...and my traffic is up. Because I'm writing again, or because people are hobbying instead of reading news? Guess we'll never know... I'm not a news site, but there seems to be a lot of rumours circulating at the moment, so I thought I'd do my part to put some of them to rest. Yes, Bell of Lost Souls is down right now, but it's supposedly due to technical problems that are "looking mighty suspicious by the hour." according to their official announcement, which you can read for yourself:
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?31218-BoLS-FRONTPAGE-STATUS-Official-Announcement
General pointing of fingers seems to be the posting of pics from an unreleased White Dwarf which seems to be the reason Faeit 212 is gone. ( http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512c/notice.cgi?NoticeID=928410 ) Tabletop Fix has also announced they'll no longer be covering GW products: http://ttfix.blogspot.ca/2013/04/public-service-announcement_30.html
Now, there's a lot of people pissed off over this, but it's actually one of the areas where I can't help but back GW. Some people are arguing that White Dwarf is just a monthly catalogue that GW wants you to pay for or that other designers post pics of upcoming stuff for free... doesn't matter... point still remains that it's copyrighted / "secret" upcoming works that GW doesn't want leaked until they're ready to display them. You can't really fault them for taking that stuff down. If someone started reposting articles from my blog, you can bet I'd take action.
That said, I don't fully understand what is and isn't "fair use" and what breaks "news" sites get for posting anything their sources provide them.
It does highlight a chilling trend that Google has with taking down data and not providing proper means of responding to take down requests. (Yes, BoLS is supposedly a "tech" problem, but even they seem to be getting a "suspicious" run around" from Google.) Google has even begun denying users the opportunity to respond to take down requests on YouTube and has even admitted that they have agreements with some media partners so that even if a video is taken down mistakenly, they won't re-enable the content.
( http://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/DMCA/youtube_refusing_honor_dmca_counter_notices )
Anyways, I guess BoLS is working on the issue AND looking at getting private hosting where takedown channels must be handled more formally.
[UPDATE]
They're running again, down for about a day, maybe less.. official word is still "technical difficulties".
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/05/bols-returns.html
That said, I don't fully understand what is and isn't "fair use" and what breaks "news" sites get for posting anything their sources provide them.
It does highlight a chilling trend that Google has with taking down data and not providing proper means of responding to take down requests. (Yes, BoLS is supposedly a "tech" problem, but even they seem to be getting a "suspicious" run around" from Google.) Google has even begun denying users the opportunity to respond to take down requests on YouTube and has even admitted that they have agreements with some media partners so that even if a video is taken down mistakenly, they won't re-enable the content.
( http://www.newmediarights.org/copyright/DMCA/youtube_refusing_honor_dmca_counter_notices )
Anyways, I guess BoLS is working on the issue AND looking at getting private hosting where takedown channels must be handled more formally.
[UPDATE]
They're running again, down for about a day, maybe less.. official word is still "technical difficulties".
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/05/bols-returns.html