascript-publishing.com/)
"Copyleft"??
Cute....and very, very lame.
Their collection of battletech Wikipedia articles sells for $51.
This type of thing makes me quite mad: someone who is new to Battltech could be duped by such a thing, and that would be $51 that could have been spent on Catalyst goodness instead sent to these leeches.
Sheesh.
The link given was
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=9786130073107
I haven't been able to verify whether or not the book's content is actually taken from the Sarna wiki (or from another wiki) though.
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Nic Jansma
01/12/10 12:03 AM
76.121.181.201
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I'm not opposed to people printing the articles on their own, but charging $51 (for something that probably costs them less than $10) seems wrong.
I could not find any research online regarding the legality of doing that -- does anyone know of the terms regarding reprinting works from *pedias?
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Karagin
01/12/10 02:20 AM
217.5.180.114
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You may want to check with some of the guys at CBT or with Rick at Heavy Metal Pro.
I know Warner had an auction on eBay shut down that had converted all of the sourcesbooks, at the time, into PDFs and was selling them.
Beyond having to require a login to look at the Wiki, not sure what can be done.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Revanche
01/15/10 10:19 AM
138.162.8.58
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The situation with HMP would be different, as the material Rick puts out is trademarked or licensed (depending on the material in question).
From a very basic knowledge-level of the GNU License ('copyleft'), Sarna's BTW itself doesn't have a leg to stand on in fighting it, as it gave up the right to its material so that others could freely "copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially." However, it does allow the BTW to maintain authorship and publisher credit for the Editors and Sarna itself (i.e., I read that as meaning Nic could require Alphascript Publishing to recognize each editor of the copied articles, as well as Sarna as the source, and that it was obtained under the GNU license).
Where to get them on this would be to have WizKids send a "cease & desist" to them for infringing on the trademark use of its property. Alphascript could argue they're doing a scholarly review of the real-world WK products, but I'd argue -if they're using our articles- its an in-character review of in-universe material and therefore inserting itself (Alphascripts) into the BattleTech universe with the intent of financial profit.
Bottom line: the owners have to get involved in this. Sarna itself doesn't have a dog in the fight, as it gave up all right to rpofit from its articles (which allows us some protection from the same sort of action that we want WK's to leverage onto Alphascripts).
And Karagin is right: while Nic can mandate who can access the site, under the license he can't (outright) control the outflow of information. On my private wikis, which only myself, family and select friends have access to (wiki dependent), the information could legally be presented if cracked open, because the license comes installed with the software. Which, thanks to this incident, makes me want to research getting that license pulled out.
Edit: From further research, I doubt this affects Sarna. These publishers are putting out hundreds of 'titles' which they state come from Wikipedia. Without actually buying a copy, I'd presume they haven't branched out to smaller wikis yet .
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Karagin
01/15/10 03:30 PM
80.156.183.223
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WizKids doesn't own anything it would need to come from TOPPs which is the parent company, they, I believe, would be the ones who should be issuing the stop order.
Does anyone know if Alphascript has actually sold anything for certain?
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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