Dodgy Geezer sites.

[Charles OatesParticipant @charlesoates31738]

Hi all, the various websites set up by Dodgy Geezer, like the eezebilt and Taycol sites seem to be down. Does anyone know if he’s ok or what’s happening?

Charles

 

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

I’m sorry to cause such consternation!

I maintain these sites on a shoestring, using free and open source capabilities where possible, and I’m afraid that under these circumstances you get what you pay for. (If you pay for things you may not get them either – but that’s a different matter).

The .TK domain allows people to register domain names for free, which is why I use it. Registering multiple domain names can start to become costly… Unfortunately, this free domain service therefore attracts a host of dodgy characters apart from myself, and is constantly having arguments with the ICANN authorities about its failure to remove criminals, hackers and other assorted undesirables (such as model boat enthusiasts?). One such argument seems to have come to a head a few weeks ago, resulting in the entire domain being shut down for some weeks.

The sites are now addressable again, but of course there can be no firm guarantees that something similar will not happen again. Incidentally, while they were down some interest was expressed by another vintage R/C web site in mirroring my ones – I’d be happy if anyone wanted to do that, and it would certainly add resilience….

[Charles OatesParticipant @charlesoates31738]

Thanks DG, I completely understand. The sites are a great resource, if they can be mirrored so much the better.

I found what I needed on the Taycol site, I’ll send you a pm about it soon, it might interest you.

 

Charles

 

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Below is a picture of a slightly enlarged Triton. Yet to get wet but hoping it will be soon.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Nice example Tim. I made one of those back in the day but it was nowhere as good as yours.

An attractive design.

Colin

[Tim CooperParticipant @timcooper90034]

Also the Russian Missile Boat from the 50 + range. Tim

 

 

 

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Advance Warning.

 

It looks as if the free domain names provided by FreeNom are finally being withdrawn. This is a common practice amongst domain name registrars – begin by providing free names and once people have come to rely on them, start to charge an arm and a leg.

So I will be looking elsewhere for some addresses shortly. AFAICT, I have about 1 month left before they start to pull the plug on the 4 sites below:

http://eezebilt.tk/

http://marinecraft.tk/

http://oldboats.tk/Index.html

http://www.taycol.tk/

There is bound to be a bit of disruption when the domains go, so if you wanted to download anything, best to do it now….

 

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

I haven’t been able to get any information out of the .TK registrar, beyond the statement that my Domain Names will be closed at the end of this month.
So I’ve finally had to bite the bullet and buy some new names. At the end of this month, http://eezebilt.tk/, http://marinecraft.tk/, http://oldboats.tk/ and http://www.taycol.tk/ will presumably cease to function, and we will go onto the new names, which are:

http://eezebilt.uk/
http://marinecraft.uk/
http://oldboats.uk/
http://www.taycol.uk/

The new sites are available now, so if you hold these as links, now is a good time to change them. Ignore the banner warning I have put up – that’s just a reminder, and will go away once the old site names die. Let me know if anything goes wrong…

[Ray Wood 3Participant @raywood3]

Hi Dodgy,

Do all the free download pdf’s of old design’s have no copyright attached to them ??

Or is this like my design free plans in Model Boats being sold on ebay ?

Regards  Ray

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Pause. Takes deep breath….

ALL design work of this kind has copyright attached to it for a longish period, no matter whether the owner realises this or not, or is even alive. Copyright is in effect a statement about the ownership of the intellectual property (IP) rights.

The Keil Kraft plans on my EeZeBilt site are copyrighted to Amerang, who have kindly given me permission to present them on the web for free download.

The data on my Marinecraft and Taycol websites are believed to be ‘orphans’. This is a term used for IP which has no clear owner and is in danger of being lost. But they still have a (virtual) copyright. If, for instance, the Marinecraft plans suddenly became valuable there would no doubt be claimed owners, a series of court cases, and a decision on either the valid owner, or a statement that they were in the public domain (70 years after the death of the creator).

For items such as these I follow the EU Orphan Works Directive in conducting a diligent search for the owner and maintaining a download record for fair compensation, but I have not as yet registered with the EUIPO Orphan Works Database. This is partly because I am not sure who the UK national competent authority for old model boat plans would be. If any issue arises, I will probably register and let the EU sort it out – which I expect would last beyond my lifetime! Where I do find an owner (for instance Hobbico for Sterling plans) I obtain written permission to distribute. Occasionally, as with Mid-West, they refuse this permission, so I do not distribute. I also do not distribute plans for boats which are currently being marketed, such as the Aerokits range.

The sites, as explained in the initial pages, are primarily a place to save old boat plans from being completely lost. I believe that placing them on the Web, and hence allowing multiple copies to exist, is the most cost-effective way for a single hobbyist to ensure this. If they are still being commercially marketed, or available from companies’ archives like Dumas, they are not lost, so they are not included. There is no monetarisation involved here – I pay all the costs and do not incorporate any advertising. So I intentionally make no profit from distribution. I have refused offers of financial assistance in order to remain completely independent. Though it would be nice if someone would consider mirroring the sites in order to provide resilience…

The ‘EeZeBilt 50+’ plans are mainly my own work, so I retain copyright. These are released under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA license, which is one of several public copyright licenses produced by the Creative Commons organisation. This allows recipients free use to share, copy, and adapt a work, provided you give the creator credit (BY), do not use it for commercial purposes (NC), and share any modified versions under the exact same license (SA). If you would like to contribute, your work would be released under that copyright license.

I keep half an eye on various outlets such as eBay. If I became aware that my plans being sold there I would contact eBay, provide proof of ownership, and ask for the seller to be removed for breach of sales terms. If I found the original KK plans from my site for sale I would contact Amerang, who would no doubt do the same thing. Though note that there is only one of me, and I have many other things to do!

I assume that either you or Model Boats magazine retain copyright on your plans, and that if you found them being sold in breach of your copyright you would do something similar. Note that is is quite reasonable to sell an original copy of a plan. What you must not do is sell photocopies.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

That’s a comprehensive rundown – thanks. Where does that leave Vintage Model Boat plans in Canada who offer a mixture of plans currently available from Sarik and those which are no longer listed or otherwise have been deemed to be damaged beyond repair and written off. Obviously they have managed to source copies elsewhere and reproduced them.

Another thought. Back in 2012, in the Special Issue I edited, I wanted to feature  Vic Smeed’s plan of the Bardic Ferry featured in the March 1961 issue of Model Boats and from which I had built a model very many years ago. In 2012 it was long gone from the Plans List.

In the 50s & 60s the photos in the magazine were low resolution black and white, but they reproduced the full plans at half page size in pin sharp rendition. I had that particular issue and I scanned in the plan at 600DPI and the magazine was able to reproduce it for my article. The reproduction was sufficiently good to reinstate the drawing to the Plans Service and it still available from Sarik now.

The same process can be applied to any of the scores of early plans published in the magazine which are no longer commercially available.

In truth copyright gets a bit murky in these situations as reviving these old plans is very unlikely to be commercially significant. The Plans Service, now managed by Sarik, has a huge selection but only a very small fraction sell in single digits at best. Not many modellers indulge in traditional scratchbuilding these days. The usual option seems to be to buy a hull or a kit or a RTR model off EBay.

So people like Vintage are doing something of a rip off but they are keeping those old designs alive for people who are interested. The cash values involved are far too minimal to be worth copyright legal action. Technically it is breach of copyright but who can be bothered? Pragmatism rules!

For my current Silver Mist build I bought the ‘official’ plan from Sarik but also bought the same from Vintage Plans  which included the original build article which I did not have. I cut up the Vintage plan for constructional templates!

Colin

 

 

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

…. Where does that leave Vintage Model Boat plans in Canada who offer a mixture of plans currently available from Sarik and those which are no longer listed or otherwise have been deemed to be damaged beyond repair and written off. …..

The Film/DVD people have politically made some aspects of copyright breach into a criminal activity for their own economic reasons, but the principle was always a civil matter. It is about stopping people benefitting by copying other people’s work, and is an actionable civil wrong (a tort) that allows creators to seek legal remedies for the unauthorized use of their intellectual property.

This means it’s an argument you can use in a civil court, where YOU have to bring the prosecution. It’s not a criminal case where the state and the police do the heavy lifting on your behalf.  So, unless a lot of money is involved, it’s rarely worth bringing a court case. If little money is involved, the penalty is likely to be that the court will only order the copyright breach to stop in any case. If you really want to stop such distribution, you would be better off contacting the web service providers, who usually have rules about not publishing copyrighted material without permission, and can shut a site down. Though this may become a cat and mouse game…

What made me unhappy was the fate of many of the early plans as the modelling hobby shrank. These were either junked when a small company closed down, or held to be part of the company assets and therefore valued by the liquidators. Because they were valued, they were never considered for public release, so they were horded until the cost of storage became excessive, upon which they were junked as before.

Public release, under a Creative Commons license, would have meant that they would have been copied widely, could have been archived for free by toy museums, and would have been less likely to be irretrievably lost.

I’m impressed by your story of the Bardic Ferry. I recently found a very rare plan – the Marinecraft Silver Dawn – and have put it up on the Marinecraft site at http://marinecraft.uk/Mlarge.html

I doubt whether anyone will have seen that before – I suspect that it’s the only one in existence…

 

 

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Quite agree that it is important to try and preserve these old plans. The physical existence of the old magazines does make it possible to resurrect them if someone wants to make the effort.

Moneywise the sums are tiny and not worth arguing about really. It was all a long time ago.

 

 

[Ray Wood 3Participant @raywood3]

Thanks for that response, I’m not sure it’s a hot topic these days 🙂

Just a shame the free plans in Model Boats for the last 6 years are no longer available except within the published magazine, these and the featured designs used to keep the old plans range alive, which it currently isn’t. As the commercial interests of each company has no financial beniffit , It would be nice if Kelsey gave the recent designs to Sarik for the sake of the hobby ? I’m sure this will never happen I have discussed this with Lindsey recently.

Regards  Ray

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Old things seem to go through three stages. First, they are new, attractive and worth money. Then they gradually become worthless and get thrown away. Finally, the few items that remain become valuable again as vintage antiques. Cars are a good example.

My interest was in how to get old plans surviving that second stage when they are worthless. Worthless means that no commercial organisation can go to the trouble of maintaining or storing them – since that would simply be money down the drain.

The answer I came up with was to make them freely available so that the storage costs were passed to every hobbyist in the world. This way, there is no need for a maintained central repository, no need to spend money or create an organisation, and we have the best chance that some will survive to reach the third stage.

If MB old plans, once they were determined to no longer have any earning value, were made available for free under a Creative Commons license, that would attract more viewers to the web site and each plan would act as a small advert for MB, spread widely around the world. The IP would still be protected against commercial exploitation.

[Ray Wood 3Participant @raywood3]

At the end of the day it’s all about money, I am surprised this forum still operates with all it’s shortcomings as it’s used by so few folk these days , it will be interesting what happens to the mag if the remaining retail outlets close as warned in the current issue by the editor 🙁

Regards  Ray

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Human activity  has to consider money, since money is the measure of how we value things. This was illustrated during the space race – after the first people set foot on the Moon, there was little interest in returning to it – a base was valued far less than the glory of the technical achievement.

The rise of the internet has made the distribution of data far cheaper than before, and many failing ‘bricks and mortar’ organisations still have functioning Web sites. I hope that MB has a clear Web site policy with commercially-costed aims, since that may be where MB is headed…

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

I think the publishers are only interested in the magazine. There is no subsequent monetary value to them from the free plans which is understandable from their point of view but doesn’t do much to preserve them for posterity although third parties might add them to their pirated portfolios which is better than nothing.

Kelsey never wanted the Mortons Forums as Kelsey don’t do Forums, but it was part of the takeover agreement. So the existing three Forums remain ‘as is’ with no further development or improvement envisaged. The only changes have been to plaster more adverts into the remaining space.

Sad but true I think.

The main alternative Forum is Model Boat Mayhem but this relies on outdated software and, while currently functional, will never be migrated to a more modern platform. It therefore has a limited lifespan with all the useful data it contains.

Facebook and other social media is touted as an alternative but social media does not provide the structured database resource offered by traditional forums.

At the end of the day, all the valuable data held on forums or social media is vulnerable to somebody just flicking a switch and consigning it all to oblivion. Facebook is a bit of a timeline and old posts just disappear into the background never to be seen again.

You might have spent a lot of time and effort in posting a useful build blog on a Forum only to find it wiped out in the blink of an eye.

If you can get your material published in hard copy format such as in the magazine (while it exists), there is a much greater chance of it surviving long term.

Colin

 

 

[Chris FellowsParticipant @chrisfellows72943]

Being a relative newbie as only joined the hobby around 8 years ago I’ve really seen changes in forum usage over that time. This and Mayhem were my main forums to visit and glean invaluable information but I also visited RC Groups and the other Model Boats forum which has recently had a makeover.

There was an upturn in traffic and builds during Covid but it’s been pretty much downhill since then. The boats section of RC Groups (aircraft still busy) is now very quiet with very few builds as is Mayhem – the Facebook Group probably hasn’t helped with that though in the main it’s different members but some that posted on the forum – but there are so many Facebook Groups now, many very similar, often with the same people posting the same things on each group that they are of limited interest and as said pretty poor for build blogs and historic information.

The only forum that seems to have any life in it (and that’s reduced) is the other Model Boats Forum. It has an international following and a number of builds etc. going on and members I recognise from other forums are active on there.

[Dodgy Geezer 1Participant @dodgygeezer1]

Hi Dodgy,

Do all the free download pdf’s of old design’s have no copyright attached to them ??

For info, I have just received permission from Hobbies (of Dereham) to publish their old plans, so if anyone has anything from that source that they think others might be interested in. send it over to [email protected]…

 

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