Pinrepair.com no longer free
- Thread starter kencinder
- Start date
Didn't work for me. Sure... it downloaded a bunch of content, but it's all still linking to the pinrepair site... and much of the HTML pages are missing, etc.
elfyhead
New member
understood, and hence the smiley in the original - i didn't really expect it. i think i'm just driving wget incorrectly anyway. still poking at it.
Downloadthemall doesn't work, it tries to hit pinrepair.com, not Google's cache. The login page stops you from getting the content.
What I've found that works:
-Paste the links into Google, view the cached page, save the page using your browser. You may miss some content this way such as the service bulletin images on the Data East pages.
-Use HTTrack and download the pages at Web Archive. This will grab more content but the information is not as up to date as the Google cache.
Or, pay the $10, get the CD.
I can't comment on wget and using it.
What I've found that works:
-Paste the links into Google, view the cached page, save the page using your browser. You may miss some content this way such as the service bulletin images on the Data East pages.
-Use HTTrack and download the pages at Web Archive. This will grab more content but the information is not as up to date as the Google cache.
Or, pay the $10, get the CD.
I can't comment on wget and using it.
Lindsey
Well-known member
RetroHacker
Well-known member
What I'm more worried about is what this is going to do to the hobby. Sure, *we* know how to grab backups of the site, and the community won't lose the information. But newcomers are going to find a pinball machine that doesn't work, go online, find that they have to pay to access information, say "screw it" and junk it/pass it on/whatever. Things like this only serve to restrict the hobby.
Also, last time I checked, that info was contributed by lots of people, for the good of the community. I fail to see how one organization can claim it's theirs to sell. Furthermore, one organization reaping profits from this does not help pinball as a whole.
-Ian
Also, last time I checked, that info was contributed by lots of people, for the good of the community. I fail to see how one organization can claim it's theirs to sell. Furthermore, one organization reaping profits from this does not help pinball as a whole.
-Ian
Big thread on the newsgroup; 100+ posts:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/browse_thread/thread/4ad047d6b20837f8#
Clay hasn't chimed in, but somebody who professes to have talked to him stated that the $10 buys you a snapshot of the site as it currently is today - meaning any updates may mean you cough up *another* $10 for another CD.
Still no confirmation whether the $10 buys you access to the web site; most assume it will, but zero confirmation either way.
Lots of talk about setting up a new/free resource (pinball repair wiki of some sort), so if this doesn't fall apart and he truly locks down the site, we're going to have a period of time where no good/free/open repair resource exists unfortunately.
Main issues are who he's pushing the money towards, and how he's able to take this collection of information (much of which was not created by him) and start selling it - especially when many people have contributed to it over the years with the understanding that the information was free for all.
If $10 got you a CD for offline purposes, along with access to the site, and it continued to be updated with new/corrected/updated content, it'd still be a good value; how it's all been handled leaves a bad taste however. Not really about the money.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.pinball/browse_thread/thread/4ad047d6b20837f8#
Clay hasn't chimed in, but somebody who professes to have talked to him stated that the $10 buys you a snapshot of the site as it currently is today - meaning any updates may mean you cough up *another* $10 for another CD.
Still no confirmation whether the $10 buys you access to the web site; most assume it will, but zero confirmation either way.
Lots of talk about setting up a new/free resource (pinball repair wiki of some sort), so if this doesn't fall apart and he truly locks down the site, we're going to have a period of time where no good/free/open repair resource exists unfortunately.
Main issues are who he's pushing the money towards, and how he's able to take this collection of information (much of which was not created by him) and start selling it - especially when many people have contributed to it over the years with the understanding that the information was free for all.
If $10 got you a CD for offline purposes, along with access to the site, and it continued to be updated with new/corrected/updated content, it'd still be a good value; how it's all been handled leaves a bad taste however. Not really about the money.
Michael Roma
Active member
Man that sucks. Glad I have PDF and hardcopies of all the repair logs...
- Mike
- Mike
JahBarron
Active member
I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and guess that his "copyrighted material" isn't actually copyrighted. A search of the U.S. Copyright Office's online database turns up nothing.
That doesn't matter. In the US, if you create the content, you have copyright to it. You can register it if you want, it makes pursuing infringement cases easier, but it isn't necessary.
The big problem many people have with this is Clay is not the sole creator of all this content. You start getting into grey areas, and it becomes a mess. Too bad everything is going down this way.
Last edited:
OU Flight
Well-known member
Like someone else said, this is really going to hurt the new pinball owners. Having stumbled upon my first pin this past month, I was just starting to make headway in bringing it back from the dead. I don't know what I would have done without that guide. I sure wouldn't be as enthusiastic about pinballs as I am now if there wasn't such a good resource that I was able to get started with for free. I know how valuable it is now, but as a newcomer I would not have probably been willing to drop money on it.
DarrenF
Well-known member
I mirrored the System 80 section locally (using wget) last year. Now I'm pissed I didn't just leech the whole damn site...
The Google cache won't last long, and I'm not sure what archive.org's takedown policy is (if they're remove content that was archived in the past, as allowed by robots.txt, if the content owner now doesn't want it archived there)
The System 80 stuff totals ~19MB... in case anyone wants to trade
The Google cache won't last long, and I'm not sure what archive.org's takedown policy is (if they're remove content that was archived in the past, as allowed by robots.txt, if the content owner now doesn't want it archived there)
The System 80 stuff totals ~19MB... in case anyone wants to trade
I just grabbed most of the site using the Way Back Machine. Now I just have to remove all the WBM code and adjust the links. It'll take a while but at least I'll have all the information to use(like I've been used to on and off for the past 15 years).
I did this to Froms site(yes, I know I mis-spelled his name but he scans sites from time to time) before he went paid. I mirrored it on my site ~10 years ago but he's asked for me to take it down. As far as he knows, I did.
I did this to Froms site(yes, I know I mis-spelled his name but he scans sites from time to time) before he went paid. I mirrored it on my site ~10 years ago but he's asked for me to take it down.
As far as he knows, I did. mickster0150
Active member
Just to post a point a view from a contributer, I have to say that I was pretty pissed about it. I am a small contributer (just a few paragraphs in the pin2000 guide about the video amp), but it was my words exactly and pics in the guide. I didn't like something that I put out there to help everyone, now was just helping the PPE fill its coffers with cash. I sent both an email to clay and to the ppe's contact email (with no response yet). One PPE person did contact me after going back and forth in the newsgroups and in his email he said that the PPE was holding off on doing anything with the material until the matter was taken care of. Can't really ask for anything more than that right now. I know that if it does go through with the current plan I want my info removed from the guide. The sad thing is, I am sure clay built all those guides with free information that came from the internet.
bummer,
mickey
bummer,
mickey
I'll acknowledge that Clay has done a huge amount of work collecting and organizing (and tweaking) the info in the guides, even if it was 'free' info (although I believe much of it is from his own knowledge/experience). However, it isn't right, as you and several other contributors have expressed, that he has taken info given by others to disseminate freely and basically started charging 'donations' for it without any approval or release from the various contributors.
JahBarron
Active member
I took liberties with the copy machine at work and printed up the editions that Way Back Machine was able to pull up. Thankfully I already had three of the guides so it was probably only 500 pages worth. HA!
KenLayton
In Memoriam
More like forcing donations.
I used google cache and this:
wget -r -l1 -UFirefox -H -erobots=off --wait 1 --exclude-domains=images.google.com,maps.google.com,news.google.com,mail.google.com,video.google.com,groups.google.com,books.google.com,scholar.google.com,finance.google.com,blogsearch.google.com,www.youtube.com,picasaweb.google.co...e.com,www.snowbrasil.com,translate.google.com google_cache_url
replace google_cache_url with the URL from google.
wget can take some tweaking but it's what I'm used to
Lindsey,
WGET only seems to be grabbing some top levels and index.htm files only... ? I'm not that familiar with WGET ca't it get down to the lowest links?
VB,
RetroHacker
Well-known member
If you cut and pasted the command, you'll only get one level. The -l1 switch tells it to recurse only one level. Change the number if you want more.
Also, man wget is your friend
-Ian
