Morrowind 2011 Mod Collection Pulled After Complaints
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
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This entire thing is ridiculous on so many levels is defies belief.
Bethesda pretty much gave the community a go-ahead to mod their games and even tends to provide the toolsets to make it easy to do. The guys making these mods were by and large adding free works to the community, and I'm pretty sure that by definition they don't OWN anything, since all their work using that game and the tool sets actually belongs to Bethesda, who by all accounts has covered itself heavily in this regard.
Claims of copyright would be bogus anyway. I'm not a huge expert on it but it's not quite as easy as a lot of people think to have a copyright stand. Simply put to hold a serious copyright costs money and you have to have it officially registered. A company that does not pay to maintain their copyrights will see their work become public domain, long before the simple passage of time would have a chance of doing it. Before anyone starts griping about how I'm wrong, I will point out that there have been a number of fights over things like this in regards to sites distributing "Abandonware" and so on. By and large they continue to exist because of companies not maintaining their rights and ownership of certain properties in the face of the law.
The whole thing about being able to mark "copyright" on something you create and then have it be protected has some validity, but mostly comes into play in cases where your on the way to have the copyright registered. The principle being that if you write something, and your roomate goes "wow, that's really good" and decides to grab a copy of it and try and get it copyrighted before you and gets there first due to having a faster car, you can protect your work from theft by having declared/marked that intent. Of course like anything there is no way to detemine the validity of when a copyright was marked, or who might have done it first. Anyone can claim anything is copyrighted at any time. Typically such marks have weight when there is some additional way of proving their validity. Back when I was in college the subject was covered in brief, and a simple and straightforward way of protecting a copyright in the short term is to write that intent on the documents (like a story) and then mail a copy of the documents to yourself through the postal service. The postal service will date the envelope/box and then as long as you don't open it you have an item dated by a third party with no vested interest that can show when you made that claim/created the work. So if you went to court over it, the package could be opened in front of witnesses. If the date marked by the postal service (and confirmed by their tracking system) is earlier than the guy trying to claim your work can prove he had a claim, your likely going to win.
Or in short, there is no way any of these mod creators could ever PROVE they created any of this stuff. I could take any one of those mods and say I made it, stamp a copyright on it, and who is to say they aren't robbing me, if there is no independantly viable proof? If they actually tried to pursue legal action here they would likely be laughed out of a courtroom. Not that the guy assembling these mods did try and claim them as his own or anything, he was apparently giving credit where it was due.
What's more, as I understand things, the guy putting together Morrowwind 2011 wasn't just using someone else's work and compiling it. Apparently he himself had to do some work to get all those mods to work together seamlessly. As anyone who has modded a game, even one designed for it like Bethesda's games can tell you, mods conflict with each other like crazy in some very unexpected ways. The guy does deserve credit for getting all those mods to play well with each other so to speak.
The point here is that this strikes me as being bogus, I think what we're looking at is a bunch of mod makers who were distributing their work for free, and who were being given credit for their work (which is the only thing they could reasonable expect) were trying to make noise because they could.
My big problem with the issue here is that Bethesda itself apparently banned the guy and took action on his account. Truthfully I think if anyone needs to be looked at carefully here it's them, because they shouldn't have been involved in this to begin with, unless in some way their ownership of the "Elder Scrolls" property itself was being threatened, which hardly seems to be the case.
My attitude is pretty much that a few arrogant twits with delusions of grandeur and non-existant legal backing, should be allowed to ruin things like this for everyone just because they can.
This is all simply what I think/have learned, and my opinion of course. Also I'll state that I don't want to get into a prolonged arguement on copyright law. It's been a while, but I tend to trust my sources. What little I know actually comes from my ambition at one time to become a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer, and having talked to a couple of english teachers in college about it when I was younger. The cost of copyrighting a manuscript was something they mentioned (if a publisher doesn't buy it from you and worry about that themselves) along with the bit about mailing a manuscript to yourself to use the postal office as an impartial third party as far as dates go as a defensive technique if you ever became worried about someone stealing your work. As well as a good thing to do in general in case when you wrote something comes into question (such as a case where another writer with similar ideas decides to try and accuse you of plagerism... having written yours first and being able to prove that is the best defense you can have).
Bethesda pretty much gave the community a go-ahead to mod their games and even tends to provide the toolsets to make it easy to do. The guys making these mods were by and large adding free works to the community, and I'm pretty sure that by definition they don't OWN anything, since all their work using that game and the tool sets actually belongs to Bethesda, who by all accounts has covered itself heavily in this regard.
Claims of copyright would be bogus anyway. I'm not a huge expert on it but it's not quite as easy as a lot of people think to have a copyright stand. Simply put to hold a serious copyright costs money and you have to have it officially registered. A company that does not pay to maintain their copyrights will see their work become public domain, long before the simple passage of time would have a chance of doing it. Before anyone starts griping about how I'm wrong, I will point out that there have been a number of fights over things like this in regards to sites distributing "Abandonware" and so on. By and large they continue to exist because of companies not maintaining their rights and ownership of certain properties in the face of the law.
The whole thing about being able to mark "copyright" on something you create and then have it be protected has some validity, but mostly comes into play in cases where your on the way to have the copyright registered. The principle being that if you write something, and your roomate goes "wow, that's really good" and decides to grab a copy of it and try and get it copyrighted before you and gets there first due to having a faster car, you can protect your work from theft by having declared/marked that intent. Of course like anything there is no way to detemine the validity of when a copyright was marked, or who might have done it first. Anyone can claim anything is copyrighted at any time. Typically such marks have weight when there is some additional way of proving their validity. Back when I was in college the subject was covered in brief, and a simple and straightforward way of protecting a copyright in the short term is to write that intent on the documents (like a story) and then mail a copy of the documents to yourself through the postal service. The postal service will date the envelope/box and then as long as you don't open it you have an item dated by a third party with no vested interest that can show when you made that claim/created the work. So if you went to court over it, the package could be opened in front of witnesses. If the date marked by the postal service (and confirmed by their tracking system) is earlier than the guy trying to claim your work can prove he had a claim, your likely going to win.
Or in short, there is no way any of these mod creators could ever PROVE they created any of this stuff. I could take any one of those mods and say I made it, stamp a copyright on it, and who is to say they aren't robbing me, if there is no independantly viable proof? If they actually tried to pursue legal action here they would likely be laughed out of a courtroom. Not that the guy assembling these mods did try and claim them as his own or anything, he was apparently giving credit where it was due.
What's more, as I understand things, the guy putting together Morrowwind 2011 wasn't just using someone else's work and compiling it. Apparently he himself had to do some work to get all those mods to work together seamlessly. As anyone who has modded a game, even one designed for it like Bethesda's games can tell you, mods conflict with each other like crazy in some very unexpected ways. The guy does deserve credit for getting all those mods to play well with each other so to speak.
The point here is that this strikes me as being bogus, I think what we're looking at is a bunch of mod makers who were distributing their work for free, and who were being given credit for their work (which is the only thing they could reasonable expect) were trying to make noise because they could.
My big problem with the issue here is that Bethesda itself apparently banned the guy and took action on his account. Truthfully I think if anyone needs to be looked at carefully here it's them, because they shouldn't have been involved in this to begin with, unless in some way their ownership of the "Elder Scrolls" property itself was being threatened, which hardly seems to be the case.
My attitude is pretty much that a few arrogant twits with delusions of grandeur and non-existant legal backing, should be allowed to ruin things like this for everyone just because they can.
This is all simply what I think/have learned, and my opinion of course. Also I'll state that I don't want to get into a prolonged arguement on copyright law. It's been a while, but I tend to trust my sources. What little I know actually comes from my ambition at one time to become a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer, and having talked to a couple of english teachers in college about it when I was younger. The cost of copyrighting a manuscript was something they mentioned (if a publisher doesn't buy it from you and worry about that themselves) along with the bit about mailing a manuscript to yourself to use the postal office as an impartial third party as far as dates go as a defensive technique if you ever became worried about someone stealing your work. As well as a good thing to do in general in case when you wrote something comes into question (such as a case where another writer with similar ideas decides to try and accuse you of plagerism... having written yours first and being able to prove that is the best defense you can have).
Yes. Yes I have. Fact is, there's nothing I can do about it(even if I wanted to).Erana said:
Most sites hosting mods will remove something if it contains your work and you didn't give permission. That's a courtesy. They don't have to do that. You don't own your mods. You have no copyright to them and all you have is the claim that you made them. You don't get to decide who gets to do what with them.
Asking for permission before using someones mod in your own work is common courtesy in the modding community. It's a showing of respect to the authors of the work you want to use. It is not a necessity and you can't be legally punished for using someones work without their permission.
While they may be technically in the right, I can't help but feel that the mod creators in this case have lost sense of the greater priorities of the modding community, which is creating a better, more supportive experience for everyone. I'm certainly not deneing they have the right to be selfish, but it doesn't make their actions any more excusable from an ethical standpoint.
Pretty sure they can claim copyright on all of their contributions Within the mod, such as graphics, music, code, etc.HG131 said:
Unless i'm mistaken.
Anyway, i understand the mod creators completely.
Its like you painting a picture, spending a lot of time and effort getting it how you want it. Then some guy grabs the picture, puts it together with a second picture, then gets up on a stage showing it off to people, getting praised for his fantastic work.
Wouldn't you feel peeved?
Its basically stealing credit, even if he did put a text file in the archive listing credits no one will really look or pay attention to it. Its got this other guys name plastered over the place and cause he set it up they'll see him as the creator.
The only reason he didn't ask is because he knew they probably wouldn't want him to do it, that they liked their mods how they were and didn't want them ripped. (what other reason could he have for not asking first?)
I have come to the conclusion that people are morons and doubly so in the internet...
Gonna try and find somewhere to download that bad boy right now.
Gonna try and find somewhere to download that bad boy right now.
Actually I think you'll find it's more like copying a picture of the Mona Lisa, putting a moustache on it.. then getting pissed because someone framed it, and hung it in a free gallery of similarly derived works because he thought they were all really well done.Some_weirdGuy said:
(EDIT...Not mentioning the sign on the door saying "HEY.. come see what other people have done")
(EDIT EDIT... nor the added mood lighting because looking at some of them in their original form made your eyes bleed.)
If it was in the mod, they don't own it.Some_weirdGuy said:
I can compose a musical masterpiece as background music for a map, but as soon as I put it in that map and release it to the public, it isn't mine. It belongs to the public, and more importantly, the company that made the game I modded. Especially if I used their tools to do it.
It would still be my work, but I wouldn't own any rights to it.
Gawd damn it, get my copy of Morrowind out of storage, set the torrent going the whole day, go to sleep for 2 hours and wake up to find it 80% done! I am way beyond furious, but I understand why he had to take it offline. Just quite a annoying thing for the mod makers to do, and somewhat counter productive IMO.
Then again asking for permission first is usually a very good idea for this kind of thing.
Then again asking for permission first is usually a very good idea for this kind of thing.
I don't understand how people can consider the original mod authors to be in the wrong. Many of them spent a lot of time on these mods, putting tons of effort into them. It's not wrong to want a little recognition for your work. Then you find out some guy has taken your mod along with many others and thrown them all together, and is being praised by the entire internet for it. Almost nobody even knows what you did to make that mod possible. The creator didn't ask for your permission, he just took your work without saying a word.
Even if he did give them credit in a text file, that's hardly giving enough credit to the creators. The fact that he didn't even ask the mod creators if they were okay with this shows he has little respect for them.
Even if he did give them credit in a text file, that's hardly giving enough credit to the creators. The fact that he didn't even ask the mod creators if they were okay with this shows he has little respect for them.
I think it's your and their use of words like 'original' that piss people off.Internet Kraken said:
All of that is perfectly reasonable. Expecting credit for your work isn't wrong. What's wrong is threatening legal action over violation of a copyright you don't own.Internet Kraken said:
He should have kept it up just to spite them. Their legal claims have no merit whatsoever.
See, now i remember there being upset a while ago about proposed changes to how the automatic rights of intellectual property worked, where they wanted to change it so that your intellectual property was no longer automatically recognised and protected.
It didn't end up happening as far as i know, so i'm pretty sure you are wrong.
Although i certainly welcome solid proof one way or another.
Care to explain?Fumbleumble said:
Honestly I don't know jack about the legal issues surrounding mods and what can or can not be considered copyright infringement in this area. I think threatening legal action was going to far, but they were perfectly within their right to demand this guy take the mod down.-Samurai- said:
I'm shocked he did not get the permission of the authors whose mods he compiled into Morrowind 2011. That is simply the way it's done. Right or wrong, this is exactly how I would expect the authors of these mods to react. They believe they should have creative control of their work (after Bethesda, of course) and will not take kindly to being so slighted.
EDIT: Even though no modder owns the work he has created in any legal sense (that I know of), there are expectations and customs adhered to by the mod community. Major sites and notable modders almost always respect the author's wishes regarding "their" work. Even popular mods disappear from major sites at the author's whim.
EDIT: Even though no modder owns the work he has created in any legal sense (that I know of), there are expectations and customs adhered to by the mod community. Major sites and notable modders almost always respect the author's wishes regarding "their" work. Even popular mods disappear from major sites at the author's whim.
With that I will agree. He used their work without their permission. They have the right to be angry about it.Internet Kraken said:
Out of respect for their work, it would have been right to take it down. Had he chosen not to, though, there would have been absolutely nothing they could do about it.
The EULA for games(and usually in the modding tools as well) state that you have no claim of ownership over the works you create, and you can't sell them for profit.
But, instead of asking him to remove their work, they decide to throw legal threats at him that have no merit. That's why they look bad here.