BoLS Bailing on Faeit212

[kriswithak]

Anyone else actually see the correlation between BoLS down and Faeit212 being permanently closed?
BoLS has featured plenty of his content, in fact he was a contributor to this blog.
There was no error, BoLS was down while his account was removed. (Notice the stuff he provided is still published)

BoLS provides coverage for Games Workshop, and Games Workshop didn't want that to stop.
So they close Faeit212 and give BoLS the opportunity to distance themselves.

Pretty sad that one of the premium suppliers of 40k information on the net sold out a major contributor so quickly.
And without even letting people know what is going on.

Natfka obviously didn't make the copies himself as the allegations claimed, and whether or not copying out small amounts of GWS rules would be enough to really warrant a DMCA notice comes down to the amount of information being provided.
If it comes from a third person (rumour) source rather than straight out of a publication it's even more dubious.

Good example of how stupid the laws are these days, just lucky most companies see the benefits people like Natfka provide and the value they add to the products and organisations.

[DarkLink]

So when Bigred says this:

UPDATE:

We are back up and running - full steam ahead! We are working with google to determine exactly what occurred over the last 24 hours with the BoLS frontpage, but I would like to clear up a couple of things for the record:

1) BoLS was never targeted by any DMCA, IP, or any other violation notices. While other 3rd party sites on blogger may or may not have been targeted by Games Workshop and/or Google, BoLS never was.

2) We take our security and availability seriously. Steps are being taken to prevent such an occurrence from ever happening again. BoLS job is to provide you with wargaming news, opinion, and entertainment day in and day out - and we will do exactly that.

On a personal note, I would like to thank each and every one of you who showed up during the frontpage outage and got to see and explore the BoLS Lounge. We are very proud of our great wargaming forum community and hope many of you return.

Look for regular posts, columns and commenting as usual on the frontpage as of now.

Best regards and my deepest thanks,

-Larry Vela

Obviously it means he woke up with his favorite horse's head next to him, courtesy GW.




Before everyone goes overboard with conspiracy theories, I'll point out that other sites that used google blogger went down at the same time as BoLS, and that there are plenty of other warhammer sites that linked to faeit's blog that didn't go down.

[daboarder]

What are you smokin' OP?


Cause I'll take some!

in all seriousness, if GW had a problem with BoLs and Faeit they are not going to talk to either of them, they like to ignore the fanbase when they can. (see bloodbowl)

[White Tiger88]

So when Bigred says this:



Obviously it means he woke up with his favorite horse's head next to him, courtesy GW.




Before everyone goes overboard with conspiracy theories, I'll point out that other sites that used google blogger went down at the same time as BoLS, and that there are plenty of other warhammer sites that linked to faeit's blog that didn't go down.

Don't worry next week anyone who complained about finecast will be waking up with the horse head and an announcement that all plastic models are being "Redesigned for maximum appeal" to finecast :P

[jgebi]

honestly if they went all finecast it might be better as they would be forced to make really good casts

[OrksOrksOrks]

What are you smokin' OP?


Cause I'll take some!

in all seriousness, if GW had a problem with BoLs and Faeit they are not going to talk to either of them, they like to ignore the fanbase when they can. (see bloodbowl)

They're not "ignoring the fanbase" with Blood Bowl, the way blood bowl is structured means its hard for them to keep making money on it, once you've bought your team, you don't really have to buy much else, great for the player, not great for when they want to turn a profit. If they can find a way to make it profitable, of course they'd start it up again and with the last 2 limited edition Boxed Games, they have worked out a way

[Mr Mystery]

They're not "ignoring the fanbase" with Blood Bowl, the way blood bowl is structured means its hard for them to keep making money on it, once you've bought your team, you don't really have to buy much else, great for the player, not great for when they want to turn a profit. If they can find a way to make it profitable, of course they'd start it up again and with the last 2 limited edition Boxed Games, they have worked out a way

I very much suspect someone has procured a license to the specialist games. They're popular enough to make a profit, rather than run at a loss, but when you're a big fish, you want maximum profit, rather than 'cottage industry' profits. Bloodbowl, Epic et al are frankly crying out to be licensed off, along with the moulds, to someone who wants to sell games and is happy with a modest profit.....

No insider info here folks. Just idle speculation, and a gut feeling.

[Desaster]

Although I know just as much as you do, I assume that BoLS got bagged because Blogger/Google shut down all blogs on which Faeit had writing rights.

I don't think this is any kind of conspiracy, blogger just doesn"t care about the damage they do and as we see, they are willing to set things right again if you can prove they made a mistake.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Before everyone goes overboard with conspiracy theories

Too late!

It doesn't help that the owner of this site, while he did point out in the frontpage post that there wasn't actually any evidence as yet of GW doing anything in re: BOLS, was also more than happy to write and post a bunch of things in this a-here forum insinuating that Big Bad GW had struck again and that you should shun them. They're the new TSR! Their strategy is backfiring!

What strategy? You just said there's no evidence that they were involved (as yet). Which one is it? You can't have it both ways.

And I know this is emotive, having your website spiked sucks, and I agree that you've got a right to be as mad as hell if this is really what happened. But you can't take the high ground and tell people there's no evidence (as yet) that you were spiked by GW *and* at the same time try and whip up your readership against them by insinuating that they did. If it comes out that GW had no involvement except to send a memo to Google, who ****ed up and hit a lot of non-related sites with a clumsy spike of one thing, then even if you say "sorry, it wasn't GW!" then you've already planted the seed in people's minds that they did.

If you're the owner of a big and well-regarded News Site, that does mean you've got a certain amount of responsibility to not just spread innuendo and insinuation when the facts are not actually clear. Yes, yes, "suspicious timing". This isn't actually evidence of malfeasance. When this is all cleared up, maybe then we can talk about whether GW's legal department went too far.

[Mr Mystery]

Too late!

It doesn't help that the owner of this site, while he did point out in the frontpage post that there wasn't actually any evidence as yet of GW doing anything in re: BOLS, was also more than happy to write and post a bunch of things in this a-here forum insinuating that Big Bad GW had struck again and that you should shun them. They're the new TSR! Their strategy is backfiring!

What strategy? You just said there's no evidence that they were involved (as yet). Which one is it? You can't have it both ways.

And I know this is emotive, having your website spiked sucks, and I agree that you've got a right to be as mad as hell if this is really what happened. But you can't take the high ground and tell people there's no evidence (as yet) that you were spiked by GW *and* at the same time try and whip up your readership against them by insinuating that they did. If it comes out that GW had no involvement except to send a memo to Google, who ****ed up and hit a lot of non-related sites with a clumsy spike of one thing, then even if you say "sorry, it wasn't GW!" then you've already planted the seed in people's minds that they did.

If you're the owner of a big and well-regarded News Site, that does mean you've got a certain amount of responsibility to not just spread innuendo and insinuation when the facts are not actually clear.

Unless you're Fox News. Who indeed thrive on innuendo and insinuation due to an acute allergy to facts