Yet Another Woodworking Plans Scam?

[Rob Young]

I will admit that this stuff is annoying.  But is it a scam?

In order to be a "scam" it would have to cheat someone or misrepresent itself.

Does he not deliver on the plans he sells?

I see on line vendors selling photos of the moon taken by the Apollo astronauts. Nothing illegal or scam-worthy about that.

Except you can get the images for free from the government.  You only need to have a vendor print it for you.  The cost for printing images from the government archives is very modest.

So is the vendor entitled to some money for accessing and marketing?  Probably all of these plans are open access, and if you know where to find them you can probably get them for free.

Ted's plan scams (and they are) have many copyrighted plans (of which many are of the "paid" variety) within that are not distributed with permission of the copyright holder.

[handi]

I write for Woodworker's Journal. I can assure you, having asked the Publisher, Rob Johnstone, personally, that this IS a scam and has NOTHING to do with the magazine.

[Steve N]

James Walker, the new Ted's Woodworking Plans scam face.

Same scam, different name.

Ted knows he's well known as a skunk, changing names online is an easy thing to do. These Jamooks are a lazy bunch, instead of redoing work (sic theft) they have already done, it's much easier just to create a new identity.

Cooler, make no mistake this guy is stealing the intellectual and copyrighted properties of the true owners, and re-marketing at a lower cost, and mixed with a number of other stolen pieces, to make it appear that his deal is a better deal. Financially for the buyer it sure is, but the buyer isn't actually buying from the authentic seller. IOW a guy steals your brand new car, and sells it to a clueless person for much less than the actual cost of the car. Would you write a review praising him as a great seller? He is a thief, any way you view it.

[elinourrumming]

Ted's plan scams (and they are) have many copyrighted plans (of which many are of the "paid" variety) within that are not distributed with permission of the copyright holder.

I write for Woodworker's Journal. I can assure you, having asked the Publisher, Rob Johnstone, personally, that this IS a scam and has NOTHING to do with the magazine.

Yep – I second both those statements. (And I'm sad to say there are similar WW content thieves out there making a living off the work of others)

[Cooler]

How do the thieves access all of these ill gotten plans?  You would think that the plans would be held securely.

[handi]

Cooler, many of these plans are available in PDF format for free legitimately. My website has most of my published articles available. I have the right and permission to do that. Many magazines make articles available as well.

You can also buy DVDs from most magazines with ALL of their plans as PDFs. Buy one of each at $100.00, and package the PDFs as Ted's woodworking. There really are not any good ways to prevent outright theft of electronic documents. 

There is a website called the wood Archivist out of England. He or she has not only stolen plans from most of the magazines, but cropped out the magazine name and issue info from the bottom of the pages, but even covers over author bios. And to make matters worse, then watermarks the pages as if he owned the rights! 

All of the magazines are aware, but his website has no owner info for them to sic their lawyers on. He has a Pinterest account. I have reported him several times since he has stolen my own articles. But they have yet to ban his account. 

Remember that you personally can generally share my articles freely among your circle of friends. In fact, I encourage you to do so. But you DO NOT have the right to sell these plans, nor alter them in any way.