A Hall of Shame

[Talisman]

I'm ticked.  can i post just that?

I think you just did  

[sixf00t4]

way to kill the mood Tal!  I was trying to be all xXXhardCoreXXx and stuff

I just logged into the game and saw the petition.  one of the mods had closed it becuase he knows the deal with that kind of stuff.  Had i seen it first, i would have directed you here.  I'll save the effort though.  

...now that i think about it...kind of glad you were reported...  

[Ariadoss]

Thank you for understanding, I have begun releasing my code in my user file on this site, and I did take down all the pages that don't have any comment concerning the original author of the code.  Please notify me if I erred somewhere, like in the commentary, or forgot to give credit to something, I made sure to look at the originals and made sure nothing copyright wise was missing.

[Kendaer]

I have at this point investigated the sites you posted.

Exactly one of them was in violation of the GPL  (Remember there were reasons we shifted from the GPL to the CC 2.0 license).  That site is the one which removed the copyright link and I have sent them a message instructing them on the error of their behaviour.

I will investigate your site again tomorrow Ariadoss.  Please make sure that you have in fact published ALL modified core files by that point.

[MightyE]

Thanks Ariadoss for pointing out the site that's in violation of the copyright and license agreement, we'll address them as appropriate.

One problem that JT and I have is difficulty in treating people politely who violate the license/copyright.  You see, we deal with several people each month who take it upon themselves to take what we freely gave them, and mutilate it with out so much as a thank you.

It gets old and it gets frustrating.  Some people when we contact them go, "Oh crap, I didn't really think about it, let me bend over backwards to fix things," and then do so.  Other people say that's what they're going to do, and then nothing happens for a couple of weeks, our emails go unanswered, etc.  Still other people insist they're not in violation of the license and that they owe us nothing.  Believe it or not, but there are litterally thousands of hours of work invested in LoGD.  If this were a project which was being developed under paid contract, the costs would be hundreds of thousands of dollars.  JT and I give tons of time every week, basically as many hours a week as we can afford to give (JT has been able to give more recently than I unfortunately  ).  We do it all for free, and we only ask a couple of things in return -- maintenance of our copyright, and as of 0.9.8 pre-releases, access to others' modified code.  I guarantee no one has put as many hours into this as the two of us, and I don't think it's at all unfair to ask these things when we give so much of our work away for free.

So maybe you can understand how frustrating it is to deal with people several times a month who completely disrespect this and proverbially rape that which we gave.  Aside from being illegal, it's also disrespectful, and that wears on us a lot over time.  Unfortunately we're not affoded the luxury of infinite amounts of time to work on LoGD, so every hour we spend corresponding with some knumbskull who's violated our license is an hour that we don't spend writing code.  Thus such people steal not only from us, the authors, but also from the entire LoGD community.

When someone is in violation, it's not a matter of simply throwing together a letter in 5 minutes, and we're done with it, it's something where JT and I correspond with each other, proofreading letters before we send them, attempting despite the overwhelming frustration involved to be fair in our treatment of those who violate the license.  Each person who violates the copyright invariable consumes at least 2-3 hours of time between JT and I, if they're cooperative.  For those who are not, well, I kept track, and spent over 40 (forty!) hours corresponding with one person who, it would seem, was skillful enough in PHP to remove the copyright and modify the code, but not apparently skillful enough to undo his deeds and return to compliance.

It is fair and appropriate for us to be able to demand that someone cease and desist running our code the VERY FIRST time they violate the license.  That is well within the rights reserved for us under US Copyright law.  It's also possible that we could sue such offenders for various things such as dillution of our product.  We don't do these things, and so we are more understanding than we have to be.

I'm sorry if you felt unfairly picked-upon.  In reality, we could have come down much harder.  On your end, all you see is us coming in with guns blazing, but on our end, this is something we go through every week or two.

[Excalibur]

I've written 2 petitions, I've wait about 1 month but I've got no answer at all, so here I am to denounce another site that has modified other's work (mine, LonnyL, Talisman, Anpera, and more) without permission (at least for my work) and hiding link to code.

In petition I've asked him to remove Tournament from his site (it's a mod I've written for 0.97 and publically released here at DragonPrime), send me the updated version so I could release it, giving credit to him for the upgrading.

But no answer at all :-(

So I ask you to enforce my request with "louder" voice, with the hope he will listen to you.

The site is: http://lotgd.togrc.com/

Excalibur

[lonnyl]

Yes I see this person has converted a great many of my mods.... I guess before I would get too upset I guess my request is that they be sent to me, and I will get them upload.  I for one have not had the time to convert anything to 0.9.8 and if the code is submitted back will be grateful to their efforts.

--EDIT--
posted my petition to the site admin...

[Kendaer]

The owner of the lotgd.togrc.com site is the admin whom I initially posted this thread about.  He had fixed the problems I had noticed, but apparently there are others.

In some ways, I only have standing to put a complaint against him when he is violating my copyright or licenses or those of other contributors to the core code.

However, you all have the same legal rights as I do in regards to his use of your code, so you need to take a hard line and basically assert your rights AND be prepared to back them up with a lawyer if needed.  I will write him since he is violating the license by taking a 0.9.7 module and porting it to 0.9.8.

[lonnyl]

  It's too bad that this kind of thing is going on..... I hope that the site admin for that site will continue to be co-operative.  I personally like to share most of what I make.  And will be quite happy to get the converted mods from this person and give them credit as due.  I hope this person in the true spirit of the community does so.....  Well.... hope to be posting the converted modules soon.

[lonnyl]

Update... I recieved a reply back within a few hours.... Frederic seems willing to send me the conversions of my 0.9.7 modules.   I will try and get them completed (he says some of them are not fully converted), fixed if needed, and hopefully translation ready just as soon as I get them.  

[Hooker]

erf, whets the point in stealing scripts? 90% of the players don't even look at that side of things... its kind of pointless and dangerous (in the legal sense) plus it really does make the actual creators of some really awesome modules think twice before bringing newer versions/modules out.

Its disappointing to see http://lotgd.togrc.com listed, I talked to the admin there a little while back about the scripts and obtained the permissions of 99% of the peoples scripts he had edited to use them, all he had to do was mail the modules in question to their owners..

As for legal stuff.. im sure if you just whois their domain and find there host it wont take many emails to have their website removed (if its in breach of copyright and you've tried to contact them about it) most hosts are more than willing to take action against these sites if necessary as I know from personal experience of requesting items/pages removed from websites.

Hope this keeps people from doing this sort of thing again!

[lonnyl]

Got some of the conversions and got the battle arena working (somewhat) and uploaded....

[Ariadoss]

http://lotgd.togrc.com/ is in also in violation of Google Adsense's Terms of Use Agreement. By displaying this text on there site:

Don't forget to visit our sponsor!
Remember, someone has to pay for you to play.

[Hooker]

shouldnt you be telling google about that? are we google now? >.>

[SaucyWench]

At least I'm trying to comply with your license, and those errors in my pages you just recently pointed out were there when you first pointed out errors to me, and they weren't included in your analysis of the site therefore I wasn't aware that they were in violation of the license.  Also I wanted to mention, I would be more then happy to release the modifications for different pages, and take down the pages I do not have the original author for.

Funny, isn't it, how you only claimed this once your name was publically mentioned.

Funny how you didn't respond to Kendaer's email until your name was here.

Funny how you KNEW that you must release modified code, and then told someone they could not have it, and then changed your mind once your server was posted here.

I for one don't have a lot of sympathy for you nor a lot of inclination to believe you when you say that you want to try and comply. Seems to me like your arm was twisted and you only said that (and pointed at other servers) to avoid the glares.