Author Topic: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!  (Read 36754 times)

Jibbajaba

  • Guest
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #570 on: August 27, 2015, 07:41:21 AM »
You guys seriously need to grow some balls.  Someone needs to just go to Tobias' house and beat him with a rubber hose.  Or the old "phone book & baseball bat" routine.

NightWolve

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5277
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #571 on: August 27, 2015, 07:56:47 AM »
Tobias seems to have gotten smart enough to just sell the original game in his boxed-sets, and then give away a matched looking "translated" CD to go in the same case.

Yeah, you noticed his altered strategy - that's the beauty of how he can get away with it now, make a beautiful boxed set like he did with Dracula X which has a "special" 2nd empty CD spot and give out the fully patched version free (keep that open to everyone), and you still get sales on the boxed set while nobody can say he's directly profiting on the patched version per sale, etc. He neutralized that aspect.

munchiaz

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2090
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #572 on: August 27, 2015, 08:44:41 AM »
Tobias seems to have gotten smart enough to just sell the original game in his boxed-sets, and then give away a matched looking "translated" CD to go in the same case.

Yeah, you noticed his altered strategy - that's the beauty of how he can get away with it now, make a beautiful boxed set like he did with Dracula X which has a "special" 2nd empty CD spot and give out the fully patched version free (keep that open to everyone), and you still get sales on the boxed set while nobody can say he's directly profiting on the patched version per sale, etc. He neutralized that aspect.


Such a POS man. I make sure to let it be known whenever i see people post his stuff.

esteban

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24063
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #573 on: August 27, 2015, 09:03:05 AM »

You guys seriously need to grow some balls.  Someone needs to just go to Tobias' house and beat him with a rubber hose.  Or the old "phone book & baseball bat" routine.

I will ring bell, invite myself in and help myself to...

1) his computer (Dell laptop)
2) Sailor Moon lunchbox (aluminum)
3) 3 cases of Dracula-X energy drink
4) Full House (complete series on VHS)
  |    | 

ultrageranium

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 94
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #574 on: August 27, 2015, 09:15:35 AM »
Now ... just for the sake of argument. Let's consider the possibility that I take a look at helping out on one (or maybe two) PCE fan translations that people would love to see get finished.

I don't have any desire to see Tobias just turn everyone else's hard work into pretty, but expensive, "collectors" sets.

Is there anything that can seriously be done to avoid that?

Not directly related but maybe helpful to the discussion:

Within free culture, that is to say the community of people who distribute their work under a free culture license (GPL for software, CC-BY-SA for media, etc, to simplify a bit), the question of commercial exploitation is even more problematic because there is unlike with fan translations, no grey zone at all. You use a license that provide unilateral permissions to anyone to do whatever they want with your work, as long as they follow the terms of the license. It means that the question of how to avoid being ripped off comes up fairly often. For instance if I release a music under CC-BY-SA and make it a free or paying download, whoever has it can resell it and not give me anything, as long as what is being sold still under the CC-BY-SA. Shit will happen and shit happens fairly often with such licensing. Recently Flickr started to sell printed version of the photos made by the users of the service: those who had chosen for a normal copyright protection when uploading would receive a fee (traditional commercial licensing of their intellectual property) but those who had chosen a free culture license like the CC-BY-SA when they uploaded their photo would not receive anything at all. Long story short, even though Flickr did not do anything illegal, it felt like a massive abuse given the pool of free culture licensed photos they have collected for years and could use to make an extra profit, a couple of days later, they stopped doing that because they felt public pressure.

However, similar situations happen all the time with such licensing, and with little consequences as it is done in a much smaller scale. Indeed, the last thing that Yahoo wants is to be perceived as some evil corporations ripping off the work of their users, but that's not the case when the abuse is done by smaller groups or commercial entities. So generally the ethos of free culture is to accept that no matter what you do and no matter how you protect yourself, you will get ripped off by someone, at some point. It is not a question if it can happen, but more when it will happen, and the reason why free culture licensing is chosen, so that for all the others with no unethical intentions, nothing will get in the way of both accessing, using and modifying the shared work.

Of course, this does not solve the problem of tracking ethics across the pool of all the people that might do something with your work. This is why an interesting experiment was done by Nina Paley, who when she released her free culture licensed animation "Sita sings the blues", and seeing the growing success of it, knew that even though she would get a lot of screenings in indie cinemas and art houses, she would not get anything at all in return, and as everyone knows here, donations/patron systems are rarely helping unless you are already a celebrity. So she decided to develop a program in which places who would give her a bit of money for showing her work would be allowed to use some sort of certification, or sponsoring label, like gold, silver and bronze. ON her website she would list only the screening where sponsoring existed, and via her project, the audience would be able to know, in a more transparent way if the ticket they would buy or had bought were only cashed by the venue or if some bit were sent in the direction of the animator.

All that to say, even if fan translations are in a grey area of intellectual property, there is some common struggle to be found here I think. Maybe a similar experiment could be done here.


« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 09:19:47 AM by ultrageranium »

Koop

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 124
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #575 on: August 27, 2015, 09:19:51 AM »
Tobias seems to have gotten smart enough to just sell the original game in his boxed-sets, and then give away a matched looking "translated" CD to go in the same case.

Yeah, you noticed his altered strategy - that's the beauty of how he can get away with it now, make a beautiful boxed set like he did with Dracula X which has a "special" 2nd empty CD spot and give out the fully patched version free (keep that open to everyone), and you still get sales on the boxed set while nobody can say he's directly profiting on the patched version per sale, etc. He neutralized that aspect.

I assume the price of his boxset is still way more than the game itself sells for though?

esteban

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24063
That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #576 on: August 27, 2015, 09:40:24 AM »
Now ... just for the sake of argument. Let's consider the possibility that I take a look at helping out on one (or maybe two) PCE fan translations that people would love to see get finished.

I don't have any desire to see Tobias just turn everyone else's hard work into pretty, but expensive, "collectors" sets.

Is there anything that can seriously be done to avoid that?


Not directly related but maybe helpful to the discussion:

Within free culture, that is to say the community of people who distribute their work under a free culture license (GPL for software, CC-BY-SA for media, etc, to simplify a bit), the question of commercial exploitation is even more problematic because there is unlike with fan translations, no grey zone at all. You use a license that provide unilateral permissions to anyone to do whatever they want with your work, as long as they follow the terms of the license. It means that the question of how to avoid being ripped off comes up fairly often. For instance if I release a music under CC-BY-SA and make it a free or paying download, whoever has it can resell it and not give me anything, as long as what is being sold still under the CC-BY-SA. Shit will happen and shit happens fairly often with such licensing. Recently Flickr started to sell printed version of the photos made by the users of the service: those who had chosen for a normal copyright protection when uploading would receive a fee (traditional commercial licensing of their intellectual property) but those who had chosen a free culture license like the CC-BY-SA when they uploaded their photo would not receive anything at all. Long story short, even though Flickr did not do anything illegal, it felt like a massive abuse given the pool of free culture licensed photos they have collected for years and could use to make an extra profit, a couple of days later, they stopped doing that because they felt public pressure.

However, similar situations happen all the time with such licensing, and with little consequences as it is done in a much smaller scale. Indeed, the last thing that Yahoo wants is to be perceived as some evil corporations ripping off the work of their users, but that's not the case when the abuse is done by smaller groups or commercial entities. So generally the ethos of free culture is to accept that no matter what you do and no matter how you protect yourself, you will get ripped off by someone, at some point. It is not a question if it can happen, but more when it will happen, and the reason why free culture licensing is chosen, so that for all the others with no unethical intentions, nothing will get in the way of both accessing, using and modifying the shared work.

Of course, this does not solve the problem of tracking ethics across the pool of all the people that might do something with your work. This is why an interesting experiment was done by Nina Paley, who when she released her free culture licensed animation "Sita sings the blues", and seeing the growing success of it, knew that even though she would get a lot of screenings in indie cinemas and art houses, she would not get anything at all in return, and as everyone knows here, donations/patron systems are rarely helping unless you are already a celebrity. So she decided to develop a program in which places who would give her a bit of money for showing her work would be allowed to use some sort of certification, or sponsoring label, like gold, silver and bronze. ON her website she would list only the screening where sponsoring existed, and via her project, the audience would be able to know, in a more transparent way if the ticket they would buy or had bought were only cashed by the venue or if some bit were sent in the direction of the animator.

All that to say, even if fan translations are in a grey area of intellectual property, there is some common struggle to be found here I think. Maybe a similar experiment could be done here.


Interesting! I did not know about Nona Paley.

TANGENT:
Well, it wouldn't solve our fan translation issue, but for most folks who create stuff...

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

...Allows folks to build and transform your stuff, but not for commercial profit, so, slimy websites with ads that just scrape content from others are technically/ethically wrong. 

Not that it is easy to enforce this sort of thing. My friend is a photographer and he doesn't have the manpower to enforce everyone who takes his photos—he has to go after large orgs/companies that take his work.bod course, he doesn't offer his stuff under by-nc-sa
« Last Edit: August 27, 2015, 10:23:21 AM by esteban »
  |    | 

Jibbajaba

  • Guest
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #577 on: August 27, 2015, 11:38:06 AM »
3) 3 cases of Dracula-X energy drink

At this point, I am more interested in this energy drink than I am anything else.  What is it?  Where did he get it?  Was he able to somehow buy blank cans of something and have something new printed on them?  Is there some kind of custom sleeve over the original can?

NightWolve

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5277
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #578 on: August 27, 2015, 11:41:41 AM »
3) 3 cases of Dracula-X energy drink

At this point, I am more interested in this energy drink than I am anything else.  What is it?  Where did he get it?  Was he able to somehow buy blank cans of something and have something new printed on them?  Is there some kind of custom sleeve over the original can?

Like elmer was saying, he is a smart SOB. That really was a great idea to "sweeten" the deal.

I wondered about those (if HE had them made), but Mike says they were preexisting and the guy just got a hold of some.

esteban

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24063
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #579 on: August 27, 2015, 12:54:56 PM »

3) 3 cases of Dracula-X energy drink

At this point, I am more interested in this energy drink than I am anything else.  What is it?  Where did he get it?  Was he able to somehow buy blank cans of something and have something new printed on them?  Is there some kind of custom sleeve over the original can?

A lot of products are available as "white labels" and, yes, you slap whatever you want on them. 

I didn't think energy drinks were popular enough to warrant this, but, clearly, they must be popular enough.

:)
  |    | 

elmer

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2153
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #580 on: August 27, 2015, 01:25:16 PM »
Well, it wouldn't solve our fan translation issue, but for most folks who create stuff...

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

As I said in the Zeroigar thread ... I don't have a lot of faith in that Creative Commons license.

It looks like it was written by lawyers, for-the-benefit-of lawyers.

I've read enough contracts and licenses, and paid for enough "professsional" advice (which usually totally missed the really significant loopholes), to be very wary of a license that claims to protect the author from someone else's "intent" to make a profit.

Proving "intent" is something that would require an expensive argument in court.  ](*,)


At this point I actually have a grudging respect and admiration for Tobias, he's a very, very good parasite.

He knows just how to attract his customers, and he learns from his mistakes.

I don't think that there's much that we can do to make him go away, he's found a nice warm host to feed off, and it's so docile that he's unlikely to do anything egregious enough to stir it into action.

At this point, I'm more curious if people think that making a translation dependent upon a 3rd-party card like the TED2 would actually deter his customers from buying a pretty box-set?



Punch

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3278
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #581 on: August 27, 2015, 02:03:24 PM »
Why the f*ck would anyone think that a can of energy drink with blank label straight from the movie Repo Man, with Dracula X art printed over it, would somehow justify paying hundreds for a bootleg of a 1990's video game.

Why has god abandoned us.

esteban

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24063
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #582 on: August 27, 2015, 02:54:43 PM »

Why the f*ck would anyone think that a can of energy drink with blank label straight from the movie Repo Man, with Dracula X art printed over it, would somehow justify paying hundreds for a bootleg of a 1990's video game.

Why has god abandoned us.


I like the novelty of ingesting a mysterious beverage.

Then again, I have a history of finding old stuff and eating it.

  |    | 

NightWolve

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5277
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #583 on: August 27, 2015, 03:19:56 PM »
Why the f*ck would anyone think that a can of energy drink with blank label straight from the movie Repo Man, with Dracula X art printed over it, would somehow justify paying hundreds for a bootleg of a 1990's video game.

Why has god abandoned us.

It's just a little extra something - he really is trying to mimic Working Designs with the stakes, crosses, keychain cards, and the drinks he found, but even without all that, you look at just the whole boxed package below, it IS attractive as all f--k!!! With or without the extra "sweeteners" to the deal, he's gonna cash in bigtime with it!









I really don't think anyone would try to drink any of those, but whatever. ;)

esteban

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 24063
Re: That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!
« Reply #584 on: August 27, 2015, 03:23:55 PM »
I will absolutely drink. Dracula-X beverage. Even if it is a few years from now, when I get one from you guys, I will make a video opening,  savoring and finishing it.
  |    |