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Chinese Government Burns "Call of Cthulhu" Supplement

posted by martyb on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the bad-things-happening-to-bad-characters dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.yog-sothoth.com/index.html/news/chinese-government-burns-call-of-cthulhu-supplement/

For many years, various publishers in the Americas and Europe have had their books printed in China as a cost-saving measure (including many in the RPG field). Often the primary downside of this has simply been the time taken for the books to arrive, but it appears there can also be another problem, as the publishers of The Sassoon Files (a Cthulhu-based RPG supplement) have announced that all print copies of their book have been destroyed by the Chinese Government – for unspecified reasons.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/25/the-sassoon-files.html

Julio writes, "Sons of the Singularity is a small RPG publisher. Last year, they kickstarted The Sassoon Files, a sourcebook for the popular Call of Cthulhu RPG and Trail of Cthulhu RPG. As a lot of publishers, theydid[sic] the printing in China. The same day that the print was finished, a Chinese Government decided that it was "problematic", so they burned the entire print run. Targeting foreign publications is a first, specially when it seems there wasn't anything problematic (the supplement was based on Shanghai but was respetful and documented carefully).

https://sonsofthesingularity.com/setback-in-the-sassoon-files-banned-by-the-ccp/

We have suffered an unfortunate and unexpected setback with the off-set print run. On March 20th, the Chinese government ordered the destruction of our books. Although the printer returned our deposit, we need to find another printer and this will result in a delay in fulfillment. We are committed to completing the print run and fulfillment.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:23AM (4 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:23AM (#820567) Journal

    It's not that we can't find similar actions before, if nothing else to fall back on there is that whole Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games in the early 90's, something something about hacking or something totally misunderstood from one of the games they made at the time.

    What was the point of this paragraph aside from the usual apologism for Chinese thuggery? You're missing the most important point. Steve Jackson Games won in the end.

    More than three years later, a federal court awarded damages and attorneys' fees to the game company, ruling that the raid had been careless, illegal, and completely unjustified. Electronic civil-liberties advocates hailed the case as a landmark. It was the first step toward establishing that online speech IS speech, and entitled to Constitutional protection . . . and, specifically, that law-enforcement agents can't seize and hold a BBS with impunity.

    That total ended up being over $300k.

    And we won. The judge gave the Secret Service a tongue-lashing and ruled for SJ Games on two out of the three counts, and awarded over $50,000 in damages, plus over $250,000 in attorney's fees. In October 1994, the Fifth Circuit turned down SJ Games' appeal of the last (interception) count . . . meaning that right now, in the Fifth Circuit, it is not "interception" of your e-mail messages when law enforcement officials walk out the door with the computer holding them.

    I won't claim that amount is adequate for the harm caused to Steve Jackson Games. But it did become a legal precedent for preventing further incidents of that sort. In comparison, there will never be negative legal repercussions to the destruction of "The Sassoon Files".

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:23AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:23AM (#820568) Journal
    Forgot the link [sjgames.com].

  • (Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:09PM (2 children)

    by looorg (578) on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:09PM (#820583)

    They got their money back. All they lost was a bit of time and had to find another book-printer. So if anything they got of lighter by comparison. If anything the precedent here (even tho not legal) is that you print in China at your own expense and risk.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:31PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 27 2019, @12:31PM (#820588) Journal

      They got their money back.

      But not from China. The publisher got burned.

      So if anything they got of lighter by comparison.

      The publisher didn't get off lighter with both significant loss of revenue and permanent damage to reputation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @04:06PM (#820715)

      They got their money back.

      And in addition they got free advertising in the form of news reports. I probably would never have heard about them otherwise.