Threshold wrote:
the_disciple replied:

I personally know at least half a dozen people who were in college with me as physics and math students who live of designing software and applications. None of them had a full CE or Software Design education, most did not have anything beyond basic C/C++ clases required of all students.

The thing is, all these people taught themselves how to code in all the other languages they program in, one of them has worked for 3 multinationals already as regional head of Computer Design division.

So, I think Threshold's example was far from ridiculous or idiotic, specially since the person to first use the annalogy was KaViR not him.

My first paid job on leaving college was as a welfare rights advisor and advocate. Despite having no formal legal training I was quickly working directly with legislation to prepare appeals and then presenting them before legal tribunals. It certainly wasn't easy, but I managed just fine and was regarded as a successful advocate by other legal professionals.

My point is that individual examples don't really do much to sway the argument either way. The 'Software Design vs. The Law' complexity argument is completely pointless. Who can say? Who really cares? It's just another distraction for KaVir and Threshold to flame each other over...

It is not a necessary evil. We uphold the letter of the DIKU license as well as the expressed intent of the DIKU team regarding how they wish it to work. We cover our expenses with voluntary donations and/or the purchase of out-of-game merchandise.

I think you're correct in saying that you shouldn't be tarred with the same brush as Medievia, because you're working with Hans and acknowledging the team's contributions as you do so. <moderator edited stuff out here.>
It's a respectful way to manage the transition from a DIKU-base game to one that will allow you to continue operating as a pay-for-perks game. But no one forced your hand to take things in that direction-- other solutions exist, and it's disingenuous to say it was "necessary".

Sorry about the recent lack of moderation. I haven't been on this thread for a couple of days. I've gone through and moderated the heck out of the last few pages, deleting some posts, editing insults or over-the-top invective out of others. I think the thrust of the arguments is still there in any case.

--matt

Well, making a profit has not been interpreted as giving out virtual benefits in exchange of money. Generating revenue is not profit.

I think you're right though: If you assumed it was profit (again, I and, as far as I'm aware, all tax law, rejects the idea that simple revenue = profit) there'd be no difference between selling a virtual sword (that isn't part of DIKU, but part of your code) and selling a sticker or a character sheet. There's a difference in terms of in-game impact, but the DIKU license doesn't mention in-game impact nor does it imply that it's at all concerned with the distinction, so it's hard to see how that's relevant.

--matt

I know this has been discussed before, and I'm pretty sure I remember you disagreeing with it, but this is the reasoning that is generally applied to the situation:

Stickers, t-shirts, mugs, and other things completely outside of the game do not infringe the Diku copyright, and thus they fall outside the scope of the licence (unless they've got Diku code printed on them or something equally silly). Obviously you could still have problems if your theme infringes on another copyrighted work (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc).

By the same reasoning, I could sell you the data file for a virtual sword which I'd created, and you could then use that data on your own mud. I could even sell you the entire area file (assuming I'd written it all myself). Once again, if the area was based on another copyrighted work, there could be problems, although these wouldn't be Diku-related.

But selling a virtual item within the game itself assigns it a value separate from that of the raw data or creative effort involved. And that value is something specific to the mud in which the item exists. The reasoning, therefore, is that you're selling something of value within the game itself.

In a similar vein to what KaVir mentions, DIKU owners can sell advertising on their websites, copyright their logos, contents, and images, incorporate themselves as nonprofits, etc. The changes we made (like all our areas) belong to us and fall under our own copyrights.

ROM's author once summarized the license as "Make no financial gains from this, and give credit where it is due." We follow that closely-- Carrion Fields pockets none of the donations or proceeds from merchandise, and routes it all into maintaining and upgrading the equipment needed to run it.

I've answered this before.  Vryce and the rest of our god staff do not care about this issue.   Thousands of Medievia players do not care about this issue.  The DIKU authors do not care about this issue.  The only people who care about this issue are the ones posting to this thread and probably a few others who frequent TMC.  Why in the world should we turn our code over for inspection to please a handful of other MUD admins that have been on this tired crusade for over 10 years?  We don't care about pleasing you.  We would much rather spend our time pleasing our players by developing and expanding Medievia.

Don't mistake me, we CARE about Medievia's code. We don't care about the crap that 10 people on these forums harp over year after year.

I know I've said this before but I like posting on these boards. I like reading them and responding and so forth. Plus I'm the only one from Medievia who comes to this site and I figure someone should read the MUD site forums regularly. Call it part of my Mediedvia job so to speak. In the end though it's intellectually engaging and good fun.

And btw, I'm not the one who starts these threads.

I always enjoy, ironically, this argument. There are only so many active forum posters. Those that do post frequently can be compared via percentages on their opinions on Medievia's ethics/running of its MUD. Even if it is only 20-30ish posters who typically have commented on Medievia, a lot more forum users read these forums. Moreover, many of the most active forum users here are admins of their own MUDs(many of them large MUDs), and assuredly their opinion of Medievia is fed back inevitably into their own games via forums and chat channels and general consensus.

I have to wonder howmuch larger Medievia would be if it just played nice with the rest of its community a little. I guess we'll never know, though - I've read Vryce's conversations with other staff members and such, via AOL Instant Messenger, and it seems very unlikely that he'd be willing to make even the smallest of concessions to try to make peace with the rest of the community.

Don't downplay the opinions of a couple dozen people, when those people effect a much larger community's point-of-view.

Again I repeat, no-one but you thinks this a valid point. You can argue it until you're blue, you'll just be ignored for the most part. If you think this is a valid argument towards those who defend the DIKU license, you're completely missing their point.

Sol - if it wasn't AIM, it was some sort of similar messenger; it was posted in the forums, so it wasn't some secret that I read it.

---

The community is very large, Sol - if I thought it would make a difference, I could easily enough send a petition out to various MUDs and forums and get a large amount of people to sign a form saying that they do care about the DIKU Licensing issue and do not agree with Medievia's breaking of it.

If I did that, though, would it change anything? If I got enough people to sign, would you credit the originators of your MUD's code-base? Would you co-operate with the rest of the community? I have the feeling the answer is no, but correct me if I am wrong.

If it's the one I'm thinking of, it was an in-game channel of some sort (hero talk, or immortal chat, or something similar).

And by "many" you mean 3 people. Looks like you're using the same math as you use to add up your "mud community" support.

And please go back and read my posts. I never said you had to be a professional to DISCUSS an issue. I said when it comes to an issue like the law, a non-professional shouldn't speak with absolute certainty just because they ran a few google searches. That's irresponsible and totally destroys their credibility.

From a hosting perspective, if someone wrote to the co-location site that said game was doing something illegal (i.e. license violations, etc), I pretty much would think that co-lo site would put a block on the game server access (both physical and net-connection wise) until the problem is resolved rather than face legal or public/community confontation against the co-lo site for supporting such a so-called business entity.

Just my $0.02 worth.

-- M

Yeah maybe... if you're talking about amateurish colocation companies looking to go out of business.

Any colo facility that cut off a paying customer for such a flimsy reason would lose their customers fast.

The only way a responsible, professionally run colo facility would do such a thing would be if they received a court order.

Murpe, don't you run a colocation service? Are you telling me you'd shut off a customer simply because you got an email telling you that one of your customers was doing something illegal (like violating a license)? Is that really what you want to be on record saying about your business practices?

I'd RUN, not walk, from a colo service like that. Any disgruntled gamer could take someone's game offline with a single email. That's nuts.

Any colo service that cared more about "public/community confontation" than their paying customers doesn't deserve to be in business.

KaVir's involvement with this issue is considerably more involved than "a few Google searches". For one thing, he's reviewed their code personally. For another, he's provided numerous legal citations which support his thesis.

You would make a stronger argument by addressing his points rather than consistently attacking the speaker.

Yep. All my point ever was is that comparing the two in some ways isn't the obviously idiotic idea that Threshold suggested.

Well...ok. Any accountant would certainly "buy it" though, so I guess I'll have to be ok with that. Seriously, what do you think the word profit means?

--matt

Couple things:
1. A third party has no standing to complain and it would be incredibly irresponsible of any service provider to yank service over an uninvolved party's complaint.

2. The DMCA is available and easily used for an aggrieved party. I've shut down a MUD myself, in a foreign country, by using it. The ISP simply required a letter from a lawyer laying out the DMCA violations that the MUD in question was committing (operating without a valid license, since we'd already yanked the license for non-compliance). As far as I know, the DIKU guys haven't even bothered using this cheap, easy method, really making one wonder if they care even a smidgen.

--matt

Heavens no, but I would make a note of the claim and determine the best route upon which to proceed, including contacting a lawyer. Personally my choice, for a lawyer, in a case like this: Tom Buscaglia () -- someone that is knowledgeable in game development,  Intellectual Property (IP) and licensing claims.

In the small town I live in, I have seen it happen to have negative impacts to new and current customer's perspectives (i.e. not supporting them when a claim is sent, requests for turning over possible evidence to higher authorities, etc).

Even though I have a basic indemnification clause as the hosting provider (i.e.Customer agrees to defend, indemnify and hold harmless MURPE against liabilities arising out of...), I sometimes wonder if its good enough against a said case/claim like this.

In a way, its a Catch-22 -- damned if you do, damned if you don't.

-- M

I suppose you speak for all accountants now?

Not really. All he does is cobble together a bunch of links, cut out snippets that he thinks sound like they apply to the situation (and say what he wants), and then foam at the mouth and shout down anyone who disagrees with him.

Because he lacks even the slightest degree of humility regarding his "legal analysis", and because he refuses to even accept the possibility that he is misinterpreting the law, every single thing he posts on this issue is suspect.

This is not a complicated point. I really shouldn't have to keep repeating and explaining it. People who are completely unqualified and untrained in a very complicated discipline should use great care when postulating about it.

<Moderator edited out stuff>

The credibility of the writer is a perfectly legitimate issue. If the writer lacks credibility, then what the writer writes is automatically questionable.

I realize you don't like actually reading other people's posts, and instead just skim them, but Matt already gave an example of how simple, easy, and cheap it is to use the DMCA.

If Hans/DIKU cared one bit about Medievia and their actions, they could use the DMCA for basically no money.

I've had to use the DMCA numerous times in the past to shut down various web sites that were distributing copyrighted information of ours. It was quick, painless, and except for a little of my time, free.

So your point that the only thing holding them back is the cost or hassle really doesn't hold water.

It's called citing my source, and it's a lot more than you've managed. In fact, your sole "contribution" to this thread appears to be nothing more than ad hominem attacks. You don't like what I say, but can't find any holes in my sources, so you instead try to discredit me - even the_logos has ended up pruning some of your attacks against me.

And that is a perfect example of your rabid rantings in practice. Nearly 6 years ago, following yet another Medievia flame war on usenet, someone proposed putting together a website with all the evidence. So I did some investigation, gathered the evidence and presented it, so that people would stop spamming usenet with the same old arguments. Other than making my opinions clear when questions are raised, that's pretty much it.

Now, let's start talking about your 'freakish crusade' against me. What's your motive?

I only need to cite one source to prove my point, and my source is you. You already admitted you have no legal training. Thus, you should immediately stop posting with such absolute certainty about legal matters.

Without a foundation of legal training, you lack the ability to accurately comprehend what you are citing. That's the problem. You don't fully grasp what you are reading, and so you don't know what parts are truly relevant and which parts are most important to the courts. That doesn't mean you can't talk about the issue. But it does mean you need to be a lot less sure of yourself and dismissive of anyone who disagrees with you.

Smart people often pose the greatest risk to themselves when it comes to legal issues. They think "Hey, I'm smart. I can figure this out." and pretty soon after, they're screwed. Do you think you're smart enough to take out your own appendix? No? Well don't think you're smart enough to analyze the law if you aren't trained.

Here is a little hint: you can't walk into a court and use web sites as your basis. You need case law. You need statutes. You need appellate court decisions. You need stuff much headier than the garbage you've been citing.

I have two motives:

The first is to get you stop holding yourself out as a legal expert when you have absolutely no training in legal analysis. Bad legal advice is dangerous. Legal advice from clueless, untrained, laypeople is extremely dangerous and irresponsible.

<moderator edited stuff out>

I agreed with you on substance 5+ years ago. Now I just think you've lost it. You need an intervention, and you really just need to stop.

(I'm noticing that forum bug Shane was talking about earlier. The first post on a new page doesn't seem to show up until someone else posts under it.)

<moderator edited out a quote from a previous post in which the quoted material had to be edited out. Just moderating out a response to something that no longer appears in the thread>

You mention earlier that legal decisions are based on case law and statutes, not web sites. KaVir generally links to case law, such as the US definition of a derivative work, etc. Just because the information is displayed on a web site, doesn't somehow invalidate it.

Again, if you think the references are inaccurate, point out the inaccuracy. But insulting other posters repeatedly does nothing to further your point.

Another question about the license:

Supposing I were to take the non-stock area/mob/object files that were made in a Diku derivitive, and adapt them for a different or 100% original codebase, would my new game still be considered derivitive and fall under the license?

I'm essentially wondering if the creative content is bound to the license because the file formats it is stored in were made for Diku.

IANAL, but I'm fairly certain you're ok there.

--matt

Area files are almost always copyrighted to their author. As far as I'm aware, including them in your mud would not make it a derivative, but it might classify it as a "compilation" (rather like a book of short stories) - nothing to do with Diku, but still something which included work copyrighted to others. The area files are totally independant from the mud, however, so I don't see any reason why you couldn't simply remove them if you later ran into legal concerns.

I'm pretty sure that file formats aren't protected by copyright. The Diku team have also stated the same view in the past, so I think you're fairly safe in that regard.

However you may still run into issues when using other peoples areas without permission. In the case of Diku, I think it's fairly safe to assume that the area authors gave permission for their work to be used with the distribution and its derivatives.

In the case of other muds, I'm not so sure. I could see some builders not being very happy about their work being used in a commercial mud, for example, unless they were getting a cut.

The difficulty is that there's no separate licence for the areas themselves. You could try and track down the authors, but I don't know how successful you'd be.

Kavir wrote:
That's an interesting question. Is it safe to assume? Do we, in fact, even have any evidence that the area builders gave copyright permission to the DIKU guys? You once opined that to buy the DIKU license, you'd have to get permission from the area authors, but if that's the case (ie that the DIKU area authors didn't give the DIKU code authors the right to license), then every DIKU using stock areas may be violating the IP rights of the DIKU area authors.

--matt

This was a (small) part of our decision to remove all our stock areas a long time ago. While they have a couple perks (comfortable familiarity to players that have seen them elsewhere, obvious ease of startup, etc.), we kept running into questions like:

1) Can you radically change this area without the author's permission? To cross-reference the Bartle thread, what if you took a stock area and added lots of explicit sexual content for some reason? A given author might not want their name associated with it. Every game that isn't pure stock will make some changes to an area (even if it's just a new flag or setting added as part of a code change), but how much permission do you have to do this? DIKU allows (and encourages) you to change the code, but the DIKU team didn't write all of the enclosed areas to my knowledge, and no contact information is provided with most stock areas.

2) If you do change it, how is authorship handled? Obviously, it's improper to omit the original author because you made some changes to the area. It's equally improper to claim co-authorship if all you've done is to add a few lines here and there. If you start with a 50-room area and expand it to 200 rooms, are you now a co-author?

We settled all of this by stripping out the stock areas, having all our areas written for us, and having all of our authors agree in writing to some standard boilerplate that grants us our needed rights as administrators. But we had the time and human resources to do so. What's the best way for a new MUD to handle this?

There's no evidence that I'm aware of, but as the areas come with the distribution then IMO it's probably fair enough to assume they can be used with the distribution - at least unless you have reason to believe otherwise.

If you don't assume that, where do you draw the line? Unless you write all the code and areas yourself, there's no way to be truly certain that it doesn't contain anything which infringes someone else's copyright.

It was a representative of the FSF who said that if the Diku team wished to create a new licence (eg GPL), they'd need permission from each contributor. If you purchased the Diku team's copyright and wished to change the licence, it strikes me that the same reasoning would apply.

But in this case we know that the contributors contributed towards Diku with the understanding that their work would be used under the Diku licence (they're basically people who were using the early version/s of Diku, already under the Diku licence, and submitted code to be added to later versions). To the best of my knowledge, the area files were contributed in much the same way.

This is why I believe it's okay to use the areas with Diku distributions - because the evidence would suggest that such was the intent of the authors (although without explicit permission I could certainly see them demanding removal of their work). It's when you want to use the areas outside of Diku distributions that it gets more difficult.

I also agree with Valg's points about modifying the areas, and agree that the best solution is to write your own areas from scratch.

Kavir wrote:
Well, it's fair to say that the DIKU authors (if they gave any thought to it) believed they could distribute the areas, but that's not the same thing as actually legally having the right to distribute those areas. I mean, I look at it much as I do regarding the DIKU license - no harm, no foul - but others don't operate from that point of view.

From a legal sense, you draw the line at verifying that you have the right to use anything you're using, if you're the type of person who cares (I am, but that's a personal thing.) If I were to download a DIKU and run it, I'd throw out all the content that comes with it for a variety of other reasons (largely a lack of quality), but if I were inclined to keep it, I do wonder where I'd stand on using it. I'm pretty anal about following IP law as best as I know how in my personal life, but a combination of the fact that the content that comes with DIKU is worth so little (unlike music, or movies, or whatever) and that nobody's ever come forward to my knowledge to complain about their areas being distributed with DIKU w/o authorization, means that I don't think I'd end up giving it much more than 5 seconds thought.

You know, that brings something else up I think: People are all over Medievia about plagiarism, but reading over the DIKU license, it strikes me if other people did in fact contribute to DIKU, the DIKU guys themselves are plagiarizing by claiming the work as theirs and not crediting the creators of it.

Definitely.

--matt

But logic dictates you have to take it on trust to a certain extent; you can't prove a negative. When you used the Avalon codebase, for example, you did so via a licence - but how could you be sure they hadn't included small amounts of material copyrighted to someone else? When other people worked on your Rapture engine, how could you be sure they didn't borrow a few little bits and pieces from elsewhere?

You can't - but there's no reason to believe that either of the above were the case. If a licence states it gives you permission to use X, and you have no reason to believe it doesn't, then I don't really see what else you can do - unless you write everything yourself.

It's not plagiarism though, it's a contribution explicitly given to the Diku team for the purposes of being added to DikuMUD - and the contributors also get a mention in the credits.

Most muds with any degree of quality have done the same. But it _is_ a very time consuming process, since good areas take a long time to produce.

For a new mud that still wanted to use a Diku derivate as codebase, I'd say there are three ways to go:

1. Don't open the mud for players until you have a unique world that is large enough to sustain a reasonable amount of gameplay. (The drawback to this is of course that it's more fun to work in a mud with players, and that it might be hard to attract competent help to a mud that is not open).

2. Start out with a selection of stock areas that fit your chosen theme, but gradually replace those with original areas. (As Valg already pointed out, there are some advantages to this, mainly that some players actually prefer stock, because they know their way around those areas. Also not all stock areas are crap, it's just that you have seen them too many times).

3. Use some kind of wilderness grid to get a fair size to start out with. These are quick to produce, the room descs can be set automatically by the code, and all you need to do is to add mobs and objects. Later the 'real' areas can be just connected to the grid gradually, as they get finished. (This is the solution I'd chose myself).

Kavir wrote:
This is typically covered by boilerplate warrants/representation clauses and indemnification clauses.

--matt