A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE Yes, there are people who do read your editorials. I'm one, and I am tardily responding to one you wrote a few issues back. You had been blasted by your readers for printing an issue on some pretty flimsy paper. (I'm afraid that I agreed with the readers on that one.) In your editorial you said that THE COURIER would go back to its regular "look", but you said that that costs. You asked for all of us to try to recruit new readers. I thought that made sense. I have been a loyal subscriber to THE COURIER since its rebirth. I am also a high school history teacher. Quite a few of my students are interested in wargaming. Why I never thought of giving the high school a subscription to THE COURIER until your editorial I'll never know. At any rate, I recently signed Kirkwood High School up. It should be getting Vol. IX no. 1 any day now. I hope that you'll pick up some additional subscribers from the St. Louis area because of that. S. JOHNSON CHESTERFIELD, MO. Thank you for your help. If more readers had your attitude, THE COURIER would be able to increase frequency and take on more special publications. Our recent survey (IX-1) has shown that many subscribers pass their copy around to 12 to 25(!) others. - DICK BRYANT KUDOS FOR A SUPPLIER FROM OVERSEAS Please let it be known that there is at least one overseas company that is a credit to the mail order business. That worthy establishment is Model Figures and Hobbies of Northern Ireland. In addition to prompt and accurate shipments on orders I have placed with them to date, they have taken it upon themselves to assist customers with problems arisingfrom the demise of Plastiform, another company in Northern Ireland with whom I had placed an order over two years ago this month. While Plastiform cashed my check, they never shipped my order, and did not respond to my inquiries. As a last hope I contacted Model Figures and Hobbies, who at one time carried some advertising for Plastiform, in the hopes of their assistance in leveraging Plastiform. In a prompt and courteous reply, Model Figures and Hobbies notified me of Plastiform's demise and shipped my order to me. If you have the opportunity to contact them, whether regarding problems with Plastiform or for the first time, let me suggest that you inquire about receiving their catalog, which has an extensive and well crafted line of 20mm 20th Century figures. It was (in part) using these figures in a Vietnam scenario at Orlando skirmishes in 1987 that I was awarded first place in the game mastercategory. I believeyou will be very pleased with this company. R. WALTON EVALUATION OF 1800 BRITISH ARMY MISLEADING? Upon rereadingG.F. Nafziger's "Evaluating the British Army 1800-1815" (COURIER VIII No. 4), it occurs to me that in at least one critical respect the author's analysis is misleading. This oversight calls into question one of the "startling" conclusions the article purports to arrive at. Furthermore it casts doubt on the value of the desertion data the way Mr. Nafziger has used it. The critical issue the author seems to overlook in rating the morale of the various corps of the British Army by numbers of desertions between 1808 and 1813 is the effective sizes of the units involved. Ratherthan computing desertions as a percentage of each unit's actual strength, the simple number of desertions is used in creating a mean and standard deviation by unit type. Now in the case of British Line battalions (tending towards the same strength) variance in individual unit strength may prove unimportant in the final analysis, but what of Guard and perhaps some Highland battalions (fielding up to twice the normal strength of the Line)? Mr. Nafziger's conclusion is that 20.7 desertions per year per unit for the Guards places them in the same class as the Line with 19.2. But considering the larger size of Guard Units (usually much larger), do not these numbers in fact indicate a considerable morale advantage in British Guard units over the Line? Given the data presented it appears that a smaller percentage of Guards actually deserted. My aim is not to assault Mr. Nafziger or the fine contributions he has made. Neither is it to claim a morale advantage for the British Guards. I only with to point out that care should be taken with statistical analysis before its conclusions are presented as "a simple distillation of... documentation." My guess is that with a careful consideration of what the number of actual desertions mean with reference to the strength and circumstances of the individual units involved, a much less startling picture of the British Army emerges. The desertion figures might then support our more common intuitions in the matter. MARK HUML BARRINGTON, IL COPYRIGHTS OF RULES AUTHORS This is about the question, "Does the author of a ruleset have the right to insist it is played exactly as written?" Although it seems that this is an opinion question, there is in fact a legal answer to it. Copyright law is pretty clear about the rights of purchasers of printed material. What you do with the material in the privacy of your own home is your business. There, you may use any portion and change it in any way that pleases you. However, outside the home, the buyer may not duplicate the material, use it for personal or corporate gain, display it in public in anyway, or publish or distribute it in any form, without the expressed written consent of the author. The author has the right to request a fee in exchange for this permission. Further, if permission is obtained for use of the material, it must be used exactly as written, unless the author agrees, in writing, to the specific changes. So, for example, if I want to run a public ancients tournament and I want to use the WRG 7th edition rules there, I have to have the permission of the copyright holder (WRG or Phil Barker). If I wish to introduce amendments to the rules for use at the tournament, I have to send those to the copyright holder and obtain written permission to use them. The copyright holder may ask a fee in exchange for these permissions, or may refuse to allow their use. lithe author learns that his rules have been used in a public context without permission, he mayseek legal redress through the courts. If the material has been changed, i.e. amended for a public use, the copyright holder may argue that his reputation has been damaged through the inaccurate presentation of his work. Courts have awarded both compensatory and punitive damages to copyright holders in cases concerned with a great variety of materials. The cases go well beyond traditional "literature", and there is little doubt in my mind that the copyright laws apply to published rule sets, and their use at gaming conventions. I'd hate to see our hobby become a legal battleground, so I lean to the conservative side on these matters and urge convention organizers to obtain appropriate permissions when using the published work of others. Cordially, ALAN M. HANTZ, Chairman, Dept. of Mass Communication, Univ. of North Carolina at Asheville Alan submitted this as a response to a question in a recent poll by a major U.S. figure distributor and sent us a copy. I would very much like to hear from any copyright lawyers out there. If Alan is totally correct -- the future of conventions and gaming with commercial rules at them could be in jeopardy. Would this apply to club play also? What if the club uses a public, rented facility and not someone's home? Of course one answer is to refuse to buy any rules with copyrights that do not include a disclaimer allowing people to use the rules in any way they see fit (except copying) as long as they don't claim that the event is "officially" sanctioned by the rules author or publisher. - DICK BRYANT MORE INFORMATION ON SIKH UNIFORMS I found a Great Battles magazine article on the Sikhs, which I had forgotten about, that has several illustrations. An undated "Persian" miniature of a Sikh Durbar, or royal audience, shows a Sikh general and mounted officer both wearing light green "Phrygian" caps trimmed along the bottom edge in yellow. Also shown is a limbered cannon drawn by a pair of white oxen. The limber and gun carriage are painted sky blue, adn the crew wear red alkaluks and yellow pyjamas; they also seem to be wearing caps as above. A watercolor of the charge of the 16th Lancers at Aliwal, ca. 1850 by M.A. Hayes, shows Sikh infantry in white turbans and trousers, and red jackets laced yellow and faced blue. The Sikh gunners shown seem to be wearing sky blue pelisses trimmed with yellow lace and medium brown fur; their turbans and trousers are white, the latter with red stripes. The last illustration of particular interest - and of some curiosity -- is an equestrian portrait of Lal Singh, by C.S. Hardinge. Lal Singh is depicted in European half-armor and wearing what appears to be a helmet covered by an animal skin (lynx?). Unfortunately, the illustration is in black and white. And that pretty much exhausts my information on the Sikhs - Men-at-Arms, help! JOHN KELLY Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. IX No. 3 Back to Courier List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1989 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com