That Tobias f--k went after Xak III and SO II as pressed CD-ROM releases!

[BigusSchmuck]

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.

It's probably pigs blood or urine or something stupid like that.

[ultrageranium]

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.

NC type licenses have a very bad reputation within free culture circles. Usually it can be summed up like:
[ul][li]False sense of security, this is a license, not a contract, so it is much more difficult to track and enforce[/li][li]It is very difficult to define what is a commercial activity, there will be loopholes to be exploited for those willing to abuse it and there will be severe limitations put on the audience supposed to benefit from it when the work is used as part of an economic activity not directly related to the exploitation of the work but relying on it, making such audience avoiding using the work by precaution[/li][li]Going to court costs a lot of money and a lot of energy, it is not worth the trouble in most cases to test the license validity and its potential abuse on your own. In the rare cases where it was tested in the past against big corporations which were abusing NC licensed works from individuals, the outcome was quit disappointing, as even if successful the compensations from suing were symbolical and the process to get it long and tedious.[/li][/ul]

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.

CC has been founded by Lawrence Lessig, an open content activist, law scholar and constitutionalist. So yes, CC licenses are biased in the way that they try to respond to the problem of intellectual property in the network society from the perspective of the law. This is different from GPL or BSD licenses that, even though are also legal documents, are rooted in the practice of software development, and more particularly the idea of software freedom and so called hacker ethics to refer to collaborative practices within commercial and academic computational culture in the 60s and 70s.

But to come back to my initial comment on Nina Paley, I find it particularly inspiring because it bypasses the regular mechanism of terms-permissions-enforcement-punishment, it does not rely on intellectual property laws for that, and it does not try to implement such a disciplinary system in the medium used (like DRM or any other copy protection system). Instead it reaches out to the public and offers in a transparent way, a choice that they can make by informing on how the project has been put, that it costs time and money and that there are some ways to consume the final product in which a bit of financial compensation will flow back to the project initiator.

[escarioth]

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.

oooh i totally forgot about working designs and their nice bundles. there was a time when they were the only ones doing nice stuff like that. The design and all of Tobias is interesting.. but i'm being sour about him taking advantage of translations projects to make money even if little at all out of them. So if something ever interest me at some point ill simply donate to the right guys 

[esteban]

Ultrageranium, I am intrigued with everything you have shared. As presented, I agree with your sentiments.

My post below is in the spirit of clarifying points/understanding full implications of of IP, compensation, licensing, contracts, etc.

I realize I have to investigate these issues more fully on my own, since there probably have been many developments in last decade that I am unaware of.

[ul][li]False sense of security, this is a license, not a contract, so it is much more difficult to track and enforce[/li][/ul]

I agree that an examination of license vs. contract probably reveals major shortcomings in CC. But, even more damning is how the mere   *suspicion* that CC is problematic can taint the entire endeavor (artists/creators don't want to touch it).

But, to play Devil's Advocate:

I would counter that contracts are just as ineffectual at our level (that is, the level of an average person, who has no time/resources/expertise to enforce a license, contract, or handshake).

Everything you said (which I agree with) is applicable to all licenses/contracts:
1. The selfish/powerful will exploit opportunities (in this case, IP)
2. If it comes to litigation, the IP holder can't match resources (legal or otherwise)
3. Any penalties, if there are any, are a pittance
4. The offender knows that they will most likely gain a net positive, even in a worst-case scenario.

So, what I am asking is: is the real issue "license vs contract" or "powerful vs. weak"?

Sure, I know they all interact with each other and are not mutually exclusive. What I am sincerely wondering, though, is if the barrier to entry (into the legal system) is simply too high for common folks.

Correct me if I am wrong, but no license/contract is capable of actually addressing (b) below:

A) The political/philosophical crafting of a fair IP system that can protect all entities, weak and powerful
B) Creating something that is enforceable by the "weak" / Acknowledging realities   (how power/resources win out over "justice")

But to come back to my initial comment on Nina Paley, I find it particularly inspiring because it bypasses the regular mechanism of terms-permissions-enforcement-punishment, it does not rely on intellectual property laws for that, and it does not try to implement such a disciplinary system in the medium used (like DRM or any other copy protection system). Instead it reaches out to the public and offers in a transparent way, a choice that they can make by informing on how the project has been put, that it costs time and money and that there are some ways to consume the final product in which a bit of financial compensation will flow back to the project initiator.

I am so glad it worked for her. As I said in my earlier post, her case study intrigues me.

I give her (and anyone who helped her) full credit for a creative solution..I am sure it required a lot of work, skill, negotiation, perseverance.

Some random thoughts...

NOVELTY WILL WEAR OFF?
How much of her success is due to the novelty of the situation? Will others replicate her success? I suspect that the challenge is to CONTINUALLY devise unique solutions to unique problems...which leads to...

EXISTING AUDIENCE WILLING TO PAY?
How much of her success is due to the unique nature of the medium (screening an art film) where a niche audience exists who are willing to pay (art house culture)? Do we have an equivalent in software? Video games?


I'll stop.

[Necromancer]

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?

Not even a little bit.  People that're buying his stuff are more interested in pretty dust collectors, so whether or not the game works isn't much of a factor.  Besides, there's nothing stopping them from buying a TED.

[Black Tiger]

That clown who would rather pay over $100 to play a bootleg spine card than a free cdr game reminded me of one of Tobias' key offenses for which there is no excuse.

After my Saphire bootleg guide was used by eBay sellers of legit copies of the game, Tobias had another batch made, in an attempt to fix the most noticeable flaws (like her purple suit appearing blue), so that people wouldn't be able to tell from photos if they were fake.

This was after he'd given up on his previous stories of official 2nd print runs and confirmation of autheticity from current day Hudson Soft. He wasn't making a cheap functional copy for fans to play. He put extra effort to once again pass off his copies as authentic. This was after he'd already made tens of thousands of dollars from the first run.

I don't think he's stopped making or selling them either. I believe that he's returned to his original plan of low cost/time + high profit margin and is just slowly trickling them out on auction sites.

For the love of it.

[xelement5x]

That clown who would rather pay over $100 to play a bootleg spine card than a free cdr game reminded me of one of Tobias' key offenses for which there is no excuse.

After my Saphire bootleg guide was used by eBay sellers of legit copies of the game, Tobias had another batch made, in an attempt to fix the most noticeable flaws (like her purple suit appearing blue), so that people wouldn't be able to tell from photos if they were fake.

This was after he'd given up on his previous stories of official 2nd print runs and confirmation of autheticity from current day Hudson Soft. He wasn't making a cheap functional copy for fans to play. He put extra effort to once again pass off his copies as authentic. This was after he'd already made tens of thousands of dollars from the first run.

I don't think he's stopped making or selling them either. I believe that he's returned to his original plan of low cost/time + high profit margin and is just slowly trickling them out on auction sites.

For the love of it.

At least he can't fake the inner ring part....yet.

[esteban]

Damn.

[esteban]

It's official, we need to flood the market with thousands of Sapphire, Renny Blaster, Dracula X bootlegs made of chocolate.

[esteban]

Bittersweet chocolate.

[esteban]

Bitter. Bitter.
Sweet.

[BlueBMW]

Om nom nom nom

[shonenx]

i can't imagine myself in the 90s ever thinking this hobby would become this crazy with bootlegs being remade using the very guides that were created to protect us or items like this Castlevainia box that is just a custom bootleg item sold as a Limited collectible. its nuts that Bootlegs can now be called Limited Editions. I've always loved my Famicom Bootlegs but part of that is the price tag of 1-3 bucks and its campiness. And btw I'm one of the original suckers that sadly bought the old sapphire fake years ago.

[ultrageranium]

But, to play Devil's Advocate:

I would counter that contracts are just as ineffectual at our level (that is, the level of an average person, who has no time/resources/expertise to enforce a license, contract, or handshake).

Everything you said (which I agree with) is applicable to all licenses/contracts:
1. The selfish/powerful will exploit opportunities (in this case, IP)
2. If it comes to litigation, the IP holder can't match resources (legal or otherwise)
3. Any penalties, if there are any, are a pittance
4. The offender knows that they will most likely gain a net positive, even in a worst-case scenario.

So, what I am asking is: is the real issue "license vs contract" or "powerful vs. weak"?

Sure, I know they all interact with each other and are not mutually exclusive. What I am sincerely wondering, though, is if the barrier to entry (into the legal system) is simply too high for common folks.

Of course, you are completely right. IP is something out of the reach of the people. These days these are essentially the tools of corporations, which are the only entities able to access and navigate this field at their advantage. This is also the reason why there was 10 years ago, so much hope put in the concept of free culture (or any new social movements related to cultural environmentalism) as it gave the impression of giving control back into the hand of the people. To some extent this is still perceived strongly in South America and Southern Europe where the idea of commons is still tightly linked to social empowerment.

But...

Correct me if I am wrong, but no license/contract is capable of actually addressing (b) below:

A) The political/philosophical crafting of a fair IP system that can protect all entities, weak and powerful
B) Creating something that is enforceable by the "weak" / Acknowledging realities   (how power/resources win out over "justice")

These are unsolvable issues, although there has been some attempts to make, in the case of licensing, a stronger link with some ideological intention. For instance there exists a so-called Peer Production License (PPL), which is a fork of the CC BY-NC-SA (if I remember correctly) that prevents commercial exploitation of the licensed work by corporations, unless it's a worker owned corporation or cooperative. Unfortunately these forms of IP hacks are so niche that they never take off.

As for your point B, and the notions of enforcement and access, most of the time, these institutions are only the reflection, implementations, and manifestation of a dominant ideology or a dominant set of neighbouring ideologies. So all these things only exist to reinforce whoever/whatever has access to power.

But to come back to my initial comment on Nina Paley, I find it particularly inspiring because it bypasses the regular mechanism of terms-permissions-enforcement-punishment, it does not rely on intellectual property laws for that, and it does not try to implement such a disciplinary system in the medium used (like DRM or any other copy protection system). Instead it reaches out to the public and offers in a transparent way, a choice that they can make by informing on how the project has been put, that it costs time and money and that there are some ways to consume the final product in which a bit of financial compensation will flow back to the project initiator.

I am so glad it worked for her. As I said in my earlier post, her case study intrigues me.

I give her (and anyone who helped her) full credit for a creative solution..I am sure it required a lot of work, skill, negotiation, perseverance.

Yes, and that's sadly enough the reason why she won't do it again for her next big project. The time and energy it took was way too much, and somehow demonstrating the reason why there are such things as collecting societies (the organisations which deals with artists' work exploitation, licensing and royalties). However, it showed that collecting societies do not have to be opaque and revolve around a celebrity system. Maybe something like what she did could scale up given some visible and already established artists would be up for operating differently, which might not happen given the fact that it would mean giving up on a well known scheme for easy incomes.

Some random thoughts...

NOVELTY WILL WEAR OFF?
How much of her success is due to the novelty of the situation? Will others replicate her success? I suspect that the challenge is to CONTINUALLY devise unique solutions to unique problems

I don't think it will wear off, actually it is already in place in the form of consumer capitalism and the way the market is manipulated by the use of all sorts labels and classification of goods based on morales and ethics. For instance Fair-Trade, Organic, Green, etc. In a way her approach is similar in the sense that she sorted establishments based on a moral system (they gave me some money so they're nice) and let the customers decide whether they wanted to reward the nice people or be cheap. The difference is that her system was simple, transparent and singular, so the manipulation was limited (in my opinion).

...which leads to...

EXISTING AUDIENCE WILLING TO PAY?
How much of her success is due to the unique nature of the medium (screening an art film) where a niche audience exists who are willing to pay (art house culture)? Do we have an equivalent in software? Video games?

That I don't know. I guess for the translation/repros issue, the best way to figure out if there is an audience for a more ethical approach would simply to try setting up such a list and agreement with a handful repro makers. Anyone up for it?

[esteban]

Some random thoughts...

NOVELTY WILL WEAR OFF?
How much of her success is due to the novelty of the situation? Will others replicate her success? I suspect that the challenge is to CONTINUALLY devise unique solutions to unique problems

I don't think it will wear off, actually it is already in place in the form of consumer capitalism and the way the market is manipulated by the use of all sorts labels and classification of goods based on morales and ethics. For instance Fair-Trade, Organic, Green, etc. In a way her approach is similar in the sense that she sorted establishments based on a moral system (they gave me some money so they're nice) and let the customers decide whether they wanted to reward the nice people or be cheap. The difference is that her system was simple, transparent and singular, so the manipulation was limited (in my opinion).

Yes, I think limiting manipulation...or, rather, making any attempt to manipulate plainly visible—this is the key to building trust and credibility. As you said, a simple, clear path to support.

...which leads to...

EXISTING AUDIENCE WILLING TO PAY?
How much of her success is due to the unique nature of the medium (screening an art film) where a niche audience exists who are willing to pay (art house culture)? Do we have an equivalent in software? Video games?

That I don't know. I guess for the translation/repros issue, the best way to figure out if there is an audience for a more ethical approach would simply to try setting up such a list and agreement with a handful repro makers. Anyone up for it?

This is the hard work.

Also, I simply don't trust (ha!) the existing repromakers.

Of course, I also feel that we need a multi-thronged approach:

(1) Public education/enlightenment about the issue (getting the word out there, using various tactics: PSAs, outreach to "opinion-shapers" (I hate this term, but, whatever...folks with clout on YouTube)

(2) Building relationships with repromakers (I can't help but feel that this is the weak link...how do I even trust these folks? What would it take, outside of personally befriending them on a local level and having access to financial records?)

(3) Generating our own data/projections (determining actual costs for repros—including economies of scale—versus profit margins).

(4) Some folks would not want certain projects to EVER be handled by a bootlegger/repromaker...so, we would have to help educate folks on good, old-fashioned D.I.Y. (Guides on how to easily create your own reproductions).