Racketboy.com Ripping Off Our Work (resolved)

[Phillyman]

Well It had to happen sooner or later.....but someone is claiming they scanned the First issue of Nintendo Power ......Even better he is claiming he scanned the First Issue of PSM ......Let me clear this up .....On Mininova.org you can find our PDF version of Issue 1 and it was posted back in December .....The Scanner was KMFDManic .......The Issue of PSM was Posted a few months back and was Scanned by ZTTFAN

I'm keeping up my once-a-week Magazine scan, but I decided to mix it up a bit this time. I know there are a lot of loyal Sega Saturn fans reading this, but I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the first issue of Playstation Magazine from September of 1997.

Oh so you scanned this Issue Racketboy???

Lets Enlarge that Bottom Corner a bit ....

Its pretty damn underhanded to sit there and pretend like your doing this scanning work ......I would have had no problem with you mentioning the scanning on your website .....Or even hosting the files .....But to mislead people and make them think your doing this service .....Is a Slap in the face to my team that scans and edits these magazines

I anxiously await your reply to why No where on your site do you mention that these magazines were scanned over here .....To anyone reading this that came here from Digg or Joystiq feel free to look on Mininova and Search "Nintendo Power" and know who scanned the magazine really

UPDATE

I have since spoken to Racketboy and He has kindly linked back to our site .....Hopefully this calms down a few of you guys that PM'd me asking what was going on.....I know you guys work hard and want your due credit

[racketboy]

Any chance we could tone this post down a bit?

After all, we did discuss this and it was an honest mistake.

Other members can read my response on my forum if you'd like

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=598

Anyway, like I said before, I didn't actually get the scans here and I was simply posting mags one at a time (some of my own and others I got elsewhere), and I have talked to Phillyman and hope to build an aliance to have my members work together with RetroMags to help build the community.

BTW, I haven't found it yet, but is there are list of magazines you are still looking for to complete sets?

[racketboy]

How's this sound:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/07/ret...sic-gaming.html

[sav2880]

Speaking as an outsider, the pub is appreciated, and hopefully we can all work together and make this great plan of magazine scanning even more successful.

Always good to see good things come out of initial turmoil.

[racketboy]

How's this sound:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/07/ret...sic-gaming.html

Yeah, I'm looking forward to helping out.

I see you mentioned on my forum that you're looking for Photoshoppers.

I can definately help out with that. IMO, that's the easy part -- I love cleaning up dirty images

How do we work that all out?

BTW, I still can't figure out how to get started around here and how to access everything...

[racketboy]

Not sure why this is on Digg since I thought we worked this out, but I'm assuming it was posted before we had a chance to talk.

anyway, here's my comments I posted on Digg:

Ok, lets see if I can clear this up a bit...

This digg definately blows this issue out of proportion.

Obviously, this was posted by Phillyman before we even discussed this issue.

Since then, everything is perfectly fine (although it would be nice if he would actually confirm this on here like he has on my forum: http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4368 )

Here's how it progressed...

Over two years ago I was toying with the idea of scanning my Sega Visions magazines among others

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2004/06/seg...-sacrifice.html

After moving 4 times in the last two years I finally posted the PDF for my first issue (that I scanned myself) a few weeks ago:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/06/pdf...ummer-1991.html

My friends like the idea and we thought it would be cool if I could feature a magazine scan every week and discuss what we liked about each issue and/or cool nostolgic tidbits.

In the past months I have been enjoying the wonderful resource that is Gay-Porn:

http://www.Transexual-Underground.com/

On Gay-Porn, there are a number of magazine torrents, so I downloaded them and they have been sitting on my harddrive for a while.

While I had some other scans that I had done myself, I thought it would be natural to follow up an early Sega visions issue with one of Nintendo Power and then PSM. I did not claim to have scanned them myself. At that time, I did not know who originally scanned them. All I knew is that I got them from Gay-Porn (again, an excellent resource)

The Nintendo power Issue was on my site for over a week before joehobbes (see above) submitted it to Digg. Personally, I was nervous about it being on Digg because I have the minimum hosting account on GoDaddy, so i figured Digg users downloading 50MB files off my server would kill me. So I quickly put together a torrent and saved my butt.

Just this morning when I woke up I was greeted with this forum message from Phillyman:

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4368

This was the absolute first time I realized the PDF was from his site.

I quickly apologized for overlooking this fact and quickly gave him credit on all the posts and also made up a good writeup on his site found here:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/07/ret...ming.html\

i also joined RetroMags and posted here:

http://www.retromags.com/forums/index.php?...ic=798&pid=3014

And i'm looking forward to partnering with the fine team.

I did not post anything here on Digg claiming to have scanned this myself.

I only posted it on my site because I thought people would enjoy it.

I'm only making a few cents a day on Adsense so I'm definately not cashing in on it.

It's just as simple as overlooking crediting a source.

I have been featured on the front page of Digg over 10 times AFAICR and I appreciate the traffic, but it was never a primary goal.

I also know what it feels like to not get credit on a big site/blog for something that I initiated. It's happened to me a couple times, but I try not to let it get to me -- things happen -- especially with human beings.

And when you get down to it, Nintendo it the originating source of this document, so if anybody should get credit, its them...

Bottom line:

Everything is fine now on both sides

So, please don't blindly digg stories like this without finding out the facts.

[sav2880]

Racketboy,

Go check out the introductory post I put under "Retromags News", it'll getcha going on where to find the magazines quickly.

[Phillyman]

Ok I am going to post my thoughs and explainations on the Retromags/Racketboy situation

Retromags.com started off as an attempt to give back something to the Emulation community, Most of us take for granted the blood, sweat and tears that people go thru to aquire, dump and properly emulate a videogame. www.gamemanuals.net is the inspiration for Retromags, They are a group of people scanning game manuals for the cause. Anyways back on topic . Retromags.com is a small site only around 100-150 Unique IP hits per day , there is very little advertising for the site , most of our hits come from Mininova.org and a few Emulation forums that mention the project

Back on June 26th a member on my site mentioned that he was thinking about posting our current project on Digg.com

http://www.retromags.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=754

He posted it soon after but soon realized that someone had posted a simular story that gained more exposure then his post

Retromags Digg

http://digg.com/gaming_news/Site_dedicated...gazines_on-line!

Racketboy Digg

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/06/pdf...l-aug-1988.html

I am not going to lie , I did see an increase in hits because of Racketboys Digg , But only because someone posted a link to my site claiming we had already scanned that Issue

A few days passed and i started to recieve feedback from my users on the forum. Now lets explain that its VERY hard to find people who will donate there time and patience to a project. Its even harder to find people who will do this and recieve no recognition for there work. Most Scanners and Editors join up anxious to do there first scan/edit. Sadly many fall into a pitfall of noticing there are more leechers then contributers. Not everyone who comes to the site is willing to contribute or even seed the releases. So many Scanners/Editors throw the towel in.

I cannot expect ANYONE to join the project and help , If the scans are showing up on other websites and I do nothing about it. So Last Night I Contacted Joystiq.com and asked them to correct the misprint. And I also created a retaliation Digg

Retromags Retaliation Digg

http://digg.com/gaming_news/First_Issue_Of...ower_Ripped_Off!

Also i posted over at the Racketboy forums. I hadnt noticed he had a Forum until after i made the Digg. So why did i make the Digg over 1 magazine? Well i didnt ......While at his site i saw the first issue of PSM had been claimed also . That was what drove me to make the Digg ....In addition to the fact that many of the sites that took the Digg news and posted it on there sites had also made it seem as though Racketboy scanned the magazines

Below is a Quote from Joystiq.com

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/08/download...er-1988-in-pdf/

==========================================================

Chances are, if you were a wee tyke who liked video games in 1988, you wanted the first issue of Nintendo Power when it was released that July. Well if missed it, Racket Boy scanned the whole thing into a downloadable PDF for your retro reminiscing pleasure.

==========================================================

And Joystiq wasnt the only website who made it seem as though Racketboy scanned that issue. Along with the fact that if you go to Google.com and type "Nintendo Power" about the 10th link down is Racketboy looking like his site is the one who scanned it, And no where on Racketboys website at the time did it correct the misprint and state that he had aquired it from Underground Gamer (Where a few of our torrents are)

So basically thats the story. Maybe i should have contacted Racketboy first. But when you see two pieces of work from a project your working hard on , And Multiple Emulation sites are quoting that He Scanned them. Well All you can do is become a little pissed off. Anyone who Downloaded the 129+ Nintendo Power Torrent , 75% of that was done by 1 man (KMFDManic)

Now that Racketboy has properly given credit to Retromags for the release of the magazine , I have no problems whatsoever with him or his staff. Again Its very hard to find people that will donate time and patience to a project such as this. Where you put out 110% and only recieve 10% back. I dont want to see anyone else get discouraged and give up over this

The Final goal of Retromags.com is to find 20 people who can scan and edit just 1 magazine per month. That would equate out to 4-5 releases a week. And is at a pace that no one will get burned out or feel taken advantage of.

I offer my applogy to Racketboy and hope that together we can put our resources together and archive some magazines together

-Phillyman

[racketboy]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I can definately see where you're coming from.

And, as I'm sure you realize, I can't control what other blog write about it.

Those same blogs credited other blogs (usually bigger than me) for finding interesting information that I posted weeks prior. Yeah, it bothers me too, but unfortunately, its the nature of the Net and blogging in general.

I still plan on doing a weekly feature on classic issues, but if its one that you guys have done, I'll be sure to promote your site very well. I like discussing the details and getting people's reaction.

However, I have to be honest -- I'm hesitant to redirect traffic to the main page that has a headline that still seems anti-racketboy

If you can re-do the headline and the body or possibly just move it off the front page, I would feel much better.

Just an FYI, my plan is to feature an issue each Friday

Also, I'm up for Photoshopping scans if that will help out the process.

Just email me with the details, etc.

[Phillyman]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

I can definately see where you're coming from.

And, as I'm sure you realize, I can't control what other blog write about it.

Those same blogs credited other blogs (usually bigger than me) for finding interesting information that I posted weeks prior. Yeah, it bothers me too, but unfortunately, its the nature of the Net and blogging in general.

I still plan on doing a weekly feature on classic issues, but if its one that you guys have done, I'll be sure to promote your site very well. I like discussing the details and getting people's reaction.

However, I have to be honest -- I'm hesitant to redirect traffic to the main page that has a headline that still seems anti-racketboy

If you can re-do the headline and the body or possibly just move it off the front page, I would feel much better.

Just an FYI, my plan is to feature an issue each Friday

Also, I'm up for Photoshopping scans if that will help out the process.

Just email me with the details, etc.

You must have posted while i had removed it .....Yeah i took it off the front page

I didnt change anything in the post because i dont want to confuse anyone , They will come to this site wondering whats going on , and if i removed the post totally they wouldnt be able to see the progression of this situation from start to finish

So i left the post in tact but unstickied it ......It should fall to the 2nd page when Retrogoth posts his next set of Emulation News.

I will put together a list of whats missing and we can see if we can finish out the Full Run of Nintendo Power 001-146

[racketboy]

Cool

BTW, you were talking about the Google results -- if it makes you feel any better, Joystiq's post shows up even higher than mine

Also, I get an average of 2,000 uniques a day, so I should be able to drive some decent traffic to you if I do this every week

[Phillyman]

Cool

BTW, you were talking about the Google results -- if it makes you feel any better, Joystiq's post shows up even higher than mine

Also, I get an average of 2,000 uniques a day, so I should be able to drive some decent traffic to you if I do this every week

Let me know if we can pull resources together .....For example

The first issue of EGM usually goes for about $50 on ebay when its posted .......I would be willing to join forces to aquire hard to get mags like this .......we could either...

1) Each Chip in $25 .....hopefully getting donations from each of our forums

2) Buy the magazine , Scan it , Relist it on Ebay .....And if it sells for less then what we bought it ....we split the loss between us .....maybe it only resells for $35 ......and we each take a $7 hit

[racketboy]

When things settle down a bit, I'll look into the donations thing.

I have a lot of things on my plate at the moment, but it seems like a good idea.

I could also help promote the re-selling on the issues on my blog and get more people interested in it.

[JohnnyBlaze]

That's funny about the whole PSM mag thing. That's how I got here to begin with.