Balls of Steel scans NO MORE!!!!

shardian

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I just went over to balls of steel to check on Jurassic Park scans. I was greeted with the main area with a note saying he shut down the scan hosting. Something about new WMS license holders bitching or something.

Damn....that was a tremendous resource for pin folk. Does anyone happen to have a site rip?
 
So does this Wayne guy (that I hear so many stories of smiles and sunshine about) happen to have an alternative, even as a means of retail? If not, it'd be nice if he'd put out some effort to keep the Williams name around, rather than running it as far into the ground as he can.
 
Wayne is with his license stuff as Steve Young is with Gottleib. Although I think he does let a lot of parts be made as long as they pay him to make it.
 
There'd be a shit ton more playfield overlays and other graphics for this dying hobby if these guys would let up, involve more people, whatever.

Spending time grinding it into the dirt doesn't help anyone.
 
Does anyone have a backup of those scans? If that guy is going to bail on the hobby due to WMS license holders, I'm more than happy to pick up the torch. I can probably have a replacement site coded and more or less functional in a week.

I probably won't be able to host licensed scans though, so I'm not sure how many useful items could even be hosted.

The whole situation is unfortunate.
 
Does anyone have a backup of those scans? If that guy is going to bail on the hobby due to WMS license holders, I'm more than happy to pick up the torch. I can probably have a replacement site coded and more or less functional in a week.

I probably won't be able to host licensed scans though, so I'm not sure how many useful items could even be hosted.

The whole situation is unfortunate.

I talked with the owner of the site and you have no clue how much he dealt with before he "bailed as you put it" on the hobby. License holders will sue over their property and that can cost a fortune so I understand why he did it.
 
I didn't mean to imply that the site owner hadn't gone through hell with WMS license holders.

There however is still content which isn't being hounded by license holders, which could help someone on their restore.

option B is to get with the license holders and work out an agreement there. It makes no financial sense to refuse money on their part, unless they have plans to reproduce the scans in question themselves. I'm sure most people wouldn't mind paying a bit to get the scans, especially if someone wanted to send them off to a printer and get them properly scaled and printed on appropriate material.
 
I talked with the owner of the site

So is he going to give you a copy of the archive?

and you have no clue how much he dealt with

Probably a cease and desist email and some mild intimidation from a "lawyer". Feel free to enlighten us if it's something more terrible than that.

before he "bailed as you put it" on the hobby.

I would call saying "I'll just move on to another hobby" bailing on the hobby. For his sake I hope that's just an exaggeration or he's just talking about the hobby of hosting images and not the whole hobby of pinball collecting/restoration. There's no reason to leave the hobby over threat of a lawsuit. It's not like anything has even really happened to him yet. He's pulled the archive now so there's no chance he'll actually be sued. It's ironic that he calls Wayne a "drama queen" then basically says "screw you guys I'm going home".

License holders will sue over their property and that can cost a fortune so I understand why he did it.

Me too. I don't blame him. At a minimum he should be sharing the files that are not protected by Williams copyrights. Sure he hosted the files but many other people put a lot of work into creating that archive. It's really a slap in the face to them to just say "sorry you can't have your files any more". Granted, I don't know that's what's actually happening but it seems like no one has come up with a copy yet.

I'm probably sounding unsympathetic. I'm not. I know where the guy is coming from. I just don't think he should close the vault on all the images that are not protected by Williams copyrights. If he's not going to host it he owes it to the people who contributed that content to let someone else do it. I hope we see that happen.
 
It would be sweet if all of that art were turned over to a printer who printed licensed decals on demand for reasonable fees. I think we'd all be happy to pay for reproduction of decals that aren't available.

I'm going to need decals for the front of a Jurassic park pin. If anyone has a copy (I don't even know if it was available), I'd be most grateful for a copy.
 
I am getting nothing, but from my understanding Wayne has been on his ass for some time. I don't know the full story, but it is a lot of work to upkeep that. Look at the KLOV game site that hasn't been updated in how damn long now?

Sometimes you get tired of dealing with something and walk away. I personally don't blame him, but I know there is some website that archives removed/deleted websites or something. Will try and track down that info.
 
It would be sweet if all of that art were turned over to a printer who printed licensed decals on demand for reasonable fees. I think we'd all be happy to pay for reproduction of decals that aren't available.

I'm going to need decals for the front of a Jurassic park pin. If anyone has a copy (I don't even know if it was available), I'd be most grateful for a copy.

Contact T-roy *I think thats his name* on here and ask him if he can get you a picture/scan of his.
 
Internet Archive shows the site wasn't indexed at all in 2009 or 2010. Sucks.

Wayne is on ballsofsteel for hosting scans of content and making no money off them, not to forget that those images aren't available anywhere else (thus they are not "competing" with Wayne and his almighty dollar).

What is his "contribution" to the industry anyway, aside from enforcing copyright and owning a pinball company?

Who's on Wayne's ass for making the pinball industry less successful? He seems to be pretty damn good at that.
 
From what I know Dano, Wayne is on wayne's ass about the Williams stuff. I am not sure if Wayne owns all of Williams stuff or just some of it, but lots of games have stuff being made for them, but a lot aren't unfortunately.

If the site was archived I would put 20 on it to say he would go after them also for having his stuff.
 
It's annoying to the hobby, but Wayne (personality aside) is dealing with copyright law as it applies in Australia, which is very similar to that in the UK. The basic concept as it applies in those places is that if you stop enforcing any rights that you have, then you also waive those rights. If he didn't go aggressively go after everybody that he became aware of, he would lose the rights he licensed from Williams. They also don't, as far as I know, have any kind of "Fair Use" type clauses like those that exist here in the USA. He's also got the ability to have Williams lawyers do his legwork, so it's not going to cost him squat to start playing whack-a-mole with websites whenever he gets bored.

I've bumped heads with this type of BS before when I was big into Warhammer 40k. Games Workshop is the same way, to the extent that they started shutting down all sorts of fan websites that exclusively catered to 40k subject matters (I.E. didn't have significant portions of other manufacturer hobby stuff on it.)

The only way we're going to get around this problem is if Williams declares the artwork to be public domain.... which is about as likely to happen as Megan Fox getting an Oscar for best actress. We're kinda stuck in this situation right now, which sucks.
 
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