Why we can't use Patreon, and talking about donations and doing more to support mod authors

[sunshinenbrick]

 

In response to post #28754509.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28754104.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28753779.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28753444.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28747764. #28748164, #28752529 are all replies on the same post.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28740509.

 

 

 

Mr. Dave wrote: RE: Bethesda believing they have a claim on all mods.

I can make a mod without using one single thing Bethesda created. I make my own content, every pixel and every polygon, then I use third party tools to implement them. So how is it Bethesda should profit from this? They should be paying me for increasing sales of their games. After all, I only have the largest all original mod out for Skyrim, and my franchise, Bob's Armory, has been so extremely popular for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim that entire groups of sub mods have been created around it. Bethesda didn't make Bob's Armory. I did. So how is it they should get a cut? In some businesses, if you walk in demanding an implausible cut from someone's net gains, you get shot. Smells like organized crime to me.

 

Anyway, to the subject at hand.

I am personally not fond at all of the newly implemented donation changes. I get spammy pop ups all over the place asking for donations now, when that never happened before. And the offensive part is that these people did NOT create the content they are shoving pop ups in my face for. Why is it, when I have to download some random follower mod to make sure it isn't crediting someone else for my work (happens around 4 times a week actually), I get spammed with multiple donate pop ups, then find my work included without credits? My work is uploaded for FREE. So why should anyone be able to demand money for something I made?

 

I think the original system with the single donate button up where the track, endorse, etc. buttons are should be the limit. And the more I am spammed with donate buttons from people who did not create the work, but only downloaded it and re uploaded it, the more vehemently I feel about this. I don't have patience for people trying to profit off riding my, or anyone else's coat tails anymore.

Simple. Bob's Armory is still derived from Skyrim. Without Skyrim, what is the mod? A collection of random bits you can't actually do much with.

 

Porting them to some other format means they no longer function in Skyrim.

 

It's not exactly hard to understand how derivative works work.

 

As for people stealing your stuff, report it. Nothing will happen if you don't and getting upset that it happens when you don't act on it isn't logical.

I agree with both sides of this arguement as the debate between IP and labour is one that needs to be had.

It does work both ways as it is reasonable to argue that ideas have been 'borrowed' from modders, by developers, over the years... and profit has been made from it.

A lot has to be said for non-financial compesation eg. gifts, official recognition and credit, promotion and sponsorship. A great deal of this revolves around mutual respect, for the idea and for the work that goes into realising it - these games are designed with the added value of modding in mind.

Unfortunately it seems that the monetary value has become the way in which people are coerced into showing 'respect' for things... hmmm... but this seems to be endemic the world over :confused:

gezegond wrote: I believe in free spirit of modding like you, but what some people believe is just downright illegal and they give far too much credit to Bethesda for no reason.

 

I as a modder do not want any monetary compensation for my work, but at the same time, I don't like the fact that some people imply Bethesda holds copyright over my work. They don't, that's a legal fact.

Arthmoor wrote: People who can read the EULA properly aren't saying Bethesda has copyright over your work. They're saying what the EULA says. That they have a license to effectively do what they want with your work and you can't sue them for it. Yes, I boiled that down quite a bit, but the language of the agreement is pretty clear.

 

The CK is a program with a specific purpose. It allows you to modify existing IP, with the company's blessing. In exchange, you've agreed to allow them to benefit from your work if they choose to. It's not that difficult to understand. Derivative works. Look it up.

 

If someone were daft enough to challenge the EULA in court, they'd lose, and it would be a very damaging event all around. Yes, EULAs have been upheld in court cases before, despite many of us not liking that.

It's not a matter of EULAs being upheld in court or not, it's a matter of exactly what clause of an EULA has been upheld. There might be a clause that says you can not sue them. That would be upheld in court most likely. Then there might be a clause that says you agree to commit acts of crime if they instruct you to. Obviously that wouldn't be upheld in court. You can write absolutely anything you want in your EULA, no matter how stupid it is, so you can't just generally say EULAs in general have been upheld in court, therefore they are now effectively the law, or over the law, or whatever.

 

In general, like the example above, it is very very unlikely that an EULA that states something that is against the law in a country, would be upheld by a court in that country.

 

But even if we blindly assume that all of the EULAs are fully enforceable regardless of the content and the context, there's still the fact that you can totally mod Bethesda games using tools besides creation kit. Reverse engineering is protected by law so you can really reverse engineer any software and modify it, including bethesda games.

 

And finally, you're still misunderstanding what a derivative work is. Whether a work is derivative or not has absolutely nothing to do with the tools that are used to create it. A digital artwork is not a derivation of Adobe Photoshop. A drawing is not a derivation of a pencil. A work is only derivative if you take another copyrighted work (work, not tool) and build on it. And building on it specifically means that your work "contains" the other work. If you have a song that has a bit of another song in it for example. If your song was merely "inspired" by another song, it's not derivative because it does not contain the other song.

 

To say whether a mod is a derivation of skyrim, you have to download the mod file (that is, the compressed zip file or 7z file or whatever) and look to see if there are any of Bethesda's copyrighted content in it. In case of "Mr. Dave"'s work, he claims that he has made all his assets from scratch. If that claim is true (I haven't checked) then his mod file does not contain anything copyrighted by Bethesda, and is therefore not a derivative work.

 

If on the other hand I open a Skyrim armor, make some edits, and then package it in my mod, my mod would be a Skyrim derivative work because the armor contained in is copyrighted by bethesda.

This is all yet to be seen.

Tis true that the assets created, voice acting, models, textures so forth and so on are not owned by Bethesda (unless it represented the 'franchise' of course...). However, the moment you feed anything into the Creation Kit or EDEN they would argue that it is there creation because they 'own' that world, pencils, mountains, stories... the lot.

Now I am not saying it is right, and I would also would like to find Bethesda's stance on how they see the use of things like Havok and all the tools they use to create the game in the first place... who actually owns what??? It all comes down to paper and lawyers, as with most things.

For the moment just be glad you are vigilant enough to question such things. The future of where these rabbit holes might take us are anyone's guess.

"Tis true that the assets created, voice acting, models, textures so forth and so on are not owned by Bethesda. But the moment you feed them into the Creation Kit or EDEN they would argue that it is there creation because they 'own' that world"

 

They can't claim such a thing.

I know what you mean but they will certainly try, especially if they have given you money for it. And unless you can get a good lawyer, they may very well win.

While there is also an importance to define the difference between labour and intellectual property, the above practice is quite widespread. For example, if you write an essay at university. They technically own the copyright to the work, not you... crazy but true.

This is partly why there was such a hoo ha when they tried doing what they did. It is also the reason to be aware and read up on law, things like the Creative Commons, share it with others and then it makes it more difficult to be taken for a ride.

No they wouldn't be able to win that even with the best lawyer in the world. You seem to lack an understanding about how software, or specifically, these games work. You can't just "feed" a work to another work lol.

 

You also seem to be giving too much weight to the whole "the better lawyer wins" thing. You can't just go and kill people and then hire a good lawyer to make murder legal for example. There are things that laws are very clear about and in those cases no matter how good a lawyer is they won't be able to do anything.

Um... the Iraq war??? I think you will find there is a lot of contention about the legality of that. And some very high paid lawyers surrounding it to boot!

And yes, you can create a texture in Photoshop and then "feed" it into Creation Kit.

In fact I hope you are right, but the best thing to find out what happens is to give it a try. While I will be routing for you and giving you all my support, I cannot guarantee that will stop them giving you a really hard time.

"And yes, you can create a texture in Photoshop and then "feed" it into Creation Kit."

 

No you can't. That's just how it appears to someone who completely lacks the understanding of how the software functions.

 

I'm sorry I can't be bothered to argue with you any further because you just generally lack the common understanding, common knowledge, and common sense that would make a discussion possible.

 

But just to not come across as an ass, I will explain this bit of "feed"ing to you so you have a better understanding. When you "feed" (lol) a file to creation kit, all you're really doing is tell creation kit where in the hard drive to look for that file. To be more precise you're inserting a piece of text that contains the location of said file. (A piece of text that's copyrighted to you at that, since you wrote it) The piece of text has nothing to do with the contents of the file at that location, so Bethesda can't have ownership over it.

 

If you're interested I suggest you do some reading on how game engines work, how rendering works, etc. There really isn't anything to discuss here.

This is not how Bethesda see it and how they legislate the use of their software (which you are doing just by opening the program) and besides there is little specific law regarding modding and mod software. Strangely enough I actually teach copyrights and computer programming in a college.

At no point have I said that I actually agree with or support the use of law or their agreements in this way, but companies are agressive and even if they don't win, they may very well try.

The law is unfortuantely not always just or ethical and when there is very common, brief or unspecific laws covering such things it can very much be up for grabs. This of course can depend on the country the court is in, but I did state this quite catergorcally earlier on.

I would think it best not to continue if it is suggested to stoop to insulting the intelligence of one another.

I didn't insult your intelligence. I said you lack common sense.

 

For instance, here you say "that's not how they see it". Well it isn't relevant how they see it. If it in anyway was, they would just "will" to see everything in their favor and automatically win everything. Then what would happen if two parties both "will" to see something in their own favor? Did you apply some common sense here when you wrote this? No.

 

"when there is very common, brief or unspecific laws covering such things it can very much be up for grabs"

 

Exactly. These laws are not unspecific. They're very clear.

 

Again I didn't intend to insult you, I usually take extra care to be polite and respectful. I just don't have the patience to continue a pointless argument over nothing, and I respectfully don't want to continue.

 

 

Will is very powerful, and I think what you are describing is exactly why people and companies end up in court against each other.

[djekmiami]

 

 

Do me a favor, don't be that guy who rats on potential competition to get rid of them before they become his competition while spreading a thick layer of B.S. on top so ppl think he did it for some heroic reason.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 17, 2015 by djekmiami

[Lisnpuppy]

I should point out that not ALL the staff gets paid. I volunteered along with other moderators for YEARS and never saw a dollar, pound, rupee, euro or monopoly money.

[MotoSxorpio]

 

In response to post #28747764. #28748164 is also a reply to the same post.

 

 

 

sunshinenbrick wrote:

In response to post #28740509.

 

 

 

Mr. Dave wrote: RE: Bethesda believing they have a claim on all mods.

I can make a mod without using one single thing Bethesda created. I make my own content, every pixel and every polygon, then I use third party tools to implement them. So how is it Bethesda should profit from this? They should be paying me for increasing sales of their games. After all, I only have the largest all original mod out for Skyrim, and my franchise, Bob's Armory, has been so extremely popular for Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim that entire groups of sub mods have been created around it. Bethesda didn't make Bob's Armory. I did. So how is it they should get a cut? In some businesses, if you walk in demanding an implausible cut from someone's net gains, you get shot. Smells like organized crime to me.

 

Anyway, to the subject at hand.

I am personally not fond at all of the newly implemented donation changes. I get spammy pop ups all over the place asking for donations now, when that never happened before. And the offensive part is that these people did NOT create the content they are shoving pop ups in my face for. Why is it, when I have to download some random follower mod to make sure it isn't crediting someone else for my work (happens around 4 times a week actually), I get spammed with multiple donate pop ups, then find my work included without credits? My work is uploaded for FREE. So why should anyone be able to demand money for something I made?

 

I think the original system with the single donate button up where the track, endorse, etc. buttons are should be the limit. And the more I am spammed with donate buttons from people who did not create the work, but only downloaded it and re uploaded it, the more vehemently I feel about this. I don't have patience for people trying to profit off riding my, or anyone else's coat tails anymore.

Simple. Bob's Armory is still derived from Skyrim. Without Skyrim, what is the mod? A collection of random bits you can't actually do much with.

 

Porting them to some other format means they no longer function in Skyrim.

 

It's not exactly hard to understand how derivative works work.

 

As for people stealing your stuff, report it. Nothing will happen if you don't and getting upset that it happens when you don't act on it isn't logical.

I agree with both sides of this arguement as the debate between IP and labour is one that needs to be had.

It does work both ways as it is reasonable to argue that ideas have been 'borrowed' from modders, by developers, over the years... and profit has been made from it.

A lot has to be said for non-financial compesation eg. gifts, official recognition and credit, promotion and sponsorship. A great deal of this revolves around mutual respect, for the idea and for the work that goes into realising it - these games are designed with the added value of modding in mind.

Unfortunately it seems that the monetary value has become the way in which people are coerced into showing 'respect' for things... hmmm... but this seems to be endemic the world over :confused:

gezegond wrote: I believe in free spirit of modding like you, but what some people believe is just downright illegal and they give far too much credit to Bethesda for no reason.

 

I as a modder do not want any monetary compensation for my work, but at the same time, I don't like the fact that some people imply Bethesda holds copyright over my work. They don't, that's a legal fact.

People who can read the EULA properly aren't saying Bethesda has copyright over your work. They're saying what the EULA says. That they have a license to effectively do what they want with your work and you can't sue them for it. Yes, I boiled that down quite a bit, but the language of the agreement is pretty clear.

 

The CK is a program with a specific purpose. It allows you to modify existing IP, with the company's blessing. In exchange, you've agreed to allow them to benefit from your work if they choose to. It's not that difficult to understand. Derivative works. Look it up.

 

If someone were daft enough to challenge the EULA in court, they'd lose, and it would be a very damaging event all around. Yes, EULAs have been upheld in court cases before, despite many of us not liking that.

 

Thanks, Aarthmoor. I can't say it like you do. :)

[simtam]

Like I said even if they're copyrighted it's trivial to make one manually.

That's, like, your opinion.

 

In court, the judge will rely on an opinion, too. An opinion of an expert. An expert on arts and creativity. Possibly an academic scholar, professor or someone alike. And this expert will opine that it is a manifestation of creative activity indeed. Why? Because - and here is the best part - in this jurisdiction the tax law sets reduced taxation rate on compensation for works which are creative in the sense of copyright law. And by opining otherwise, the expert would upset colleagues and fellow artists, because such opinion would threaten to hurt them financially. The expert knows this very well, because what the expert is paid for opinions is taxed at reduced rate for being creative, too, despite a lot of this opinions being trivial to make. :geek:

[MotoSxorpio]

I should point out that not ALL the staff gets paid. I volunteered along with other moderators for YEARS and never saw a dollar, pound, rupee, euro or monopoly money.

We shouldn't claim to know what we are no longer privy to...there might be paid members of staff (other than IT) at this point.

[Lisnpuppy]

 

I should point out that not ALL the staff gets paid. I volunteered along with other moderators for YEARS and never saw a dollar, pound, rupee, euro or monopoly money.

We shouldn't claim to know what we are no longer privy to...there might be paid members of staff (other than IT) at this point.

 

Fair enough. When I was a moderator a few months ago not all of the staff were paid.

[offthebeatenpath]

I just finished reading your statement Dark0ne. The little information I know about skyrim modding and it requires the creation kit. Someone posted about "feed"ing the creation kit. Is it possible to post a pre-creation kit mod? Basically, have the mod authors post their "before" the creation kit mod on site and be able to be compensated. All the while the people who download the authors mod "feed" it thru the creation kit themselves. Mod authors get compensated for their work and let the "users/downloaders" use the creation kit in lieu of the mod author doing that step. It would definitely cut out the corporation chance of suing Nexus. I hope this is a viable possibility.

 

Again, i'm not a mod author in any way, i'm a "user/downloader" who just want to see the mod authors get compensated for their time/work.

 

Sorry to have post this if someone else has already ran it thru you guys. This is a constructive comment and my opinion. I don't know how to use the creation kit or even seen one being used. Just reading other people's post and just throwing this idea out there. If it makes sense, good. If not, it's a miss.

[simtam]

Well, the gist of this lengthy discussion thread is that there is no technical loophole which would "definitely cut out the corporation chance of suing Nexus".

[gezegond]

In response to post #28755519.

simtam wrote:

Like I said even if they're copyrighted it's trivial to make one manually.

That's, like, your opinion.

 

In court, the judge will rely on an opinion, too. An opinion of an expert. An expert on arts and creativity. Possibly an academic scholar, professor or someone alike. And this expert will opine that it is a manifestation of creative activity indeed. Why? Because - and here is the best part - in this jurisdiction the tax law sets reduced taxation rate on compensation for works which are creative in the sense of copyright law. And by opining otherwise, the expert would upset colleagues and fellow artists, because such opinion would threaten to hurt them financially. The expert knows this very well, because what the expert is paid for opinions is taxed at reduced rate for being creative, too, despite a lot of this opinions being trivial to make. :geek:

What I meant was that to bypass all of this nonsense, the modder can just make his own skeleton instead of importing one from skyrim nif files. It wouldn't take more than 15 minutes.

lol @ all that drama for 15 minutes of boring work.