IMPORTANT! A SITE IS STEALING MODS!

[Ghogiel]

This is where you will fail.

 

[Kreisher]

@Terry

If this is in testing than why the hell is it not just within a close circuit of people? In reality ANYONE can go make account and download work of someone else on the website. Terry, LOOK if you simply delete the files, send out an apology to those you stole work from and than KINDLY ask them to upload their hard work on your website, than it would be better for everyone. You cannot run a modding community like a business and treat everyone like crap. Robin (Dark0ne) Doesn't make a penny from the site and most of the time I am sure he loses money from the site. However he treats modders with respect and anyone stealing w/o permission and uploading to the site is banned. Simply messaging a 100 or so active modders would make it so much easier for your site to get traffic and legit mods uploaded by AUTHORS not bots or MEMBERS but by the people who spent hours of work making mods. Simply asking the author would most likely have him/her say sure and upload their mod to your website.

 

 

If I can chime in. Antokr, GMOD tried and continues to try and contact mod devs before uploading content. The difficulty is that most developers are no longer active. The VAST majority of mods are uploaded up someone several months / years ago and 1. didn't include an contact email or 2. the email they provided is dead. What happens to that content? If the user didn't put restrictions on the the distribution or didn't ask to be contacted before hand, can it be moved to another site for hosting? What happens when the fan sites hosting mods for older games like Diablo 2, NVN 2, Baldur's Gate, Etc. close down? Does that content die with the site because the devs are unreachable? "Contacting each developer" is a lot easier then it sounds.

[antonkr]

@Terry

If this is in testing than why the hell is it not just within a close circuit of people? In reality ANYONE can go make account and download work of someone else on the website. Terry, LOOK if you simply delete the files, send out an apology to those you stole work from and than KINDLY ask them to upload their hard work on your website, than it would be better for everyone. You cannot run a modding community like a business and treat everyone like crap. Robin (Dark0ne) Doesn't make a penny from the site and most of the time I am sure he loses money from the site. However he treats modders with respect and anyone stealing w/o permission and uploading to the site is banned. Simply messaging a 100 or so active modders would make it so much easier for your site to get traffic and legit mods uploaded by AUTHORS not bots or MEMBERS but by the people who spent hours of work making mods. Simply asking the author would most likely have him/her say sure and upload their mod to your website.

 

 

If I can chime in. Antokr, GMOD tried and continues to try and contact mod devs before uploading content. The difficulty is that most developers are no longer active. The VAST majority of mods are uploaded up someone several months / years ago and 1. didn't include an contact email or 2. the email they provided is dead. What happens to that content? If the user didn't put restrictions on the the distribution or didn't ask to be contacted before hand, can it be moved to another site for hosting? What happens when the fan sites hosting mods for older games like Diablo 2, NVN 2, Baldur's Gate, Etc. close down? Does that content die with the site because the devs are unreachable? "Contacting each developer" is a lot easier then it sounds.

If the modder asks specificly for their content not to be uploaded to other sites. DON'T UPLOAD IT TO OTHER SITES. How hard can it be? A lot of modders here on The Nexus would love to upload their work to your site, since a lot of attention has been gained. As long as you change your policy with "Claim your mod" bullcrap a lot of community members would love to have more members enjoy their mod and expand their horizons beyond the Nexus but just taking the mod. And not uploading permissions and requirements for the mod!! That's just nonsense.

 

 

If you only uploaded the mods that have no requirements or restrictions about uploading them to other site than there wouldn't be a problem.

Edited July 5, 2011 by antonkr

[ub3rman123]

A lot of modders' works aren't actually copyrighted, but this doesn't give free reign over what anyone does with them. It works on an honor system of sorts, and when someone takes advantage of that and put up mods when they don't have permission, it insults the modders who spent their time making the mods in the first place for the community to enjoy. Insulting the modders and community is not the way that you build up a community.

 

Now for some specific examples about what you say with modders being hard to contact. About 70% of mods will actually have a reuse policy listed in the ReadMe, and almost all popular mods have it in there to prevent situations exactly like this. Midas Magic in particular has a spot in its ReadMe: You must get permission from me before uploading this mod, in part or full, anywhere else. Without my consent you cannot upload it.

 

On a side note:

I was talking with Pronam earlier about the site, and we figured some stuff out. I think. Your site has some problems. First off, it's nearly impossible to navigate. Unless you want only the 10 most popular or latest mods, you can't find anything. You need a category or tag search like what the Nexus has, or at least a bigger list of the mods than your 10 thumbnails.

 

Next question: What's the point of a client for mods? There's nothing for it to launch like Steam does, and I really hope there's nothing to buy from it. There doesn't seem to be anything that a client can do that a web browser cannot.

[Dark0ne]

If I can chime in. Antokr, GMOD tried and continues to try and contact mod devs before uploading content. The difficulty is that most developers are no longer active. The VAST majority of mods are uploaded up someone several months / years ago and 1. didn't include an contact email or 2. the email they provided is dead. What happens to that content? If the user didn't put restrictions on the the distribution or didn't ask to be contacted before hand, can it be moved to another site for hosting? What happens when the fan sites hosting mods for older games like Diablo 2, NVN 2, Baldur's Gate, Etc. close down? Does that content die with the site because the devs are unreachable? "Contacting each developer" is a lot easier then it sounds.

 

Copyright, and community etiquette, allows for the freedom to choose how, where and through what medium your work is published and hosted. If a modder (and ergo, copyright holder) has chosen not to mirror their files on other sites then it is not your right or prerogative to then simply assume that you are doing them a service by uploading it to another site without their permission. If you can't contact an author your rights and their rights don't suddenly change and your assumption that "no response means I have permission" is obviously misguided. I'd be surprised if you weren't fully aware that what you are doing is frowned upon and arrogantly wrong. You know your attitude to this is wrong but you continue to defend your actions. Frankly, it's pathetic.

 

Using the excuse of "hey, we're doing you a service by uploading your files on our site for you so we can offer redundancy" has never flown well in this, and any other mod community I have been a part of. If a mod author wants to upload their files elsewhere, then they will. Redundancy in this community comes from a state-of-the-art enterprise level backup solution in the UK, dedicated file server backups on 3 different continents, and a bearded man called "Buddah" (and me) who have every file ever posted in this community on our own hard-drives (mines in RAID-1, can't vouch for Buddah's setup).

 

Let people decide based on the merits of your site. At the moment, the merit is lacking not in looks, functionality or design, but by your uploading policy.

 

I'll lay it down in layman's terms for you:

 

• Author has specifically stated in their readme or permissions that you can upload their files to another site without their permission: fair game
  
• Author has specifically stated in their readme or permissions that you can upload their files to another site with their permission: ask permission, wait for an answer. Only upload if you receive permission. No response does not give you permission to upload.
  
• Author has not stated in their readme or permissions or a public place if/how you can upload their files: ask permission, wait for an answer. Only upload if you receive permission. No response does not give you permission to upload.
  

 

That's how this community has worked for 10 years.

[Ghogiel]

 

If I can chime in. Antokr, GMOD tried and continues to try and contact mod devs before uploading content. The difficulty is that most developers are no longer active. The VAST majority of mods are uploaded up someone several months / years ago and 1. didn't include an contact email or 2. the email they provided is dead. What happens to that content? If the user didn't put restrictions on the the distribution or didn't ask to be contacted before hand, can it be moved to another site for hosting? What happens when the fan sites hosting mods for older games like Diablo 2, NVN 2, Baldur's Gate, Etc. close down? Does that content die with the site because the devs are unreachable? "Contacting each developer" is a lot easier then it sounds.

As with ALL copyright, you do not need to put restrictions on anything. If it is not explicitly stated there are distribution restrictions you do not ever assume there are none. In fact you never assume any rights unless they ARE explictitly granted. No BS.

 

And what happens to those mods is XYZ site goes down? Not anyone's concern apart from the author or those with permissions. So yeah many might die if the site goes down.

[ub3rman123]

Ah, nothing quite inspires walls of text like a topic like this.

 

By the way, is there any way we can be certain you actually are the leader of the site? I'd hate to give questions and advice like this to someone just trollin'.

[ziitch]

I have a question for you, Terry - What made you think that making people pay for mods was a profitable endeavor? If it's because it was being done in one modding community, that doesn't mean people in another modding community (especially ours, and many will agree with me) will also permit the same process. You want to know why we don't let such things happen? We actually make sure gullible people aren't taken in by a EULA-breaker's desire to profit on their own work, and the developer and publisher actually backs us up on it. Not like someone else, who doesn't care about what's going on with one of their most popular series...

[Zaldir]

I have a question for you, Terry - What made you think that making people pay for mods was a profitable endeavor? If it's because it was being done in one modding community, that doesn't mean people in another modding community (especially ours, and many will agree with me) will also permit the same process. You want to know why we don't let such things happen? We actually make sure gullible people aren't taken in by a EULA-breaker's desire to profit on their own work, and the developer and publisher actually backs us up on it. Not like someone else, who doesn't care about what's going on with one of their most popular series...

 

Did you read Terry's reply?

He says they are NOT charging money for mods.

 

Addition by Dark0ne: Zaldir is right. nothing has been mentioned about them charging for mods and any implication has been fabricated by other members and then spread like chinese whispers. The main issue here is about mod theft, not about charging for mods, which would be an issue if and when it were to happen. It's not the issue right now, so no more on it please.

[Metallicow]

I sure haven't noticed anyone asking for permission to do anything, on any mods DEV thread even.

Being a contributer to many mods, first of all, I know for a fact there was NO Permissions asked for certain mods.

There are many different forums you would have needed to at least ask about upon. How many do I see. NONE.

 

I bet most members of the nexus here reading this could easily tell you the places you would have had to look to ask.

Hell, you didn't RTFM even.

Remove anything that the authors did not upload themselves personally, or face an angry community.

Sorry you lost my respect there. Checkmate.