"Ahrm gonna sit dahn and rit me an editoreal, yes siree...Those no good low down sons of..." to paraphrase the editor in an old Jesse James film.

Yes its time to cast a few slurs again. What is the object of the editorial wrath? Nothing less than the dreaded breech of copyright! Since 1988 it has been and continues to be a criminal offence to knowingly breach someones copyright. Six months in pokey and £ 10,000 fine or something of that ilk. Now what brings this about, you cry, who has dared upset the editor, (apart from the human race R.A.), well you all know how I absolutely love (ironic grin) the now defunct Battle Honours, recently I received a telephone call from a young man, who was starting to trade as Battle Honours Software. Now he wasn't in my good books anyway as he had breached my copyright, when working in conjunction with Battle Honours, and had broken into my code and produced Eagle Bearer 2. A rather tense conversation followed, the upshot of which was that he was going to sell Eaglebearer unless I could prove ownership of the copyright.

So I got in touch with `Big Mal' (The friendly neighbourhood brief)who posted the required documents to the aforementioned young man. Two weeks later, another phone call. Young man confirmed that he had received the papers and I quote "Yes the copyright is yours and you can stop me selling it". Permission was of course refused. You would think that this was the end of the matter ... oh no ... I start getting phone calls from customers saying that they have received a mail shot offering to sell them Eagle Bearer and its modules, in fact I even have copies now. To add insult to injury I even received a call from one of `his' customers asking me for software support. Support for a piece of pirated software! It's a bit like a `fence' asking you to fix the TV that was stolen when your house was burgled!

Unfortunately this means another long drawn out legal action. Why have I gone public with this? Simple, I am not the only one to suffer. Companies like Minifigs, regularly suffer from thieves, (yes that's what you are!), who pirate their figures. When I tried to get a new scale of 4mm figures off the ground, one designer sent me samples which were blatant pirated figures, cut down Heroics & Ros, (I suspected), in fact to prove my suspicion I took 2 Heroics Russians and three swipes of a knife later I had produced a new 4mm figure that only needed a base! These and the designer were consigned to the bin.

The point is you may think that you are getting a good deal(!) when buying these items, but imagine the scene, its Friday, payday, you work all week for you employer producing the same as your colleagues. You wander up for your wages, but your employer only pays you for one days work and there's nothing you can do about it, you only produced the same things on the other 4 days work, it doesn't matter that he now has five times as much for your wages. He is only paying out once and its not your turn! That would go down like a lead balloon wouldn't it! You wouldn't do that job for long would you? Such is the relationship of the manufacturer and the pirate.

If you are involved in pirating anything, be it software, books or figures, then this is what you are doing. Carry on and eventually you won't have anything to do. I accept that people do make mistakes over copyright, I'll admit that I've made one myself (issue 2), but genuine mistakes and criminal acts are different things. If you can't see that then you are a genuine talentless moron!

To further illustrate the problem, whilst I was actually sitting down writing this piece, the phone rang. A gentleman gave his name and made an enquiry about the Campaign module for FTET. I didn't recognise his name (most FTET users are registered and he didn't come up on the database) and pointed out that he needed FTET to run the Campaigner. "Oh I've got a copy ... well actually _______ ______ bought it, but we all use it .... I use mine at home and at work". It also transpired that they had all bought a copy of Empire. What's the difference between a rule book and a computer set of rules? Apart from one takes longer to (photo) copy than a disc. Gawd help me, as I look at the starving children around my feet and the washing that `the editorial concubine' has had to take in, I start to wonder.......... Merde!

And finally, you may wonder what has happened to the colour pic on the front. Well I really like this particular drawing by Job and having the last word over this mag I decided I was going to use it. (This is of course, was after having tracked it down and found that it wasn't colour in the first place!)

Lost at sea....

Part 2 of the excellent Fever Islands has had to be held over until next issue. Peter Lawson slogged his guts out to finish it only to have the first copy disappear in the GPO `Bermondsea Triangle'. The second copy arrived with the disc crushed...nice one GPO, glad to see handle with care has meaning still, unfortunately only to the rest of the human race! The third copy still hasn't got here.. so with luck we may see it in issue 999.