Got my first takedown notice

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Got something interesting today. One of the PC gamer magazines I put up on Archive a couple of years ago was taken down.

I was wondering if Retromags has received any notices recently?

[MigJmz]

Yup i got hit with a few of this on archive.org. Lets hope these strikes are from the actual publisher and not some random idiot posing as them. I wonder how they prove that these are from the actual people...?

 

"You are only permitted to upload materials that you have the rights to. The Internet Archive disables accounts that repeatedly violate the copyrights of others."

Do they not know that most everything on archive is taken / copyrighted content illegally uploaded?? LOL 

 

[Areala]

The only official takedown request we've received (that I'm aware of) came from Game Informer, who explained they have an archival system in place for their magazine already and requested that we not host issues here. That's why GI is marked "Not Allowed" in the database.

When Nintendo went after the Internet Archive for hosting all the Nintendo Power scans a few years ago, we removed our copies as well. This was in preemptive self defense, since the Archive was hosting copies of our files with the credits page still intact, which could have pointed Nintendo at us, so NP went away while all that was being sorted out. With Nintendo Power having ceased publication almost ten years ago, this seems less likely to be an issue.

*huggles*
Areala

[godane]

10 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Got something interesting today. One of the PC gamer magazines I put up on Archive a couple of years ago was taken down.

I was wondering if Retromags has received any notices recently?

The Publishers Association has been DMCAing some of my stuff i have also. What was weird is stuff like some of my Linux Format cds was was also taken down. What weird about is that i only took down some stuff i had but no the full collection of Linux Format disk. And to add to the weird Linux Format is releasing current dvd iso's on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/@lxfjb

I comes across as the Left hand doesn't know how the Right hand is doing. But also the dmcas are very random. Here is one of the big takedowns that made me question why they didn't take down the collection:

 

 

[vgmax]

Interesting. A law went on the books recently in USA to stop content aggregation of copyrighted content, was sneaked inside the Covid recovery bill in December as a rider. We should not expect companies to turn a blind eye to anarchivism much longer... a theory is circulating that freely available content competes with non-free content ("market displacement" is the term), thus all non-strategic use of a company's intellectual property holdings to be inhibited (including old mags). PC Gamer be like, "our old mags compete with our new stuff, even though we don't offer them because we don't got them anymore". Same theory that old games compete with new games. It's all about where people's time is being spent..." if you can corral a person into being your customer, do so" is the logic.

I did a presentation on the anti-piracy movement/scam last month for class. The place we are headed is frankly quite disturbing. I can post the presentation (PowerPoint format) if you're interested.

Ethereal I would definitely watch out for the reappearance of that issue somewhere in the care of Future plc in the future. Very likely they will steal your work.

 

If there are any PC Gamer mags left there, I will archive them tonight. I saw like 30-40 before the 2000s yesterday. Also Internet Archive not a reliable place to post potentially marketable content... the games themselves will likely go offline in the next couple years. The intellectual brutes of society think they are ascendant and are gonna be really uncompromising and vicious going forward.

Edited May 21, 2021 by vgmax

[vgmax]

OK so I checked IA out and there are definitely some things there that shouldn't be. What is strange to me is the fact that they went after the old stuff that had been scanned rather than the blatantly pirated ebooks from Future's digital store. In any case the issue TC mentioned seems to be restored to the site.

Edited May 21, 2021 by vgmax
double post

[hardcorehubz]

The Publishers Association is doing a sweep on the IA from what I understand and taking down a lot of stuff unfortunately. My two Super Plays I uploaded were taken down (luckily they're here thanks to MigJmz). Hopefully it gets sorted out before more and more stuff is yanked. What's weird is that the two super plays were taken down seperately, one was weeks after the other one so I'm not really sure how they're finding this stuff. Maybe uploading without mentioning the publisher going forward would help avoid takedowns. Not sure.

[vgmax]

Not likely. Search bar returns all keyword results eventually. They are foolish to think that they are serving shareholders by striking the mags from legit services like IA or this one. If not at IA, here, or oldgamemags the next place that will turn up in the Google/DuckDuckGo/Dogpile results is not a place they want people to know exists. However it's likely the Publishers Association doesn't actually know the details, they've probably just outsourced the job of "protecting content" to a takedown firm (this is what's usually done).

Edited May 21, 2021 by vgmax

[MigJmz]

i've stop editing this week just to download all the files I can get on IA. I suggest to backup all scans on external HD's!

[hardcorehubz]

I've got backups of all my stuff if you ever need anything lmk

[JHD]

 

This is yet another good reason to maintain personal copies of everything that looks interesting. I have no idea how many of the game magazines that I have downloaded are no longer available online (once I have them, there is no further need to look for them), but I do know that I have copies of other material that is no longer available. In some cases, content creators have chosen to monetize previously freely available content. 

 

I have no interest in sharing or redistributing any of this material, of course, but my own local, offline copy is utterly immune to  anything short of a major catastrophe. I do not even trust cloud storage as I do not have full control over it.  

[AJIMS64]

On 5/21/2021 at 11:51 AM, hardcorehubz said:

I've got backups of all my stuff if you ever need anything lmk

All of the Super Play issues that were on the Internet Archive we're nuked! The only thing that remains is this special issue: https://archive.org/details/superplaymagazine

[MigJmz]

8 hours ago, AJIMS64 said:

All of the Super Play issues that were on the Internet Archive we're nuked! The only thing that remains is this special issue: https://archive.org/details/superplaymagazine

Luckily i saved a few of those and are on Retromags. I'm assuming all Future published content will be going bye bye at some point.

[hardcorehubz]

Yep! MigJmz saved the day the ones I uploaded that were yanked are safely here now

[Sivilius]

On 6/13/2021 at 5:18 PM, MigJmz said:

Luckily i saved a few of those and are on Retromags. I'm assuming all Future published content will be going bye bye at some point.

That's not good. Last I checked Future U.S. still owns Next Generation, PSM, and a few others. I have all the RetroMags uploads for NextGen but still. Yikes.

[E-Day]

Future owned stuff is probably half our content!

[MigJmz]

Hmm I think were OK over here but they might be deleted over at IA at some point.

[Realmguardian]

PC Powerplay is also owned by Future. Future has already taken the the magazine to a bi-monthly schedule from monthly. Future is also using a lot of content from PC Gamer UK in both PC Gamer USA and now PC Powerplay essentially robbing the magazines of what made them distinctly American and Australian.

Quite a few issues of PC Powerplay are on Internet Archive. Those issues (along with the DVDs and CDs) may end up disappearing in the future if Future aggressively pursues copyright claims.

I have an almost complete set of PC Gamer USA since I subscribed beginning with Issue 1. I may have a complete set. It has been a while since I checked.

There is a distinct difference between the early issues under Imagine and the later issues under Future. The same with the issues of PC Powerplay before Future took over in 2018.