Morrowind 2011 Mod Collection Pulled After Complaints

[Jabberwock xeno]

On one, hand, he should have asked first...

On the other, I'd be pretty damn proud if I could say that my mod was part of something this awesome.

 

[yundex]

What. The. Fuck?

What the hell happened here? Was someone making money from this?

That's what I was thinking as I read this. Aren't mods, y'know, free? It's not like the guy was saying that he did all the work *personally*.

Being free doesn't give anyone right to rip it off.
For example, I might give away free postcards of my paintings at my art gallery. As a method for attracting guests to come see my paintings in full. That doesn't give anyone the right to produce enlarged version of those cards and display them on the street, even if they give me credit.

and yet when people use sane arguments like you did agaisnt piracy they get shot down with well it didnt hurt anyone. lets see the pro piracy peoples opinion on this, probly screw the modders they evil anyways.

Personally if the modders dont want their stuff in the compilations, dont put it in.

My pro piracy argument is basically: it's free and i'm not taking credit for another persons work. Than again, my spiritual path lead me far from what is considered the norm here, so what another person claims I do or do not have a right to do means nothing to me. I decide whatever I have a right to do, and accept the consequences.

Basically, yeah screw em, lol.

 

[Jennacide]

Did he not have the foresight to say "Hey, maybe this is gonna piss mod authors off? Why don't I NOT package them together and just post links to each piece needed and how to work it." If he couldn't produce a link to an item that was used, it's more than likely because the mod author removed it from the web for thier own reasons.

 

[Freyar]

Is it piracy when the legal rights for control over the content don't exist?

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I think it interesting that it was asserted he had breached international law when, at worst, he simply violated goodwill agreements among hobbyists.

 

[Cid Silverwing]

This is why we can't have copyrights, people.

 

[Ericb]

Furthermore, mods aren't "free". It takes time to make them, time that could otherwise be spent doing well, anything else.

In this context, free is precisely what these mods are. Free of charge all the way.

The amount of work put in their creation does not change the range of economical values available for the end product.

The definition of Free Software [http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html] by Richard Stallman might be a worthwhile addition to the topic if it hasn't being cited yet.

No it doesn't. Fair use is just that fair use. It's taking a character of someone else, or one image. It is not copying their entire work, or their entire gallery.

I cannot take an entire short story someone wrote and stick it in a free book of short stories without their permission. I can take passages or examples or characters from that story provided I'm not trying to make a profit.

Taking a small part is fair use, copying the entirety is not.

And what is unfair about this use, exactly? Is it the full-accreditation, the free publicity, or the appreciation of their work? We seem to have different definitions of "fair".

"Fair use, a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders."

Do modders hold any copyright [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright] claims whatsoever over their work?

I think it interesting that it was asserted he had breached international law when, at worst, he simply violated goodwill agreements among hobbyists.

That's what I'm thinking too.

I only hope that people (or one person at least) comes out of this mess with a better understanding of copyright/copyleft concepts.

 

[Jymm]

There is another compilation in the works and it's being done over at the forums at Bethsoft. The makers have asked the modders for their permission to use their mods and better still their input on the project itself.

It's called "Morrowind Overhaul-Sound and Graphics" and it might be even more user friendly than "Morrowind -2011"

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1156204-wipz-morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics/

But I'm still going to download "Morrowind -2011" because I remember the ***** of a time I had trying to get all the mods to work together when I last played the game. But when "M.O.-S&G" is finished I'll give that a try too.


edited to add...

PS- I wonder how much this project (that was in the works) had to do with the response by some of the modders?

 

[Lord Krunk]

Can he at least make a guide so we can compile it ourselves? That'd be cool

 

[BoogieManFL]

What a bunch of little pansies. They should be happy to be a part of something so good for the game and it's fans.

 

[Scars Unseen]

What a bunch of little pansies. They should be happy to be a part of something so good for the game and it's fans.

What a bunch of ungrateful pissants. They should be happy these modders made something so good for the game and its fans.

 

[DaggerOfCompassion]

http://morrowind2011.ultimaaiera.com/
It's back up!!

Thanks to Shardok for the link.

 

[yundex]

What. The. Fuck?

What the hell happened here? Was someone making money from this?

That's what I was thinking as I read this. Aren't mods, y'know, free? It's not like the guy was saying that he did all the work *personally*.

Being free doesn't give anyone right to rip it off.
For example, I might give away free postcards of my paintings at my art gallery. As a method for attracting guests to come see my paintings in full. That doesn't give anyone the right to produce enlarged version of those cards and display them on the street, even if they give me credit.

and yet when people use sane arguments like you did agaisnt piracy they get shot down with well it didnt hurt anyone. lets see the pro piracy peoples opinion on this, probly screw the modders they evil anyways.

Personally if the modders dont want their stuff in the compilations, dont put it in.

My pro piracy argument is basically: it's free and i'm not taking credit for another persons work. Than again, my spiritual path lead me far from what is considered the norm here, so what another person claims I do or do not have a right to do means nothing to me. I decide whatever I have a right to do, and accept the consequences.

Basically, yeah screw em, lol.

your basic argument is screw the video game industry they can burn, also welcome to reported ville population you.

Its people like this why I consider all gamers the largest group of anti video game advocates out there.

I don't know what downloading a free mod pack has to do with the gaming industry burning. Thanks for the report, I guess.

 

[cybran]

I'd take the second part a little further and more cynically, and suggest, "What he did wasn't illegal because it didn't affect me, and only benefited me, and how dare someone who was wronged make life the slightest bit inconvenient for me, no matter the ethics involved." ...that may have been too cynical of me, however.

I wasn't trying to be sensical, I was trying to save everyone the trouble of creating another ten pages of the same posts.

Personally, I side a little more with the second group. There's very little functional difference between this and just providing links to all of the files that were combined in the pack along with the instructions and I don't think that ANYONE would have grounds to complain if he had done that despite the fact that the end result would be indentical to the result of just providing the pack. Moreover, as many have already mentioned, it's not an issue of credit, they just don't want it in the pack at all. While that's not technically the same as saying "you're not allowed to link to the download for my mod without permission", it's functionally pretty similar, which is why this seems so silly to me. To me at least, the creators complaining are mostly just being indignant because it makes them and their work seem more important (which is nothing new in mod distribution arguments).

To be fair, I think he probably should have asked permission first, but even having ignored that step, I think the complaints remain pretty silly.

The fact is, there are a lot of guides like this already out there. So there's a very shitty element of this where he wasn't doing anything new or creative, just taking credit, and alerting the media.

I didn't know that he personally alerted the media. That's shitty behavior, though still not nearly to the extent he's being yelled at for. Nowhere am I intending to suggest that he didn't act like a dick (or, more likely given what I've seen, just fairly naive and a little dumb), I just think the retribution and the discussion has been completely out of proportion and that the original complaints were more about the mod creators getting to complain and lord power over someone else than about any substantive complaint they had.

And the guide did mention that there were a lot of other guides and that he was just trying to simplify the process, which, having installed the thing before it was taken down, he definitely did.

No he did not "alert the media." He posted it on Reddit, and the video on youtube, and it went from there. The media alerted the people about it. Stop spreading misinformation. (Not speaking to you personally, I'm just clarifying something).

Also, the name is mod COMPENDIUM. Which means collection of mods! So right away you should see that he didn't in fact make the whole thing, he just put it all together. If you bothered to read his original guide, he even said so in the closing lines of the guide.

There's no denying that the Elder Scrolls modding community is filled with egotistical douchebags. This coming from someone who has been with this community for years before getting tired of all the disgusting drama.

There was an incident at some point with a modder known as Alien Slof. Yeah, it was just a huge bout of drama. The simple fact that this kind of drama even occurs in a modding community disgusts me to no end. They don't have much to be proud of either, since the Bethesda modding community could pretty much be summarized as follows: Giant Penis Gatling Gun.

You sir, said it all x)

The modders should really just be happy people are enjoying their mods, and that their mods made it so far to become part of the compendium that gained the sensational graphical upgrade. Now that this has to be pulled because of their ego, noone is going to have fun with that, or the mods they made themselves.

Good going you ego pricks. seriously, you guys are scum.

 

[The3rdEye]

Furthermore, mods aren't "free". It takes time to make them, time that could otherwise be spent doing well, anything else.

In this context, free is precisely what these mods are. Free of charge all the way.

The amount of work put in their creation does not change the range of economical values available for the end product.

True, there's not much point in debating if the mods are "free" since all copyrights are held by Bethesda, so anything that's not covered in their EULA/copyright agreements is pretty much fair game.

Still though, I can't help but draw comparison between this and the original crapstorm that surrounded Ebaums World and their initial procurement of content. This may not be as severe a case, but my earlier statement regarding "It should have been common sense to ask first" still stands, regardless of whether the software is free or not.

 

[Ericb]

This may not be as severe a case, but my earlier statement regarding "It should have been common sense to ask first" still stands, regardless of whether the software is free or not.

It's just that many people seem to be confusing the issues on account of this mistake of social conduct coming from the person who distributed those mods.

But I do agree on this, it would have been very polite to ask them first.

 

[Del-Toro]

They can sue him? But, they just took someone else's sourcecode and worked with it. They don't actually own a copyright of it. Think about it. If they can sue him, or if they proceed to do so, I would encourage Bethesda to just go fucking nuts suing them. If for no other reason than to remind them that they made their 'snicker' names modding Bethesda's game.

 

[Retardinator]

The least all those modders could do now is provide decent instructions. I just broke my installation of Oblivion and since I didn't get to download M2011 on time I get the feeling my Morrowind installation is about to be broken too.

 

[Scars Unseen]

But, they just took someone else's sourcecode and worked with it.

God, the ignorance on these forums is boundless. Go open up Morrowind's editor. After doing so, please provide me with instructions on how to create new textures, models and sounds in that editor. Wait. You can't. Sorry, must have slipped my mind.

No matter what claim Bethesda can make to the scripts and dialogue made with the editor, any sort of modification that alters the way that Morrowind looks or sounds is going to involve (occasionally extensive) work with external tools. Bethesda does not and cannot claim ownership of those. So can a modder take legal action for non-authourized use of the assets in these mods? Yes (depending on the country, naturally). Should they? Well that's pretty much what this whole debate is about, minus the ignorance.

Oh, and for the people claiming that no action can be taken unless the works are registered with the US Copyright office... well you're half right. The Berne Convention grants automatic copyright whether the author requests or even wants it. In the US, you do have to register the copyright in order to take most legal actions, but this can be done after the fact. So if they really wanted to (and live in a country that signed the Berne Convention) then they could.

As someone else mentioned, this whole debate is largely made pointless by the fact that there is already another group of modders that is making their own compilation the proper way (i.e. they got the modders' permissions beforehand). I believe the beta release of the graphical update is available, with another compilation affecting gameplay to come. You can read about and get it here. [http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1156204-betawipz-morrowind-overhaul-sounds-graphics/]

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Also - some, let's say, uneducated people here were stating mods are not art. Right. Because designing, creating new or improving old 3d models, painting textures, writing dialogues and scenari - not art. Nope. So you're one of those real grown-ups eh ? Feeling a bit alone now that Mr Ebert wisened up ?

Some mods are certainly works that fall under the umbrella of artistic endeavor. But plenty of the mods included were comprised of nothing more than coding and outright programming. There have been times that I have written what I consider to be beautifully clever code but never once have I looked at anything I've written and thought of it as art. Programming is no more art than the assembly of gears and springs in a watch is art. It can be clever and well designed but in the end code of any sort is simply a problem of passing around data and performing various math operations on said data.