if they're legally obliged to remove the content then they cut it. i'd much rather lose bits of a game than see gog sued and shut down for providing a german manual to people who bought the game after a dmca said they could no longer supply said pdf.

if gog go down then we lose everything. well.. everything we haven't backed up but if people backed everything up then they wouldn't mind a dmca cutting up old games they'd bought because they'd already have the backup.

i am perfectly behind gog protecting themselves legally. i'd rather see the ire correctly aimed at the shakey outdated ground that dmcas base themselves on legally and have things change from a grassroots level. but then we're getting into a giant discussion about disney lawyers and sonny bono and all sorts of nonsense that just makes me sad

You "own" what you buy on GOG because immediately upon purchase you can download it, back it up and never need the store again. That's what DRM free means, same with music files from Amazon or Apple now. Expecting the site to continually provide access for all time has never been realistic, for all manner of reasons, and is covered by the fact they are technically selling you limited licenses.

First off, that is a bit hyperbolic(GOG going away for good due to one suit over one game extra).

Second, I would rather GOG stick up to it's principles for all of us and show some spine(even if it risks GOG a bit) than see GOG get weaker and more a shell of it's former self over time due to constantly giving in.

Now that doesn't mean they should do things to make said possible suits work out in their favor(in this case taking down the content while they fight the issue if need be), just that they should take a stand and not be pushovers(legally speaking).

Musing: This reminds me of all those beings in media who wanted to live forever at ANY cost, and not lose their lives, yet as a result turned into shells of their former selves due to that eternal life & to keep it at any cost.

I don't think GOG would go down over fighting(in a smart way) one legal battle.

Also I "worry" more for those who haven't yet DLd everything they've bought(like those who just bought the game and the extra just got removed...it could happen, rare as it would be) than myself.

Grassroots hardly ever works because people need to work/eat and not many participate in a worthwhile manner.

Also as said above, i'd rather GOG not sacrifice more and more just to stick around in some form or other and not possibly be lost forever.....such companies built on such principles need to stand up for said principles...they've already dropped so much that made them what they were, they shouldn't keep dropping more or giving in even more.


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Not for all time, but for as long as the store is open/here...to me that seems fair.

a bit hyperbolic? maybe, maybe not. it depends on how much money gog has vs how much money the ip holder has. big companies will tie up litigation and grind down the competition who simply cannot pay the legal fees to keep fighting. i don't know enough about their financials to be able to judge that.

i'd be interested to know what caused the current dmca. it does seem weird that it's only in the german manual. who filed the dmca? about what? what was in the german manual that didn't exist elsewhere?

they may, they may not. it depends what it's over and who it's with.
if people are worried they need to back things up. personally i don't have backups. i live on the edge baby ;)
yep. but if the cause of the issue is never corrected and we simply put a bandaid over the issues as they pop up, they'll never stop popping up and eventually we'll run out of bandaids.
i concede that it's easier said than done, especially with the sort of legal army backing the harsh ip infringement laws and pushing back the date when things would fall into public domain.

don't get me wrong: i am definitely against ip/copyright infringement, but i'm also against the draconian legalities that are largely wielded against kids and the unwitting to force ridiculously harsh rules (my least favourite: you buy a cd and want to rip it to listen to the music on your phone, because who has a cd player anymore? - nope. in many countries that's copyright infringement).

that's basically my opinion on it. i agree with your standpoint that gog should stand up against silly things, but i also realise that sometimes they need to bend so that they don't break, and i'm not in a position to tell them which battles are worth fighting and which are not.

First off, thanks for posting civilly and in depth to me and sticking to the topic(unlike many who post online)....it is appreciated. That said:

I would guess it depends on the type of suit and how fervently the other party pursued it.....I am guessing, though, from what I know of DMCA claims that it is somewhat easy to file counters to them(to at least get the ball rolling)

From reading other posts it would seem the german manual is owned by another company/ip holder and GOG added it without being legally allowed(a user submitted it to GOG, I think).

Lol at the last bit.....I am the same way sometimes with some data due to laziness, actually.

As for others...as I said some may have data caps/speed limits and might miss out on it before even getting a chance to DL something....rare, but it could happen.

Agreed 100%...I think, though, that we should put bandaids on when that is all that is needed and not amputate entire limbs, so to speak. ;)

Yup...which is why it's more realistic to have companies fight such things(or the very rich and influential)....to be the defenders/avatars for us "common folk". :)

I go one step further......I think copyright should be whittled down to the bare minimums and that works over 10 years or so should be put in the public domain/commons, among other things. :)

They should bend if they have no chance of winning, but they need to stand up sometimes as well else be seen as very weak and not to be taken seriously.

Heck, it's likely steam does so well(in part) because they don't back down much.

Exactly. You *potentially* own what you buy. Provided that you do the required legwork, towards that goal.

There is also another solution. I myself, missed the Fallouts farewell giveaway... I bought them upon return right after and there were no extras! We still haven't got official update on the matter and as it seems, they are gone forever. Went and got them, by ways and means. Since i paid for the stuff through the gog store, i did nothing wrong, there. GOG gets their money, you get your stuff complete. Win-win

teh new versions didnt offer them, so you did? eh, howevah you justify it...

If I had infinite backup space I'd probably "find" DRM free versions of all my Steam games and back them up too. Maybe someday.

If one pays for something digital/non physical and said content gets removed and they cannot make use of it I see no moral reasoning why one should not be able to get an exact same version "somewhere else" if they paid for it to begin with. Now if one DLd a better versions than what they paid for, then i'd take issue with that.
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There have been "ways" to make steam games steam-less since steam was very young, and also to back them up. o.0

Also for big games I can see a space concern, but many older games are under 1 GB each. :)

^This. Saying you're deeply sorry after you've been called out about the stealth removal doesn't do you any favours. Looks like no matter how many times you say you're working on improving communication, it just isn't something you actually want to improve on.

On a side note, it's quite impressive, in a not positive way, that a DMCA was issued after said manual was available for about 1.5 year, and on a Friday to boot.
What's even more impressive, in a not positive way, is that GOG made the manual available without doing their homework.

If GOG never had the right to offer the German manual, they don't have any other choice than to remove it. You don't want to get sued and pay an absurd fine for offering the German manual of a game that isn't even offered in German here (JA2 on GOG is English only, if I'm not mistaken).

It's not about principles. It's about illegaly distributing copyrighted material. Sure, it's a dick move of the rightsholder to tell GOG to delete it from everyone's library. I mean... what kind of "damage" do you have when someone has a digital copy of a translated game manual? But... The fact that GOG distributed it without having the right to do so still remains. And that's the only relevant part when someone's bringing that case to court.

My best guess is the guy who did the translation complained because he wasn't being compensated? I can't imagine the publisher would have complained, since they sell the game here and presumably all the images inside are the same.

ofc. i'm all for frivolous quips, joking, and whatnot, but a discussion is also good and if we're going to test our opinions against one another then it's best to be civil or be quiet imo :)
i think steam also has a lot more money and market weight behind them. that being said this sounds like an odd situation with a user submitted manual?? not that i have verification of that, but if that were the case it's probably not something steam would even host and that sort of rigidity, while annoying sometimes, probably keeps them legally in the clear. they're also probably not dealing with the murky contracts of long forgotten games. they only started hosting those after gog started getting popular iirc and that would seem to me that they only pick up things where publishers can firmly show they have rights to publish (and then the onus is on the publisher if something goes wrong).

i think we're largely in agreement on our opinions though. maybe differ on a few minor points and severities, but overall we're saying pretty similar things.

It probably would not have come from a single person, but from a 3rd party agent organisation*. It's unlikely that the author randomly woke up one day and decided to issue a DMCA takedown- a US rather than German process- for something he wrote 21 years ago, OTOH agent organisations are always trying to show how relevant they are. Any legal objections to the manual being available would go away with a licensing agreement and a wad of $$$, and if they don't get that at least they can show whoever they're agenting for that they're actively protecting their interests.

*CDPR itself has used 3rd party agents to protect IP, and those agents too were more zealous about it than many would think reasonable.

I guess "the guy who did the translation" is the company who did the German localization of the whole game (probably the publisher for the German market. Doesn't make sense to get someone else to translate the manual). It'd make a lot more sense to offer GOG a deal to add the German localization instead of getting a manual pulled from the store. But what do I know... I'm just a gamer.