Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Putnam]

Modders never had any expectation of being payed. <snip>

Why is that the case? Because all the modders in the very beginning decided that they would never receive money for moral and ethical reasons, or because Bethesda stamped it out with their EULA?

In my case the former, but I can't really know, ask Eul/Meian/Ragn0r/Guinsoo/Neichus/Icefrog/the thousands of modders who make mods for games that aren't bethesda

You make it sound like there's no precedent for paid modding outside of Bethesda. I beg to differ. In particular: "The CD contains twenty WAD files created by various authors under contract." (Emphasis mine.)

No, you're just comparing apples to oranges again. Those were paid modders under contract, which does not resemble the steam workshop system in any way, shape or form. There is precedent outside bethesda, with the sims 2 modding that has already been mentioned that you apparently ignored, and that was a total shitshow. Minecrat modding ended up in similar circumstances.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I can agree with both UXLZ and Putnam's points.

[nenjin]

@UXLZ The idea that Bethesda didn't understand the community they were messing seems absurd to me. They've only watched it grow for years now, and benefited from its work. The game company that is known for making "those games you mod" suddenly decides its time to try and bring those modders into their profit ecosystem, and that was a random choice? Bethesda modded games are probably the most successful and well-known of them all, next up being Minecraft I'd think. That hardly seems random. That seems like hubris.

[Leyic]

That means they are built on the combined knowledge base and skill set of many hundreds of contributors not on the main creditor list.  They use coding techniques pioneered and shared to the community. They use rigging and weighted mesh techniques and tool chains for file export that were pioneered and shared by the community. They then add their own contribution (which without argument, may be substantive and nontrivial!) and slap their name on, and demand full ownership rights.

I could forbid all font mods and tools from being paid in nature, by asserting my property rights to the whitepaper and progenitor font toolset from which basically all morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim font editing tools descend.  All subsequent tools are derivative works of my original work. I can seriously shit in some cheerios. I dont believe that is an appropriate action, and would never do so, but I could well and truly do so, since i can establish the timeline of creation and innovation, which I did earlier in this thread.

The use of knowledge is itself, inherently, free. When you use arithmetic, your grade school teacher doesn't show up on your doorstep demanding to be paid. When you program something, the authors of the book from which you learned don't send you angry emails. When you put F=ma into a gravity simulation, the Newton estate doesn't sue you. You can patent algortihms. You can patent code. You cannot patent or protect knowledge because that is inherently free and has been for millennia. For that matter, in the US at least, patents are in the public domain. By protecting your right to profit from the production of something, you have to make much of the knowledge of that something freely available.

People forbid derivative works from collecting money all the time by using the GPL, which is rather popular.

Also, @Leyic, with those numbers you posted earlier, that is with 19 mods, most of which I'm pretty sure were fairly good. Now, imagine a marketplace with 10,000 or more ridiculously low-quality mods, knockoff mods, stolen mods, fake mods, etc.

16 mods, 19 authors. Crap mods not getting a payout would be an example of the market working: If people find that there is insufficient demand for what they are producing, then they will quit producing it. And no, most of the original batch of mods were not very good as they were hastily put together. Now, Valve would've been wiser to curate the market, but the point is mods were meeting the threshold to receive a payout.

No, you're just comparing apples to oranges again. Those were paid modders under contract, which does not resemble the steam workshop system in any way, shape or form. There is precedent outside bethesda, with the sims 2 modding that has already been mentioned that you apparently ignored, and that was a total shitshow. Minecrat modding ended up in similar circumstances.

I do not approve of the ValveThesda anarchy model. How many times do I have to repeat this? What I am in favor of are the commissioned and curated models. This is why I keep bringing them up as superior, because they are.

[Putnam]

And nobody has actually mentioned them! And nobody is arguing against them! And you keep arguing against completely unrelated posts as if we are arguing against them!

[wierd]

Leyic--  code IS literally nothing but algorithmic expression, focused toward a specific goal.

that is literally what it is.  You cant say that algorithms are not protectable, and say that code is somehow magically protectable, when code is a subset of algorithm.

All programs are collections of algorithms. Not all algorithms are computer code.  Have you ever studied computer science?


as for legally protected knowlege, you seem pretty ignorant here. There's trade secret protection, intellectual patent protection, copyright protection, trademark and trade dress protection, simple licensing agreement protection, etc.

a patented algorithm or data structure (there are such things, if they are sufficiently novel. see for instance, cryptographic solutions) is literally built around the protection of ideas and knowledge, and yes-- people CAN place limits on how knowledge is legally able to be used, and do so all the time.

what do you think a non disclosure agreement is for? being hip?

[Leyic]

@Putnam: Presumably someone who is in favor of only the donation model is against all other models. So yes, people are arguing against commissioned and curated models.

@wierd: I said both are protected, so your premise against my argument is flawed. "You can patent algortihms. You can patent code. You cannot patent or protect knowledge...".

[wierd]

leyic- that does not disqualify the latter part of the post. what do you think an NDA is for, if not to forbid the distribution of simple knowledge?

other forms of protected knowledge: your bank account numbers, your medical history, and your driving record. 

RE: @Putnam--

that is a false dichotomy. I am not intrinsically opposed to amature modders (people accepting money for thier mods, such as via donations, in contrast to people who do it full time for money, who are professionals, per the definitiions of those words) becoming professionals. I am against the direct paid model for modding. They can become professional developers at any time by either creating a company and doing due dilligence with licensing their source materials for commercial use (something valve did not do), or by choosing to work for a company that does so and drawing a wage for their services.

When it comes to doing work IN THE COMMUNITY, then I am opposed to the self-promotion of modders unless they wholly develop their mods from scratch, and do NOT include *ANY* IP from unlicensed sources.  The valvethesda solution was an attempt to leverage the community for profit, which inherently means the malapropriation of those assets for financial gain by rent seekers.  That is not a good idea. It will never be a good idea.

If you want to make 100% of the work in a TC mod, or pay somebody to work on that mod for you, and use works for fire, I have no problem with you direct selling it. Just dont steal community knowledge or assets to do it. Do your own work, and keep it chaste.

[wierd]

keeping the product you want a refund for is fraud.

I cant walk into walmart, buy something, return the reciept and not the item, and expect the refund.

That's what copying the file before "refunding" is. You are then using the file without a valid license, which is software piracy. if you are going to do that, avoid the fraud charge by just going to pirate bay and be done with it.

[Leyic]

leyic- that does not disqualify the latter part of the post. what do you think an NDA is for, if not to forbid the distribution of simple knowledge?

other forms of protected knowledge: your bank account numbers, your medical history, and your driving record.

Yo, you keep editing large blocks of stuff into your posts when I'm already responding, and the forum software only tells me when new posts are made.

You're conflating knowledge with information. Knowledge is big picture: A theory, an algorithm, a technique, etc. i.e. something which can be learned and practiced. Information is small picture: a number, a fact, a figure, etc. i.e. something that can be recorded and remembered. Through the accumulation of information, via education, one acquires knowledge. One does not go to school to learn peoples' bank account numbers. Someone does not read an article about relativity and suddenly understand all there is to know on the subject. Etc. and so on and so forth. An NDA represents a signed contract, hence contract law has priority.

Consider the context of your previous post: "That means they are built on the combined knowledge base and skill set of many hundreds of contributors not on the main creditor list.  They use coding techniques pioneered and shared to the community. They use rigging and weighted mesh techniques and tool chains for file export that were pioneered and shared by the community. They then add their own contribution (which without argument, may be substantive and nontrivial!) and slap their name on, and demand full ownership rights." (Emphasis mine.) What I am telling you is that people use prior knowledge all the time in their work and in their personal lives, and at no time does anyone run around seeking recompense for the knowledge they had taught. One can charge to acquire knowledge, for the service of education, but once acquired that knowledge can be freely used unless such a right was signed away in a contract.

tl;dr: Knowledge once taught cannot be stolen.

The person adding to that knowledge does not get to claim ownership over all the preceding knowledge, but the general idea that someone who teaches others how to mod, model, texture, etc. has the right to seek compensation after that person has used that knowledge is crap. The teacher can charge for the act of teaching as it occurs, but that is all. You have a point where it concerns Skyrim, as prior knowledge was taught for free on the basis that no one could profit from it due to Bethesda's decree. Bethesda temporarily revoked that decree without respect for those who had developed the community knowledge up to that point. But that is one community. You then go on to say:

so please, think about the consequences of direct marketing in cathedral style communities, and stop thinking about how much more money you could be making if you salted the ground and stripmined the community.

(Emphasis mine.) This is a general statement. You're not talking about just the ValveThesda model or just the Bethesda games, you're talking about all direct marketing in all games with cathedral style communities. Paradox games have a cathedral style community, and had commissioned modding without destroying that community. id Software practiced commissioned mapping without destroying the Doom mapping community. I'm not as familiar with Mount & Blade, but they have commissioned modding and their community still seems to be alive. These are three counterexamples to your notion that direct marketing is inherently bad for modding in general.

[Putnam]

Commissioned modding != direct marketing.

[wierd]

leyic--  ever seen an NDA? most explicitly mention "know how" as a bullet item. That falls under your "knowledge" umbrella.

For a real example of this, see this boilerplate template. see section 1.03, where definition of terms is given, and where "know-how" is explicitly mentioned.

contracts.onecle.com/moodys/d-b.ip.1998.06.30.shtml

[wierd]

The "best fitting" analogy here would be buying something from walmart, then using a startek replicator to duplicate it, keeping the duplicate, and return the "original."

since the actual thing you are buying is NOT the software itself, but instead the limited right to use the software, this is fraud. You are claiming that you will not use the software, and want a refund based on the "fit for function and market" aspect of the implied guarantee of workmanship and marketability, when in fact that is not what you are going to do. Trying that shit is worse than simply downloading the pirate offer. The former constitutes felony fraud, the latter is simple civil copyright violation.

[Rolan7]

Rolan, Copyright is NOT immune to Either Laches or to Estoppel, as per this supreme court decision, and is also subject to a 3 year statute of limitations.

patentlyo.com/patent/2014/05/copyright-preclude-limitations.html

If what I said is as false as you said, why did MGM arguue based on it, and how did it get to the supreme court?

Simply because the IP enforcement issues I cited were not specifically copyright claims, but were other kinds of IP claims, does not make copyright some magical unicorn that is free of those problems.  In reality, it is even more troubled due to that 3 year statute of limitations. If the alternative marketplace is able to direct sell mods without giving bethesda/zenimax/valve thier pound of flesh for 3 years, then a case can be made against future enforcement attempts, which is exactly in-line with what I said-- attack trained lawyers are necessary.

That's really interesting Weird, thanks.  I think I understand better what you meant about copyright.  So I was right that the content remains under the original creator's copyright, but there's a 3-year statute of limitations on enforcing each violation.

If I understand you right, you're suggesting that a thief could steal someone's code and post it for sale on Steam, and if the creator didn't bring a suit within three years (longer than Steam has existed), they would be able to continue violating that copyright indefinitely. 

I'm sorry, I thought you were saying people could become the official owners of your copyrighted code if you don't defend it -

That is not what this guy does. instead, he takes the lure home and carefully dissects the lure, seeing exactly how it works. He then writes a patent document on said revolutionary lure design, files it, and because I did not file one first, he gets the legal power and prestige of inventing that design, even though he is a charlatan. He sells the shit out of his amazing patented lures, that are flagrant copies of my design.  moreover, I can now no longer produce and distrubute my lures, because doing so violates his "rights."

Oh.  So you ARE saying that people can steal ownership of the code and prevent the original creator from distributing it!?  Would you care to explain how?  Because that's a far cry from the case you actually made earlier, that the creator loses the right to sue for each *specific case* of infringement after *three years*.  Which has nothing to do with Steam taking down stolen content.

[wierd]

The latter can be defeated in court if there is evidence of such fraudulent appropriation, but then again, if the discovery of that appropriation is not dealt with within 3 years, no legal remedy is possible.

So, the two work together like this:

I make a work, and have it up on the interwebs. Somebody steals it, starts selling it, and makes a business out of selling it. I do not know about it, and thus do not shut it down in a timely manner (within 3 years).  As a consequence, when I DO find out about it, I cannot seek legal remedy, due to Laches, and Estoppel. He has essentially stolen my right to control distribution and derivative works of my work, and due to my negligence, I am unable to fight it.

In regard to something patentable, it is first to file who gets the protection. So while I might be able to get his patent invalided by showing prior art, he is still the one who gets awarded the patent-- not me.

That there is a risk of losing this protection/control over intellectual property, companies with a vested interest in that IP actively and viciously enforce their rights. That is why a market that allows resale of mods directly without paying the Bethesda Tax (tm), would be immediately and aggressively torpedoed by Bethesda's attack lawyers, lest the site exist for more than 3 years time, and become immune, making Bethesda unable to stop appropriation.


For a specific use situation where it would come up in the TES mod community specifically-- Let's say I am the creator of SkyUI, or some similar highly utilized tech mod. Other people incorporate my work, and produce derivative works from my work, and I do NOT crack down on them for 3 years after they start using my work without seeking license from me. This removes my power to legally compel them to stop using my work should they decide to then use their protected user status to sublicense their immunity with their own licenses to my work. EG-- While I might switch to a paid model, they can fork my mod as it was when it was incorporated 3 years prior, and continue development of it outside of my control, and there is not a god damned thing I can do about it.

Now, extend that to art assets used all over the place, code segments used in scripts, etc.

Do you see the clusterfuck yet?