DoctaSax

Perhaps an exemption is in order where publisher-approved paid mods can't be linked to if the publisher withholds modding tools and the documentation to use them from non-paid modders.

Can't speak to Nexus policy, but legally there is definitely precedent that protects people from having their voice associated with a product or work of art without their consent. Tom Waits won more than one lawsuit in the US and Europe against companies using impersonators for ads that sounded as if Waits had done them. Back then, those were landmark cases because the companies hadn't actually used his music recordings for it, simply something that sounded close enough to his voice and stylings that could convince people it was him. They had to pay up serious cash over that too. AI sampling a voice and creating new work with it is close enough to the same practice, and there's even a tiny bit of actual copying involved, so I wouldn't expect legislation and the courts to be more lenient if the matter was pressed, particularly with the precedent in place. Ofc, people like Waits or James Earl Jones have distinctive voices, so their claim that their reputation could be damaged by being associated with something they don't approve of or consent to has a bit more weight than people who sound less distinctive, I suppose.

I wager the instances of screenshots of PMs granting permission being forged are so few and far between they're not worth considering. What is, however, a common issue for moderation is a mod getting reported for not having permission, and then having to take into account that permission may've been granted in private. You hide it for the time being, but shoot off a PM to the re-uploader/porter giving them a chance to provide proof of that, which can take a while. In the meantime, things are up in the air. Also, when this proof is actually provided, you still need to make some kind of note that it exists, for the next time it's reported unnecessarily - and it may not even be you who's on call then. So I certainly get the practical concerns, combined with the reputation issue. Still, imo, a private message giving permission is as good and legal a way of doing it as doing it in public, and saying you're going to disregard it looks a lot like disregarding a modder's explicit wish too. The condition that it needs to be in a certain location or format is one you impose on top of what the modder considers enough. As said, in the past it certainly was, and quite a few people aren't around to adjust to a new system just like that. At the very least, such a takedown shouldn't be framed as 'so-and-so uploaded something without permission', but only as 'so-and-so uploaded something without providing the details we asked for in the format we asked for' instead, then it's just a matter of house rules rather than anything else.

By perms being contradictory, I assume you mean perms as set on the mod (or lack of perms) vs perms given in private. A lot of people aren't comfortable asking for permission in public, so they ask for it, and may receive it, in private. It's easier. There seems to be a push here to make personal permission (as opposed to a general permission, and necessarily public) also a public one (as opposed to private). So far it's been understood that proof of presonal permission, given in private or public, overrules a lack of general permission, whether closed entirely or 'ask me nicely and we shall see'. In fact, it's what it's for, and has been this age and more. Now, you seem to want to move to proof of personal permission only being valid if given in public. This means that someone may be entirely on the up-and-up under the current system of rules and habits that we operate under, but may end up being accused of not being so, and then the proof of having obtained permisison in private is no longer valid. If the orginal modder is no longer around to set the record straight, that's a sorry reason to suddenly get branded a thief. I don't quite understand the agonizing about proof of private permissionbeing unverified or possibly falsified (which as far as I know should be exceedingly rare). It's the nature of private conversation that only the people in it know what happened. If there is doubt that it happened or if there's a conflict in how that is remembered by both parties, then it is always the re-uploader/porter's job to provide proof this permission was given. If they can't they can't. If it is convincing, it is; if not, then not. On the very rare occasion that you might find against the original modder in such a dispute, you can still back down when faced with an actual DMCA if they take it that far and just remove the file - it's not the end of the world. It feels a bit like the responsibility for the transparancy you're after is handed from bethnet to other sites, and from the reuploader to the original modder. Now people are gonna get anxious about having gotten permisison once but the original modder no longer being around to adjust their file page on nexus, leading to them getting crucified on beth-net or something. It's all quite unnecessary, imo.

Then again, if you pretty much allow anything to start with, realizing full well what could mean, it's impossible to get burned after.

If permission to copy from you is not explicitly given, it's assumed to be denied. It is like that by default because that's what's legally required of the site. You're the one who has to go to the trouble of giving the permission.

@Wolfstorm About half the files you have here on Nexus say people need to ask permission, or are outright forbidden, to modify, convert or reupload them elsewhere. I must admit that kinda bugs me coming from someone who keeps saying how much of a cathedralist he is.

I fail to see the rationale behind limiting Libre modding to a site - it's antithetical to the concept. Sites are only places of distribution in the end, and fleeting, while licensing is between creators, and quite permanent usually. Monetization is really a tangent to all this, as it's only one of many reasons why people would want to exercise control, and monetization isn't impossible with Libre either. Libre works; dictating to people who don't want to release Libre that they have to doesn't.

Paradoxically, you can only license your stuff to be freely used by acknowledging copyright and claiming your own first in order to share it with others. Which is why even staunch FOSS proponents don't simply go around saying copyright doesn't exist or should be ignored. That seems to only happen in more amateuristic circles like the modding community, with the current result that 'cathedralism' as a term is completely corrupted by years of mis-use. I'd suggest using a phrase like 'Libre modding' to capture the original intent and leaving the rest by the wayside.

The cathedral in question is certainly not a single mod that a bunch of people contribute to. Nor is it any given user's personal load order/game install. It's simply supposed to be creativity itself, a bustling scene where new things are created more easily because people choose to allow others to use their creations as building blocks for other new content.

There's nothing utopian about it if you keep the element of choice. Cathedralism is simply FOSS, translated to the state of modding around '05, when mod disappearance due to site disappearance was a big concern, and Wrye's position is obviously also infused by certain frustrations he had at the time. Yet for all that, while he says he thinks modders should adopt it, I don't think he says anywhere that it should be forced on them. The main objective of FOSS is encouraging the creation of things and it tries to achieve that by making it easier for people to copy and build further on what already exists. Some people only want to create if they maintain control over what they create, so while FOSS proponents think their way is better (it's allowed), they should accept others going about it differently. Otherwise they just don't get it.

Cathedral v parlor wouldn't be so bad if people didn't misinterpret cathedral all the time. The main point being who it's for: other creators, or users. If the former, it's about helping each other out, because you want to, the Free/Libre Open-Source Software philoshophy, which I share when it comes to stuff I put out. Take away the voluntary part, and it's about toiling away in the mines for those who never contribute, which is unsustainable as a creation model, but quite popular with users and posers. SInce the term cathedralism has become so corrupted by the latter it's time to just re-brand what's good about it and ignore the rest.

I also think this is the most logical course of action. Most of all, I hope people will not just remain scattered to their own discords, social media and other places where they'll be hard to find for new users. I quite like moddingham. It's a bit bare-bones atm, but it's entirely 'by modders for modders'. Adult content is a bit of a pickle for the time being, mostly due to the hosting, but there's quite a good alternative for that already. Something of an 'if you build it they will come' vs 'if they come I'll build it' paradox is inherent in any new modding site, of course. Either way, dagoba will defnitely take feedback into account.

And there are four times as many white people as black in the US. Math tells us those numbers mean that you're roughly twice as likely to get killed by police if you're black. You tend to bring them up to suggest black people have nothing to complain about, but those same numbers tell the opposite story.

"The police should be more racially balanced in its killing" just doesn't make for a catchy slogan. I don't get why people can't help themselves from deconstructing it with tangential arguments. "All lives matter", for instance, because they insist BLM means "only black lives matter". That's either willfully misreading things, or a problem with comprehending rhetoric. "You spent a lot of time whining about this dream you've had, but what is your vision for race relations in the country, Dr. King?" Speaking of, the one thing that bugs me about BLM is a lack of solid leadership. But then, there's none to be found anywhere else either.

It's just not BLM's purpose to decry violence between African-Americans. Your argument is like saying that climate activists aren't doing enough about poverty. Doing something about poverty is someone else's job, they're doing the climate thing. Also, cops are held to a higher standard of conduct than criminals are. That is only right. Burning the city to the ground... Race riots and riots following police killings are as American as apple pie. They happen at least every decade. If you think this is bad, the year '67 alone had almost 160 race riots. This reoccurrence points to a systemic failure: nothing ever changes. But even Homeland Security claims that most of the violence and looting is perpetrated by 'opportunists'. Ie the same guys who start looting when there's a power outage. BLM could do a better job of disavowing violence in its nameh, for sure, but I doubt the people doing it would take much notice.

That's for a jury to decide. Due process is a thing, and capital punishment - if at all defensible - is meant for the most heinous crimes.

Yep. That one is a real head-scratcher. Never understood it myself. Of course, I don't really get the whole "Black Lives Matter" thing either. They keep whining about cops shooting blacks, but, say absolutely nothing about blacks shooting blacks. (on a MUCH grander scale than the cops could even consider.....) Criminals are gonna commit murder, but cops aren't supposed to kill innocent people.

They're just saying they don't want you to sell, or give people permission to sell, your mods. Because they assume that selling them requires the people who're gonna do that to download them from you, you can't permit them to download for a commercial purpose, as a necessary step towards re-selling them with your permission. If they simply download them, and then use it for a commercial purpose without your permission, then you're in the clear.

There's a difference, from what I can tell, only a complaint by the original's author gets the patch taken down. Other copy violations can be brought to staff's attention by anyone, and being unable to provide proof of permission marks the copier as someone in need of sanctioning. I also take it this mostly applies to compatibility patches and bugfixes, which can barely be deigned to "translate, adapt, arrange or alter a protected work", less so for patches that actually add/change the mod's content/functionality. Either way, it seems staff acknowledges this ain't so black & white, don't consider such patches to be wrong in the way actual copy infringement is, but will err on the side of caution if an issue is made on a case by case basis.

BigBizkit quite recently said this about patch mods on Nexus: Something of a "don't ask, don't tell" unofficial policy then.

Mega's speed is usually way above 10 Mbps, there's no noticeable delay, and you don't pay a cent, iirc. For that kind of service, you don't mind merely seeing a banner (without extra clicking).

They're also operating on a shoestring server that's barely adequate for the tiny number of people who actually download from it. They sure as hell are not offering something on par with Nexus. Not even close. So they're not a valid comparison. Several shoestring servers, in fact. Nobody's saying it's as big as Nexus, or that it has all the bells and whistles, and that was never its intention either. But at 1/6 of total membership, let's presume active membership is along the same rate, and actual traffic volume probably somewhat less than 1/6, but surely over 1/325. Donating at 3$/month gives the exact same benefits that Nexus Premium does: no ads or caps. Hence the comparison, along with the fact I have those numbers within reach, which I can't say of places like moddb and what not. Been a while since I visited those - I don't remember a premium option even showing there. My point is, whatever the percentage of premium users is, as long as there's no insight in Nexus's actual income or expenses, there's no point in going around shouting that the end is nigh.

Your reasoning is flawed. The Nexus has 18,000,000 members , that's EIGHTEEN MILLION Members. Of those 18,000,000 million member, approximately 126,000 have a premium membership. That's an awful lot of bandwidth to pay for, especially when only a small fraction of people pay for memberships. Only .007% of that 18 Million have a premium account. This is why websites disappear. You've been quite alarmist about this ratio and what it means to the site's prospects. By comparison, and only to provide perspective, LL, at over 3 million total users has 386 donators, ie 0.00013 %, and is in the black. Nexus obviously has more traffic to contend with, but I doubt it's 325 times as much. Nevermind that more traffic logically means more ad views as well, and Nexus's pay out way better per view. Nexus has far more overhead because of office space and fulltime staff, but those were management choices that we must assume were made knowing Nexus could afford it. Unless we hear different from upstairs, Nexus isn't going belly-up anytime soon. As long as Nexus continues to provide a free service, the decision of members to buy premium or turn their adblockers off depends largely on goodwill. Clearly the new UI isn't very popular, and when premiums start calling non-premiums leeches or cheapskates that probably doesn't do Nexus any favors either in the long run.

I doubt that Nexus's ad revenue can be called 'little', and both the existence of adblockers and the comparative low number of Premium members (if the cited number of over 100k can be called low) will have been taken into account when the decision was made to invest in more full-time staff and an office. I'm not informed of the rationale behind the UI change, but I doubt it will have much to do with users suddenly driving up costs. For the past year and a half, there've been fewer downloads than in the same period before it, for instance. So, you expect the differences between free membership and premium membership to be even more unequal? Or are you looking to have your dog walked, car washed, shoes shined, steak cut up for you, etc, to encourage you to pay for a service you've enjoyed for as long as you have? Would a hug, or a birthday card be enough? Both? What I, personally, am looking for is nothing at all. I haven't downloaded much of anything on Nexus for ages. For what little I do download, I can live with the capped speed, no problem. Even the new nag screen's much less likely to end up bothering me than other users. Which means I have no incentive to buy Premium, other than charity. It's been said time and again that Nexus isn't a charity itself either, but a business. If a business wants people to pay for its services, the only viable way of doing so in the long term is to make sure you sell an attractive product. In order for a business to sell me a product, it should be more than the lack of an inconvenience that doesn't trouble me to begin with. Simple as that, no need to bring up that steak nonsense.