stratigo

I mean, large corporations steal the IP of individual creators all the time :D. I do think Europe (and by extension, the UK) does a better job than America are protecting smaller creators from predatory companies. GW's run afoul of this in the pat actually. I mean the story is actually usually "The person that actually makes things of creative value has that thing they made bought out by the boring money guy, often for far less then it is actually worth, because the boring money guy knows how to manipulate money and has few morals, and the creative simply doesn't" But, you know, I wish GW would use all that hiring power they got to hire people who actually know how to make an app. Cause like, it's a comedy of errors in there from what I hear from people who know someone working on it. GW the business doesn't make anything. It hires people that makes things for it, who do NOT see a equal return for the things that they make proportional to what the people who own, but have no involvement in, GW make. Thus it is not actual fairness to equate GW, the corporation that holds IP, to a creator who creates an IP themselves and thus owns it. The actual reality is that GW has more protections afforded to it de facto, and even de jure, then an individual creator. The law does not protect them equally, it protects GW more then any individual. I would not be nearly as critical if we had equal IP protection in fact as well as in law, but that's not the world we live in. The world we live in is that a corporation, by dint of its resource advantage and ability to pressure politicians, has more rights then any individual creator. This is just the facts, and like, yes we can accept this is true, but it kind of stands to be commented upon quite harshly because, pardon my french, it's ******. GW commits to a lot of hilariously anti consumer things mate. Like, a lot a lot. And again, the law treat an entity like GW with far more even handedness in actual reality then you indie animator. Honestly I am waited on baited breathe to see if they try to shut down alfabusa, because he has the clearest source of non review based fair use I have ever seen via parody. But I can guarantee to you if GW goes at him, he's done, no matter what the law protects. I mean maybe I am vastly overestimating the amount of knowledge people have, but I feel like y'all know that larger, wealthier entities are better protected under the law then smaller, poorer entities. You don't seriously think the law is actually equal right? In practice or in writing. I mean, I did post the link to capitalist realism, but I didn't think people fell this hard into it to think that the system is truly strictly fair to literally everyone because this is so blatantly not the case.

Luckily a lot of AoS is dictated by either teleports or mega speed. Like, warclans will literally be right in the foxes' face no matter how much they run

Mate, your way of approaching this is "It is equally ethical to support the IP rights of small creators and multi million dollar IP holders and if you don't do both, you are a hypocrite" And, no. Not at all. See on a basic level, a small creator creates the thing and then owns it. A corporation pays someone else for a created thing and then owns it. It's quite different on a basic level. GW, as a corporation, creates nothing, they just pay people to create things. The technical "owners" of a company like GW are largely divorced from its day to day operations, (Kirby still shows up to do things though, but not that much). You can support the rights of one (say, through IP rights til their death plus x years) and not another (IP rights for an ever extending period that will realistically never end) without hypocrisy. But this is just another "S;eboda things you have to do things exactly the way GW says or you aren't a real fan/playing the real game" style thing. Except here it's not just bullying people out of the hobby, it's bullying people out of jobs and creative pursuits. Do you think, say, TTS is infringing on GW's IP? I mean I'm not sure I'll ever buy another GW rulebook again until they get their heads out of their rearends and start offering them digitally again and stop trying to double dip the costs for two products I find strictly inferior to a simple pdf. Again, chapterhouse did indeed lose most of the cases (there were a lot), but GW really can't trademark models that don't exist. Which is why they don't try any more, and that's fine (though it has had a knockon hobby effect) Yes you can trademark things in a narrow industry even if they mean things in a broader context. But GW failed to prove several things were narrow enough. Imperial guard, for example, exists in several historicals because.... imperial guards are in fact historic military formations. But in the context of wargaming, imperial guard is just too general an idea to trademark. Same with space marines I believe, I don't think they won this particular trademark, but I can be wrong. They definitely did not win trademarking an octogon cause it shows up in tau iconography. I mean, Disney is literally the big elephant in the room of IP law cause they keep successfully pushing IP laws further and further in their favor using their wealth to bribe (I mean lobby) politicians. Logically nothing follows at all. You can logically support small creators over large corporations because you think small creators are more deserving of protection by law or freedom from law then large corporations are. Instead of the reverse which is literally true in the modern world. Cause Disney actually does do this and get away with it. Opposing corporations is, indeed, a moral good since the legal system is set up so heavily to favor them over the average individual. You have to already be quite rich by the standards of America, or have the ability to collectivize your legal action to challenge a corporation in law. And that last one is increasingly harder to do from decisions handed down at the SCOTUS level and legislation on the nature of contracts, at least here in America. I won't speak for Europe in these cases because I simply don't know. When the law where I live actually treats corporations fairly, I'll be more willing to consider this idea that one has to be 'fair' to corporations rhetorically. But I can tell ya, this day ain't ever gonna come. I support the rights of small creators because they struggle to defend their own. I don't need to support the rights of corporations, the entire legal system bends over backwards to make sure they have more then their fair share of rights. I do, in fact, spend quite a bit of time thinking about the ethics of my positions, thank you very much (hint, I'm a utilitarian) EDIT: Actually, I think you're smart enough to get this concept, so i'll do you one better. We, as a society, from America to Europe to Asia (and even increasingly in nominally communist China) live under a philosophic concept called Capitalist Realism. I push back against corporations because the default assumption in modern society is that the concept of corporations (Which can be divorced from individual corporations that do things too obviously bad to ignore) and the system they are a part of (capitalism to be clear) are an inherent good and there can be no alternatives to the economic and political systems we have right now. We have reached the end of history, and it was a capitalistic one the whole time. I do not think this (obviously). I think the errors of the current system can be examined and fixed, and so push back against the idea that you have to be fair to corporations. We live under a philosophic framework that corporations are an inherently good institution. So, this is why I don't bother defending them, because society is set up to do that from the ground up. I don't need to point out the good things the concept of corporations and capitalism provides, you learn that from when you can understand language to when you die. But any pushback to the idea that perhaps the current system has very VERY serious flaws has to be shouted loudly because it is yelling to the entire theoretic framework we live under. It's not actually hard to find a place to draw the line. That line is just made super scary, least here in America, cause it was made clear by communists (Although a lot of it was talked about by Adam Smith, of Wealth of Nations fame. But, like, even an originator for many modern capitalist ideas is too socialist for modern corporations), and anything remotely connected to it terrifies a lot of Americans But here's the line. The content creator verse the content owner. A person or team small enough that they are actively involved in the creation of the content verse an entity that owns the content by virtue of paying someone else who has actually made it. There's your line. It's usually pretty easy to find (there's some fuzziness when you get to true small business, but GW is Weeeeeell over the line) Companies are not, actually collections of people working together. They are collections of people working FOR someone. Usually most of those someones are not even involved with the company. The vast majority of people working for a company largely have little say in how the company is run, and the people who do are often partially owners (and also often ****** the company itself for personal profit. Just look how often Bobby Kotick elects to raise his salary over shareholder protest) A company worth over a billion dollars is... a billion dollar company, yes. You don't value a house if it costs 100 thousand dollars to buy and go "Well actually this house is a ten thousand dollar house because that's how much the price changed from when it was last bought" And, I hate to break it to you, but IP laws are super political. It's actually telegraphed in the word "law" There is a difference between GW and Activision (for one GW actually pays most of its taxes ). But it is largely a difference in scale, not kind (except, again, GW pays most of its taxes. Good on em for that). And this is a thread about GW practices, so fitting GW into the modern economic system that, you know, it actually is a part of, is just gonna, like, happen?

Hmmm, sleboda here to tell us that if you don't support a big corporation's right to lobby the government to declare copyrights only expire in 1000000 years is truly ethical and if you think modern IP regimes are slanted in the favor of corporations you are a bad person. I am shocked.

Pirate materials open a website up to liability and that is absolutely not at all worth the stress and hastle the owners would have to deal with if GW came down on them, which GW eventually would. Like, I think piracy can be understood in a moral dimension and wether it is wrong or right ethically is depending on context. But I also don't expect people to host pirated materials and essentially ask GW to hit them with legal action. That would suck, and the game is absolutely not worth that sort of sacrifice. Also, like, come on dude, you absolutely know where to look, you don't need TGA to be posting scans. On the other hand, nah dawg, this ain't reasonable. Fair use exists for a reason mate. And it should, IP stranglehold impoverishes all of us world wide, and the continued consolidation and extension of IP rights in the hands of smaller and smaller companies stifles creativity. We are, as a society, made dumber by it. Reviews, batreps, tourney coverage is all explicit fair use, and you can legally very much use images of GW trademarked products in these things. Animations likely not, and that is sad. Yes they will. Like GW isn't gonna spare fan animators who have no income stream and they don't have to. No com pany might want to deal with it, but no individual can actually afford to, and we should not ask people bankrupt themselves (and then still lose because they can't pay the legal bills) to try and fight a billion dollar corporation overstepping its legal authority. I don't think you understood the chapterhouse suits. To be clear, GW won the majority of them. But it turned out you can't claim trademark on a model that doesn't exist or a military unit called imperial guard or a friggen shape. All things GW did try to do. The parts of the suit they lost wasn't because they failed to go after their IP voraciously enough, it's that they were trying to trademark things that could not be trademarked.

I did mean in an actual situation you'd face in the game, eg, someone who has buffed their heroes. Chaos especially has an embarrassment of plus 1 to saves.

It REALLY isn't the law that decides anything. For hosted videos, the hosts will decide everything. That means Youtube, who will side with the corporations. The trick is ultimately GW is a billion dollar company. People doing videos, ESPECIALLY as their career, might have a few ten thousand in their savings account. Maybe even a hundred or so if they got themselves a nice inheretence. And a lot to all of that will go away if you decide to fight over fair use in court.

I play a faction that literally doesn't have wizards, so like magic dominence or not doesn't make much a difference for how I play. But I can see people who DO have wizards being frustrated that a number of common lists just shut them off. But you are right, it is 3 plus save hero monsters that are bending the meta around them. Only some of them do megamagic.

Huh, no delete function?

Every 3 plus save monster hero is hard to kill with anything but mass mortal wounds, not just god characters. But, roll up 40 sisters against any 3 plus save hero monster in the game and see what happens. I guarantee the results aren't gonna be what you think

Archaon is usually showing up in Tzeentch, which styles hard on anything but other mega caster factions

I think you are missing the meta. Skinks aren't it anymore, and sentinels haven't made it yet. The meta is things nagash is really good at killing right now.

Who do you think crushes Nagash? Like... archaon? Maybe? That's about it. And there's a reason archaon based lists are showing up eeeeeverywhere

Arcane bolt is really good is how.

it will be depressing. And also I am... not convinced they are actually useful.

There's plenty of needless complexity in AoS. Indeed the whole rules lawyer debate silliness kind of proves that.

It was mentioned in the early tournament results thread here. He is a strong counter to the pushed meta unit of three plus save monsters because he just trashes them so hard, and can do so fairly efficiently. Note, bonereapers is probably NOT a good place for him cause he really benefits from the new command abilities. Lot of folks think SBGL are an A tier army right now.

Please, no, not 140 arkanauts, no. Oh god the horror. The horror!

Nagash has definatgely shown up in early competitive lists. He kills an infinite number of 3 plus save hero monsters.

Yeah, wouldn't want to have a chance to stop that flying necromancer from throwing a purple sun down the entire enemy army's line. Magic was absolute nonsense in 8th edition when you could guarentee or near guarentee a cast even over a dispel.

the problem that any changes to make spellcasting in general stronger just reinforces the dominance of the megamagic armies.

Welcome to how dumb rule lawyer debates get every single time

I mean, the old WHFB legitimately did spellcasting better.

Well, a changer of ways would never fail to cast a spell for one. This just makes power casting armies all the more oppressive.

Yes but if you play with these models in matched play, you are obviously making up an entirely new game and are bad for not playing purely to the text as written and should be spanked. Obviously. At least according to a number of posters here.