Unfortunately, My Signature is Full... Can add nothing more to it...
So... I use it as my tag line... Much like Medicineman Dances...

Keep the Faith

And, Fistandantalus, I never took Tymeaus' "keep the faith" tag line as religious in nature.
"Keep the Faith" has always, to me, been the same as "keep up the fight" where one thinks
saying such would be dangerous. Or a statement encouraging people to keep up with the dream,
whatever said dream is(Ireland for the Irish, MLK's Dream, finding an honest politician, keeping
to music for music's sake, or any other revolutionary ideal)

If only there was some sort of show called Firefly
Where the main character was non religious
but was driven to have and keep Faith in something..

Then we gamers would have a reference.

Sadly, this must all be in my head.

BlueMax
/two by two
//max of Blue

Then why doesn't he say something like: "Keep having fun", "Keep the dream alive", or something non-inherently religious?

Cain, if you don't like his affirmation perhaps it's you that have a problem. You being offended does not obligate him to change.

Are you saying this song is "inherently religious"? : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7oZnBH05s
When you sneeze, and someone says "Bless you", do you tell them off? Do you refuse to use cash because
it says "in god we trust" on every bill and coin? Certain phrases over time lose any direct religious connection.

Soo back to speculation about CGL. Any new speculation... ?

Maybe he could time travel back to the seventies and use "Keep on Truckin'!"

I have noticed a drop off on twitter posts from the CGL Twitterati. Last few make me think that
they are working on ALOT of stuff right now...I almost wish I could make GenCon this year...

Yes I'm currently speculating that the company will be infiltratrated by wannabe shadowrunners in a attempt to get a data steal of the current work in progress.

This run has been paid for by two opposing factions one side we have the loyalists who wish to use the data as a banner of joy to show how good the world will be when the final copies come and the opposition wish to use the half finished work to show how poor the world we be soon.


I do have half a mind to try writing up a game based on some of what's happened just for fun.

Disco will never die!

You forget, I'm old enough to have danced in polyester suits to the Bee Gees. In fact, my first date was at a disco in the 70's.

Back to topic, does anyone want to try calling CGL and asking for a reference for Bobby Derie? I'll speculate that you get a few negative things said.

Negative number one: "No, Derie was not employed here"

he was a Freelancer right? That adds even more the the mix of possible pre-determined responses.

BlueMax

aaah, i see ^^
yeah, okay, now i can see 1how that would fit too O.o

No need for a tag line when one can use a signature. So please move your tag line into it and change your sig accordingly.

Wow, that's totally on topic. Not.

Seriously

Someone is actually having problems about someone using the word faith, wow.

Back to the subject at hand. Are we there yet?

I just hope if they retain Shadowrun, they will do what they are supposed to do and pay people on time.

Pretty please ? I'd so run that

Well I did start making notes on some ideas for one but i'm not sure if it would be appriate to post on here as some of the people / events might be abit sore still.

Well, take all the notes you need, change a few details for added juicyness, guss it up some more, inject laughs & fun, then publish.

You can base it on the actual events. We do that all the time with real life events in-game. This would just be another one. Just since this one would be personal, change up some of the events so they cannot be slanderous/libelous, offensive, etc.

What about from Shadowrun's biggest fan, Frank? Has he been raking any muck lately?

All Frank-related (and others) muck raking, legal discussion and speculation can be found in "The Shadowrun Situation" thread on The Gaming Den.

I just loved the assertion made (by Randall from an interview) that freelancer works are automatically owned by Topps even before the freelancer is paid for them. The freelancer couldn't even pull copyright as the contract makes the work not owned by them the very moment it came into being. Then the logical leap of "It's ours by default and we don't have to pay the freelancer right away/ever". That the most a freelancer could do is sue for breach of contract.

This of course assumes a given company is operating under the Evil Twirling Mustache mindset.

Perhaps freelanccing should take a cue from BattleTech universe... the hiring company and the prospective writer engage a neutral 3rd party that holds the payment in escrow. Upon signing the contract, the payment is given to the 3rd party to hold. That way, upon delivery of the final product, the 3rd party pays the writer.

All in all, the more I find out about the legal ramifications of professional writing, the less I am inclined to support it when there is the hint of mischief afoot.

Yeah, this year will be interesting. While I was cleaning up in preparation for moving, I found a few things. So, since I'm writing for SR now and working the booth at GenCon this year, I'll be bringing along a draft of the original rulebook for SR that I acquired that fans can peruse at the booth. Just a little touch that I'll add this year.

Shiny!

We're diehard fans and players of a game system where your character has a 50/50 chance of getting a bullet or getting paid upon completion of a job. On a good run. Of course we assume a given company is operating under the Evil Twirling Mustache mindset.

Here is the link (.pdf) to the US Copyright Office's legal definition of work for hire, which is what all SR freelancers are considered to be and how all contracts are worded. I've also consulted with a friend who specializes in copyright and patent law. Bills' statement was correct. A freelancer who has signed a work for hire contract cannot (legally) withhold copyright as a tactic to recover owed sums of money. A freelancer can sue for breach of contract.

Who did you kill to get your hands on that ??
Or do you mean draft copy if sr v4 ??

This post has a significant amount of truth in it.

Jason H.

I doubt anyone's going to be running a data steal on Catalyst right now.

Unless the intention is to steal a finished proof, then properly edit and proof it before another run to replace the original.

No, draft of SR 1, complete with a Shark totem, post-its, comments and a 7th-grade-esque report binding.
I have my ways....

I know people who would kill for that . .
Even better, i know people who would pay to get that . .
*sharpens letter-opener*

If someone at GenCon could take a picture, it would be appreciated. No desire to read the the text, only to see and feel how the draft presented itself.

BlueMax

Did you buy it off that guy who had all the notes/rough drafts from the old FASA building?

That was Propwash. Prop is the guy who bought up the majority of the Virtual World Battletech pods, and now takes them around to various conventions and shows. Very cool guy.

I have no idea if that's who KC got this from though. There's a lot of that material kicking around though, if you know where to look. I still have most of the 3rd ed core books in Kinko's Spiral Bound format from when we did various playtests. Not quite as awesome as a 1st edition, to be sure, but still

Bull

Somewhere... I have several manuscripts for 2XS.

If someone says they have hairs from Nigel head, I'm going to be envious and disturbed all at the same time... yeah I post that... yeah I'd ban me to...


I think I just threw up a little in my mouth

Buy? Nick's a friend. Though he got the piece of binder paper that appears to have started BattleTech. That was pretty cool to see, the proverbial cocktail napkin. Bunch of interesting stuff to be found, including a script from Star Trek...five? Luckily I got the draft, it will be fun to share.

The important keywords, here, are "signed" and "contract".
I don't know how it's handled now, but when I was writing, very few freelancers signed contracts, or at least, they were usually signed long time after the work was done, and often after it was published...

Mike

I so hated the Seventies... but I was young then...

Keep the Faith

x 2 for a photo of SR1 draft, would never get to Gencon to see it myself, but a photo would make my day.

Edit: added the word 'draft' so it makes sense

Nobody is disputing that this is the case. We are pointing out that this is a shift in attitude from CGL.







Oh look, a shift in attitude that was predicted in Thread 2 by someone that was derided as a lunatic by nearly everybody here.

Topps are clearly large enough to be classed as a Corporation from an SR perspective, which might as well be a euphemism for scumbags, and are passing their habits on to CGL.

This will lead nowhere good from our perspective.

Unless there are exceptions I'm unaware of, all freelancers sign work-for-hire contracts with IMR.


It was very clear from Bills' statement in the podcast that he didn't understand copyright law at the time. That's just bad business and if you look back through the speculation threads you'll see posts from people like Jay "Demonseed Elite" Levine stating that poor business practices are nothing new, even prior to this blowup. So, no, there's no shift in attitude. Just an increase of awareness. People are only now noticing because these practices are actually beginning to affect product quality, there has been a loss of fan-favorite talent, and there are severe accusations that could result in interruptions to the product line.


Viewing real life through a fictional lens makes for ridiculous assumptions. Topps has nothing to do with any of IMR/CGL's questionable behaviors.

Considering how long Calbeck's dispute has been brewing, it harly seems like a new attitude. Just Topps has the lawyers on retainer who specialize in copyright and trademark law to smack his claims down.

BTW, my understanding is that his lawsuit consisted of claiming that WizKids/Topps used a page or so overview of a mercenary unit that he wrote up as a proposal for FASA. I believe he wanted the Battletech license as compensation.

Though, irony of ironies, it may be a relatively new attitude for Catalyst, as it was LLC who most recently tried to contact Calbeck and resolve his complaints with the license holder at the time, WizKids.

http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/forum/ind...fbcec#msg100225

The one bit of good that's gradually been coming out of all this is that CGL might have a greater respect for getting contracts signed and keeping up their end of those contracts.

Also, consider that this position taken by Topps was in 2009, and there's little doubt that CGL was aware of it then. I think it shows a greater significance to the way that CGL responded to freelancers who 'withheld copyright' considering that CGL knew Topps' position would be on just how much weight such an argument holds. Though it also may be that the freelancers were more specifically threatening breach of contract, which in the popular view got changed into 'withheld copyright'.

Midnight was withdrawn from shelves well before the date any Freelancer could have expected payment for it according to what I understand of IMR's schedule for paying freelancers. Do the freelancers contracts work on a per-project basis, or is there a single contract signed when the freelancer starts working with them, that covers all the work that freelancer submits, regardless of which book it is for? If it is the former, the Cease and Desist letter that IMR received couldn't have been related to breach of contract, as they'd not yet reached the date to which they could be deliquent on their payment schedule for that particular book.

Freelancers are contracted on a per project basis. Even those of us who are working on a single "project" that has multiple products being produced. I have over a dozen contracts I need to get signed and turned in for Missions related stuff.

Bull

Shadowrunners debating the nature of freelancers.

Holy Drek Batman! You can really find anything on the intertubes.

BlueMax

Yes, yes there is.

Previously CGL had the attitude that Free-lancers had the right to pull their work in the case of a disagreement.

Now CGL has the attitude that once you sign a contract every word you write in pursuance of that contract belongs to them regardless of whether they pay you or not.

He flat out said that Bobbie's PACKS material belongs to Topps.

Nice of you to classify my assumptions as ridiculous.

Care to back that up with debate or was it just straight ad homimem?

I quoted Topps saying 'all your work are belong to us' even if there is no contract and we didn't ask you to submit it to us.

Several months of weekly contact with Topps later CGL is singing an almost identical tune. That's good evidence of a causal link.

Care to counter?

As I understand it he wanted part ownership of the entire property.

His point was that they used his material which did not belong to them as it had not been created as 'work for hire'. They stole his copyrighted material and used it without permission.

His point is that legally that should make him co-creator under US law.

He's not wrong. If you take my copyrighted lyrics and add a score I own half the copyright on the resulting song.

His case looks ridiculous but that is by his own admission a matter of magnitude rather than merit. Asking for half of Battletech is ridiculous.

Wanting to retain control of his own copyrighted material? Not so much.

The problem is that his claim disregards magnitude. His 7 page contribution amounts to very little in the BTech universe, and WizKids withdrawing the use of those 7 pages seemed to set him off even worse than their use of them.

It's not a mater of them using his lyrics in their song, it's a matter of them using a word he made up in their song. He got pissed, they took the word out, he got even more pissed.

It's not helped by the fact that at this point the property has been through the hands of three companies, FASA, WizKids, and Topps, not to mention two licensees, Catalyst and Fanpro. Topps is basing their position on what to them is standard operating procedure, which, unfortunately was not the same for FASA, when the content was originally submitted.

To bring this up only as a parallel example, look at Ancient's snippet in the Corp book that got through layout even though they meant to fully replace his content. Jason admitted the mistake happened and it has apparently be removed from the PDF and the print version. Not good, but it was handled. Now if Ancient came back and made a bigger stink about the fact that it was taken out and that the fact that it was ever included at all means he's now co-owner of Shadowrun, I think we'd all think he was more than a bit crazy.

Throw in a claim that his snippet was based on a larger submitted text that included a corporate division where pink unicorns rode Lone Star cops and thus makes pink unicorns riding Lone Star cops canon in the Shadowrun universe, and you can see why the general fan community might have even less sympathy for his claims.

Previously, IMR was woefully unaware of copyright law and complied with a cease and desist letter for fear of being subject to significant liability. Now, they've consulting with intellectual property lawyers and have an informed view of their rights, the freelancers' rights, and how they could have handled the situation when it arose.

I don't think there's anything terrible or surprising about their prior ignorance. It would have been better to know in the first instance, of course, but do most small businesses really understand those sorts of things? Not so much, in my experience. Most people just use boilerplate forms, or they rely on what their attorney puts in front of them and don't ask many questions. Hell, most lawyers don't know much about intellectual property law. It's a niche practice area and IP clients often go to boutique/specialty firms. Patent lawyers and patent agents even have their own, separate bar exam.

As for "all your work belong to us" . . . no one's saying that, that I've seen. The Topps/CalBeck issue is a red herring. He tendered a submission without a contract, his work was withdrawn on request after accidental use, and his suit concerned the status of the license rather than the status of his work or payment therefor. Totally different situation, largely irrelevant to the freelancer issues here. I don't think he even asked for money damages for the time his work was in use; he went straight for partial control of the whole BattleTech IP.

Also, holding the copyright to something isn't necessarily useful if there's a contract stating that payment is due for the work. You can't publish it without paying up. Non-payment after proper performance is a breach and should give the author a cause of action on the contract itself, possibly for economic torts. Randall flatly stated that the freelancers could have pursued a contract remedy, so it's not like he was contending the freelancers were powerless or that IMR could have used their work without any consequence.

A more interesting legal question is the status of Bobby's work after he pulled his contracts. Frankly, I'm not an intellectual property guy, so I've got no idea how that one shakes out.