Hammer Rant: Posting Tips on the Forums- Be Ready to Get Ripped Off...

Hans, it happens—Barnum said that a sucker was born every minute. He may have added that a gonf is born every thirty seconds…

E-mail inbound. 

That just sucks, Hans.

It's EXACTLY how I feel everytime somebody steals my music by illegally downloading or burning it. My ideas, my work, my music and my time--and you just stole it for free. 

It burns my a**!

Hmmm....

Let not there be an idea put in a public place without fore knowlegde that it may become "someone elses" idea next.

I've seen it, I don't let it bug me. I have no way of knowing if we thought of it independently or it was stolen. Nor do I have any way of knowing if an idea I have has been thought of by someone else before. If I thought of it, I use it and let everyone know it, then the thought is original not stolen, regardless of the same experiance someone else had a couple of weeks ago of whom I may have never heard.

Got an idea? Hide it. Patend it. Then it's yours. Otherwise how can one complain? To be copied is to be flattered.

I've noticed that over the course of the years, there have been many tips that have been reprinted in Finescale. I figure it's been happening for many years, but I have noticed it in the relatively short time that I've been reading the magazine (about 8 years or so). It's just recycling of old ideas, something that many publications do with stories and articel as well. The old saying "there's nothing new under the sun" is pretty appropriate here.

Granted, it would be nice if, when the person submitted the tip/trick/idea, they gave credit to "a friend, neighbor, or buddy" or even state that it is something that has been done for a while.
Unfortunately the submitter does not have control over the content of the tip as it appears in print, as the magazine can edit it if they choose. That happened to my tip in the February issue, and even though it only changed the tip slightly, I knew it was not in its original form. I'm just throwing that out here to suggest that it may not be entirely the fault of the person submitting the idea.

"An almost word-for-word description "

 Then it's Plagarism, and Finescale should investigate it, print a retraction/correction or some course of action to the effect!!! 

But please dont let this deter you from writing more tips for use here!

I keep a cut and pasted word document from what you and others post.  It's my "manual", and I am grateful for your and others contributions.

Oh, I'll still write 'em... I just won't write 'em without submitting 'em to the magazine at the same time... Then everyone will be kept honest and I'll have a date/time stamp I can use...

Besides, that was yesterday... I'm mad about much more and different things today...

BUT: It's my day off, so I can't go build a model, since that's my job...

bspeed wrote:

Then it's Plagarism, and Finescale should investigate it, print a retraction/correction or some course of action to the effect!!!

Unless there's a copyright on the tip, it would be next to impossible to prove plagiarism. That's why publishers return manuscripts unopened. FSM accepted the tip from the person and printed it. They are NOT going to do any kind of investigation, nor should they. I came up with printing articles of clothing with complex patterns of clothing maybe 7 years ago. I've told people about it. Someone came up with the idea of printing German camo and started a thread about it. Did he "take" my idea? Probably not.

Bottom line, if you think you're idea is original, great and valuable, get it directly into the magazine and don't put it out for the world to see until you get money for it.

Sometimes, odd coincidences just happen.

Recently I wrote a reply on a thread (regarding purchasing/selecting paintbrushes) which I later found was very similar in content to a posting by another member on a different thread. My reply was entirely my own. yet if you compare the two, they say almost exactly the same thing.

I can't recall reading the other posting prior to writing my own, or perhaps I did and unconsciously echoed what had been said previously, but when I wrote my reply it wasn't with direct reference to the other.

One thing that I do find disconcerting is when one writes a reply to someone in a thread and then a day/week/month later someone else writes almost exactly the same thing in a similar form (eg. in a point by point layout) in the same thread.

One thing you can be sure of, if I post it, I can guarantee it's somebody else's idea.

I haven't had an original idea since 1986.

And that was "Hey, I wonder if I can loop the output on my amp back into the input of this other amp and then back into the other and double the sound? Yeah!!!"

The ensuing scene looked like Michael J. Fox in "Back to the Future".

Anyway.....

Just rambling.... back to the thread.

Hey Jon I tried the same thing back around that same time. Does that mean I can tell my mom it was you Idea??

Thad

I've noticed almost word-for-word postings of mine that have ended up in other people's articles. Also when Missing Lynx originally put together their Abrams Tweaks list, I was one of the people approached to assist. I put together a list of all the Abrams kits and aftermarket accessories available (at the time) along with a fairly comprehensive list of all the commercial books available about the tank, as well as a complete list of available technical manuals.

Interestingly, my name was missing from the list of contributors even though the MS Word documents I submitted were placed in the tweaks list word-for-word.

ajlafleche wrote:

bspeed wrote:  Then it's Plagarism, and Finescale should investigate it, print a retraction/correction or some course of action to the effect!!!  Unless there's a copyright on the tip, it would be next to impossible to prove plagiarism. That's why publishers return manuscripts unopened. FSM accepted the tip from the person and printed it. They are NOT going to do any kind of investigation, nor should they. I came up with printing articles of clothing with complex patterns of clothing maybe 7 years ago. I've told people about it. Someone came up with the idea of printing German camo and started a thread about it. Did he "take" my idea? Probably not. Bottom line, if you think you're idea is original, great and valuable, get it directly into the magazine and don't put it out for the world to see until you get money for it.

I figure that FSM was reading the thread...  I am not aware that copyright and plagarism are related, so to speak. I thought plagarism was a singluar entity.

bspeed wrote:

I figure that FSM was reading the thread...

As of right now,there are over 973,727 posts on this forum. Do you really think some editor is going to skim thriugh all those to make sure a hint submitted to the mag hasn't been posted by someone else over here? Even using a key word search could be extremely time consuming. Then they'd have to ascertain the poster here hadn't learned the tip from the person submitting to the magazine.

KINGTHAD wrote:

Hey Jon I tried the same thing back around that same time. Does that mean I can tell my mom it was you Idea?? Thad

Oh yeah, and get me in more trouble.... I see how ya are....

Ya know... If the guy would have prefaced it with something like, "I picked this tip up from a fellow modeler..", I wouldn't have been near as pr*cked-off...