Mill and tain ethics - ...and a lesson in hypocrisy

ChrisP · Post by **ChrisP** » Wed May 05, 2004 4:17 pm

I would post this on PlayMyth where the topic is being discussed, but since the time Blades returned, my account no longer works there and nor does the auto-emailer send me replies when I've tried to have things fixed. I don't know if this is a technical glitch or intentional, but it doesn't really matter as I have little desire to participate in anything Blades runs. However, I would like to render my opinion on the following post by Clem regarding the Tain project.

Quote:

"The thing is Just because a mapmaker is not around does not make it ok to redistribute work without his approval. Assuming the author would say "sure no problem" is just easier.

If there is a possibility a mapmaker would not want his work posted than you have to err on the side of NOT doing it. Rather than deciding that it's the mapmakers problem to track it down and say "hey, take down my stuff please, you do not have approval".

If you do not have approval to use someones work you should not do so. There is no Public Domain issue at work here.

A Myth colormap is a creative work. It was produce by an artist and holds the same creative rights as a painting or drawing would. Bungie tools may have been used to construct the Tag, but the creative content within those tags belongs to the Author and no one holds the rights to redistribute that work without approval.

As stated before. If it "was" ok to redistribute, then Bungie & TakeTwo would NOT have gotten legal waivers from every map author who's work was included in Total Codex and MythWorlds.

It's an old arguement. One that was ignored and apparently no attention paid to.

Seeing as how no individual's I'm familiar with have heard anything from anyone with The Tain regarding approval I ass-u-me that they are proceeding with their current trend of "fuck anyone that doesn't agree with how we feel is legally or ethically correct".

Personally I think it's a hoot that it's taken them this long to create a site at all."

End Quote

There are some almost valid points here, but one thing that is being overlooked is it was the intention of the authors to distribute their work to the public. I'm sure it makes Clem feel more precious to assume that authors uploaded their maps for the sole reason of "ohhhh, the Mill!", but I think it is more reasonable to assume that in virtually every case, the authors only wanted their work to be available to the public. In fact, there were a lot of mapmakers who liked this service by the Mill, but hated the managers.

Of course it would be ideal to be polite and ask permission for each individual map, but given that such a task ranges from impractical to impossible, I don't believe that furthering an author's original intentions is the gross ethical violation that Clem suggests.

The hypocrisy here is that while Clem was in charge of the Mill, he allowed many maps to be uploaded by 3rd parties who were not the authors. Some of the people who did so stated in the descriptions that they couldn't find the authors or didn't even know who they were, yet apparently Clem's conscience wasn't bothered by this.

Either Clem's morals have changed since the Mill went down and he now feels the need to self-righteously force his new morals on others, or his hyperbole is just another example of his fixation on criticizing Project Magma to releave some bizarre self-esteem problem. Or... Clem can just plead ignorance that such practices took place at the Mill and claim he couldn't monitor every upload, but in that case, he should have payed as much attention to his administration and "ethical" obligations as he does in critisizing what Magma does. Afterall, I barely visited the Mill five or six times a year and I knew, so Clem shouldn't be able to claim to have not noticed what was plainly stated by the non-authors who were uploading.

As far as legal matters and comparing the Tain to Myth II Worlds, I think the difference lies in the fact that Myth II Worlds was sold for profit. Obviously, if Project Magma tried to sell the work of other authors without permission or compensation, we'd be in a whole different ballpark, but just as obviously, this is not the case.

Whether authors even have a legal right to demand their maps not be hosted by a website is a very gray area considering that by using the applications that created those maps, they essentially agreed to forfeit ownership. Take Two could most likely have published Myth Worlds to make thier profit without compensation to the authors, but wisely decided that would have been a very poor way of handling things.

At any rate, Project Magma has no intentions of keeping any maps hostage. If a legitimate author asks his map not be on the site, for any reason, it will be removed without question.

Contrast this to past behavior of the Mill. Some of you may remember the brief but ill conceived plan to turn the Mill into a paid subscripiton site for download users. Several mapmakers asked at this time to have their maps removed and were met with extreme hostility. Project Magma at that time had rougly a dozen TFL maps there, and very politely notified the Mill that they wished to decline having their maps hosted on any sort of site where people would have to pay to download them. As a result, Project Magma's account was immediately locked preventing our maps from being removed. Furthermore, we were unnecessarily flamed and one of our authors had his name childishly changed to "Some Moron" in the map description.

My conclusion to this matter is that poor Clem is upset that the community is going to be able to manage without his help. Pathetic.

Edited By ChrisP on 1083792346

Pistol_Pete · Post by **Pistol_Pete** » Wed May 05, 2004 6:21 pm

Interesting read, Chris. I find it quite amusing that clem is hopping on the bandwagon to crucify CIK for changing Acheron's name to Complete noob, when he did the same thing to someone else. I think a more important step than debating the ethics of maphosting would be for the Tain to be up and running ASAP. I'll be quit busy for the next 3 weeks or so, but I'll be sure to lend a hand, where ever possible, after that period.

Post by **TarousZars** » Wed May 05, 2004 7:00 pm

I agree there is a need for the Tain to be up and running. Even if it hardly has any maps. My personal myth web site did over a 5Gigs of downloads from it last Month. And I have VERY crappy upload speeds (25kbps). I also only have like 30 maps. So if people are that willing to download from me. I think the Tain would be a hit right at first.

Looking forward to the Tain

Tarous Zars

Heatmiser · Post by **Heatmiser** » Wed May 05, 2004 11:03 pm

"At any rate, Project Magma has no intentions of keeping any maps hostage. If a legitimate author asks his map not be on the site, for any reason, it will be removed without question."

B.S. If I want to play it, it better be there.

All those in favor, say 'aye'.

ChrisP · Post by **ChrisP** » Wed May 05, 2004 11:15 pm

Hey Pete. Just to clairify and to be fair, Clem didn't change Deadman's name to "Some Moron"; that was Clem's associate Frigidman.

Of course, Clem didn't exactly start ranting about it the way he did about CIK either. I guess if you're friends with the guy who does something like that it makes it okay, but woe be to anyone you're just looking for an excuse to condemn.

Also mind you, DM was nothing but polite and didn't deserve that sort of attack. Speaking of people leaving Myth due to ugliness, last time I talked to DM he said he's basically quit Myth because all the garbage from Blades and Clem took the fun out of community involvement for him - though I'm sure Halo had a lot to do with it too.

mauglir · Post by **mauglir** » Wed May 05, 2004 11:34 pm

Every item that was posted on The Mill was put there by the people who created it. Those people wanted their stuff distributed to the public free of charge. If those items are transfered to a different site that offers the same free download service, I see nothing wrong with that. Clem has no ownership over anything on The Mill except for his own personal creations. He doesn't speak for the authors of those other plugins.

Orlando the Axe · Post by **Orlando the Axe** » Wed May 05, 2004 11:51 pm

I think toward the end a bunch of stuff (especially old TFL stuff) was being put on by Beer Can saying "I don't know who made this but it's fun" and such.

GHOST® · Post by **GHOST®** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:41 am

[color=DFC99B]

Clem can just plead ignorance that such practices took place at the Mill and claim he couldn't monitor every upload

He cant claim this, as after he took over running the Mill for FM, (and for a goodly time before FM passed over full control to Blem), every single item ULd to the Mill had to pass thru him and meet his approval before being made available for download. Note also Clades had no problems with others loading ubknown authours work to Myth Maps when it was up.

A Myth colormap is a creative work. It was produce by an artist and holds the same creative rights as a painting or drawing would. Bungie tools may have been used to construct the Tag, but the creative content within those tags belongs to the Author and no one holds the rights to redistribute that work without approval.

Im no lawyer, but Im gonna say BULLSHIT!

From the MII Manual . . .

A Note About Map Making

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Myth II: Soulblighter ships with map editing tools, so youâ€™ll be able to create your own net maps and solo campaigns. Documentation for these tools is on the CD-ROM.

Any file(s) created with these tools may be freely distributed provided it conspicuously contains the following copyright message:

â€œCopyright 1998 in whole or in part Bungie Software Products Corporation.â€ Created with Bungieâ€™s Fear and Loathing by: >YOUR NAME, YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS<â€

In addition, you may not charge money for any Fear/Loathing creations that contain any Bungie copyrighted artwork, sounds, or other Bungie copyrighted content.

If it was in a Myth Tag, its now Bungies, and if I can get it out of that tag, then I have full rights to use it as long as I give Bungie Credit.

Now if I got my hands on the original PS file, or Model file for a unit, or original sound recordings, etc then fine, I couldnt use those without permission.

However, as I said, I believe if it has made its way into Fear, Loathing and therefore Myth and was released to the public, then I or anyone has full rights to use whats in those tags.

Sure I feel, (as I think we all do), its proper to ask before reusing someones material, (Scenery, CMaps, Units, etc), in our own work, and I think we all make the maximum effort to do this because we would want others to do the same for us, but thats different than making an authors 'completed' work/plugin available to the public for downloading via a new website especially if that author cannot be found and had already made those files available.

As stated before. If it "was" ok to redistribute, then Bungie & TakeTwo would NOT have gotten legal waivers from every map author who's work was included in Total Codex and MythWorlds.

Waivers ? He must be smoking the crack again. As far as I recall, the only one who gave a waiver, and that was because he was trying to be all official/legal like, was Clem for TSG. The rest of us were just asked if it would be ok to include our work on Myth Worlds, and most importantly, that those works contained no Â©opyrighted material by some other party. ie art, music, etc etc.

Take Two could most likely have published Myth Worlds to make thier profit without compensation to the authors, but wisely decided that would have been a very poor way of handling things.

?? As far as I recall, we were NOT compensated, unless you call a few free chit games, a copy of Myth Worlds compensation. Of course none of us really cared about money when we were asked, we were just happy that our Maps would be distributed to an even larger (or so we thought/hoped) crowd of new and old players. :op

Personally I think it's a hoot that it's taken them this long to create a site at all

Not a big as a hOOt as I find it that he still cries about our intent to host un-findable authors maps when he himself did the same in the past and even went a step further with Peace n the Ramparts, which he admitadly(sp?) gave immense credit/kudos to the original author, but still goes against that which he bitches so loudly against us doing. ;o)

My .02 worth, dont give it another thought, if an author finds he doesnt want his map there, he can ask for it to be removed, though I must agree with CP, I am not at all sure if legally we would have to remove it.

::goes back to sleep::[/color]

Orlando the Axe · Post by **Orlando the Axe** » Thu May 06, 2004 2:13 pm

good points but a little imflamatory, i forsee a response :-/

GHOST® · Post by **GHOST®** » Thu May 06, 2004 3:48 pm

Orlando the Axe wrote:good points but a little imflamatory, i forsee a response :-/

[color=DFC99B]Gah! I really outta pay attention to which section of the forum Im replying in. ;op[/color]

Post by **haravikk** » Thu May 06, 2004 4:47 pm

Personally I think it's a hoot that it's taken them this long to create a site at all

This is the one I least like, considering the sheer amount of work recquired from free-time to get all the collected plugs entered and in a presentable form is not exactly easy. We want it to be an easy to use site and easy-to-use != easy-to-make

remedial. · Post by **remedial.** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:17 pm

I'm glad that ChrisP pointed out the fact that Mill patrons of the past did not post their work because of any allure presented by the site but purely to bring something they created to the myth community. This is the point of the Myth editing community (in my opinion). And these creations probably exist on thousands of computers all over the world and at one point or another have probably been mirrored on smaller-scale sites.-has this irked anyone concerned with ethics (no really, has it?

) - If places like the Mill hadn't existed, I'm sure authors would have done anything they could to distribute their maps, ( I know i would have.) even if it meant emailing it like crazy.
It really seems to be more of an ego thing that any moral matter for Clem.

Heatmiser · Post by **Heatmiser** » Thu May 06, 2004 10:53 pm

"I don't know who made this but it's fun"

found my signature.

(removed the name and I feel better now

Orlando the Axe · Post by **Orlando the Axe** » Fri May 07, 2004 3:54 am

that was a paraphrase don't blame me if it is a misquote!

Edited By Orlando the Axe on 1083920104

Gholsbane · Post by **Gholsbane** » Sun May 09, 2004 6:27 am

Graydon, please don't post screenshots of private development in a public forum. Never mind the fact that you didn't even hide the URL, I'm not very happy at all with the fact that the first impression of the site is now a leaked screenshot of an incomplete site.

Pretty angry right now.