haha, been here and there. Alots been happening recently so havnt had a lot of free time. But I am here now

Hey Ronin, happy new year to you too! And yeah, I agree with you, most modders will say yes to reusing their stuff if asked first. It's mostly a question of courtesy. For instance, even though I almost never say in my readmes "you can use whatever I did in this mod without permission", if I'm asked I will say yes. I do find it nice to see my work used in other people's mods. I just like to be asked.

I have been in the situation where something I made was used in another mod without my permission. Was I annoyed? Yes I was, because clearly the other modder hadn't bothered even reading my readmes, or just didn't care. Did I contact them and asked them to remove my work from their mod, and complained about it to the community? No, I didn't, because it's just wasn't worth it. People were enjoying this mod, and had I been asked for permission in that case, I would have probably said yes.
So what is the difference whether I was asked or not, since I would have said yes anyway? Well, it's about courtesy. My respect for the author of that mod dropped drastically after that. I just found it rude. I share my work with people, not robots, and I expect courtesy from people. Beyond that, I'm pretty okay with people using my stuff.

Ok, now I'm out of this thread for good. Modding is more fun

I believe that the principal is established as of now. Good to see you around.

i would have to say the the community is a 'Cathedral' with many 'Parlors'. Some of the Parlors are open and some are roped off.

One quick question!

Is it that you would like to be asked, or rather, you just want to know where your work is being used?

i think he had made it quite clear the he would like to be asked to use his stuff and as with most of the people here if you ask you will most likely get permission and on occasion help with implementing. showing respect goes along way.

hehe, princple established or not, can someone explain why we are discussing a hypertheortical social model, made 5 years ago and which has no room for sub-factions or those that fit into neither? doesnt taht seem... pointless?

While I have enjoyed reading the many response in this thread ( and some of you people seem way more intelligent than I) I am starting to think its all a complete waste of time and its now got to the point where people are repeating in slightly diffrent words the post above theirs.....

so can I just ask: Does it matter what group you belong to? has this "division" been notcible or affected us in any dramtic way? No? We all still do what we do best - mod. We all have our own Ideals or how things should work but we still crack on and do what have done for the last couple of years, the way we want. I do things diffrently than some nad others do it the completly oposite way.

shouldnt it be enough that we all mod morrowind? Why do we have to justify what group we are in, what group we like, what group we'd like to be in and what the fundemental reasons are for our permssion usages. Slap a permission usage in the readme - if they break it then do what we do best as a community and EVERYONE crack down on that guy.I've seen done before, bascially if anything goes wrong we pull together and sort it regardless of what "model" you fit into.

Personnally I like a model that has short green aliens with awesome super powers and the ability to create mods out of thin air. But then I'd feel like I'd be segrating myself from the rest of the universe (sigh ) :spotted owl:

At present there is no "the law" on this subject. Here in the United States we have seen several rulings concerning EULAs and they do not agree with each other. This term "the law" is meaningless unless we specify which U.S. Circuit Court we are referring to.

Bethesda has enforced the position. Old-timers may remember a charity project of Cait's back in 2003. It was her idea to burn a collection of mods onto CD and ship them to folks who donated to her favorite charity, War Child. We, the project members, would buy the CDs and pay the shipping costs ourselves. The donations would go straight to War Child. Anyone claiming to have made a donation would be sent a CD, on the honor system. When Bethesda heard about this they instructed her to stop, immediately. So she then decided she would burn only made-from-scratch meshes and textures onto this disc. Again Bethesda instructed her to stop. It did not matter which software was used to create the work, they said. If the work was intended to be used in their game they reserved the right to control what was done with it.

Until somebody decides to take Bethesda to court over this matter good luck arguing with them.

Your parable is irrelevant because it was commercial, and money and profit are involved. The EULA is clear: Bethesda has copyrights on all .esp or .esm plug-ins and content as it is used inside the CS. The law(s) (Copyright/Service Mark/Trade Dress/Intellectual Property/etc., since you seem to think it doesn't exist) is/are also clear: made-from-scratch meshes and textures are the creator's property. You may not be aware of any case law for the issues at hand, but case law only comes about after legislation and statutes are passed by Congress. There is very much "law" on this. But please, stop arguing about the law. Please, everyone stop posting in this thread, because there's no point. Stop worrying about one or two overprotective modders, and instead think about why you are here playing this game and frequenting this forum in the first place.

Just a point that occurred to me as I read Haplows above post : esp. esm. and ess. Elder Scrolls Plug-in , Elder Scrolls Master and Elder Scrolls Save . It's there in the very things we use to add content and save .

not everyone knows this information. if we were to stop posting, no one would learn anything. not everyone is as savvy as some of us here when it comes to digging this kind of information up. we learn nothing without discussion.

i don't really see how a copyright or eula can be in forced for stuff made after the fact by a someone that isn't in any way associated with the copyright holder or eula that was issuder before the fact unless the game covered is required to use said creations, also if copyright stuff is used with permission how could it be claimed by someone else.

You agree to be legally bound by the Terms and Conditions of the EULA whenever you hit "I agree" to continue with the installation of Morrowind. You're free to click "Cancel" if you disagree. At such time you are required by law to return the entire game and the contents of your box or CD case, in the original packaging, to the store from which you bought it.


Then search for it on the internet... this section is for 'Morrowind Mods', not 'The Legal Interpretations and Ownership Rights Regarding Player-made Content.' Sorry to sound harsh, but there is a reason most people aren't experts on this stuff; it's because they don't need to be. 98% of modders don't have any issues beyond "should I give credit in the readme?", and the other 2% are dealt with effectively by moderators.

as you inferred, most people breeze past the EULA without so much as glancing at it. 'The Legal Interpretations and Ownership Rights Regarding Player-made Content' is indeed a part of modding. the EULA sets out the rights provided to us modders, to the players, and to bethesda. people should be aware of such things. what will spark people's interest in this dusty and boring hunk of legalese? and while not everyone needs to be an expert, people should be familiar with their rights. this is why you are supposed to read the EULA before clicking "i agree". to use a similar situation, not everyone must be an expert in constitutional law, but everyone should have a basic understanding of the contents of the constitution.

there is absolutely nothing wrong with discussing this topic, so long as emotions dont run rampart and things stay civil. you suggest searching the internet for things pertaining to legality. this forum is on the internet, you know? it's also a central point in the modding community. it's as good a place as any to get people discussing this topic, and hopefully get them to doing a bit of research for themselves.

And what if I don't hit "I agree," and instead download MWEdit and use that to create my mod? I am bound by no EULA at that point since I did not agree to it. The only thing I personally am using of Bethesda's is the file format; and while the name of a format or the extension can be a trademark, a format itself cannot be copyrighted nor patented. Otherwise every gif ever created would be owned by CompuServ.



From US copyright code:

The copyrights of derivative work and the original work are entirely separate. Anyone from Bethesda stating that even without the agreement of an EULA they own works that have anything to do with their game is simply false. If it was so simple as stating publicly that in your view you own something made by somebody else, there would be no purpose for an EULA, let alone a copyright. I mean, what if Microsoft suddenly came out and said that anything ever written in Word was owned by them? Or if Google stated that any content you find through their search engine becomes their property? These are exactly the reasons we have copyrights, to protect ALL parties.

Now please understand me here: I am not trying to undermine Bethesda's implied authority over the modding community, nor harm their position financially in any way. I just want everyone to know the facts as they pertain to copyright law. Before I was involved in modding, I cared not one whit about copyright law, I had no need. And I certainly didn't ever think that I would need it for releasing mods. But I have since realized just how important protecting my legacy is to me.

So let me state this here: I adore Bethesda and appreciate everything they have given us. And in turn, I know for a fact that I have contributed to their bottom line by adding content to their game that drives others to purchase it. It is a symbiotic relationship, and the moment one party demands more than what they own, the relationship can easily be severed.

Now here is my argument in favor of their point of view.

I freely acknowledge that anything I create using their Construction Set belongs to them; though I usually only use it for world-building, NPC/creature creation, and dialogue. Everything else I tend to do with MWEdit or Enchanted Editor. However, I use the game they created to test all of my mods very thoroughly. So while there is nothing in their EULA about that, I personally see no difference between that and using the CS. So I personally believe that they do, in fact, hold ownership of my mods to a degree. And they are of course able and welcome to use my intellectual resources in their games (black soul gems anyone?)

Um, don't the majority of the mods that get published in this community fall under the category of Cathedralism?
At least insofar as they are not general taken down along with the author and that their recourses can be used with permission? The materials included in a mod is either open for use on larger scale (within reason), or it isn't, and most mods are. I really don't see where the problem exists about which you guys are debating?

I will put in however that Cathedralism is, in essence superior to "parlorism", but don't most of the recourses that go into epic mods come out of parlorism originally? It would be different if this community represented a company, however as a whole, most modding work is done on individual terms, even if joint efforts generally yield superior results.

I'm so glad to have that bit about copyright finally settled. Naturally, the copyright laws in different countries wouldn't be exactly the same, but I don't know of any that differ so much as to contradict this basic concept.

gnomesrule19, you are absolutely correct. I can count on one hand the number of "so-called" parlorists who have de-marbelized since I discovered the Morrowind modding community. Some of those have even re-uploaded their mods or given permission for others to do so. Others have gone on to mod other games and it is quite easy to get in touch with them. I can only think of two who have died or seem to have dropped off the face of the internet completely and cannot be reached under any circumstances. One of those even left a tutorial for others to reverse engineer his work, though with a few reservations.

So, is this debate really just about everyone's definition of sharing? Personally, I'm with Sesame Street on this one. It's good to share and it's wrong to take without asking.

Nope.

That fact they require permssion means they are not catherdralism.

In terms of modding, I'm not sure of the legal ramifications, but I imagine like you said that you would be free and clear. If you used this method to actually play the game, however, that would probably count as circumvention of DRM, which is a violation of the respective laws at play.

Then the no-permsion-required aspect of Cathedralism is not realistic. Everything else about it makes sense though XD

You can patent formats. mp3 for example is a patented format.

I believe that's what Fliggerty was saying Yacoby. It's a matter of semantics. Fligg said "extension" instead of "file format"; but you're both right, you can own that and not the content. Just as .mp3 may be a patented file format or extension, those who hold that patent do not subsequently own the copyright to all music in that format, nor would Adobe own the content of all .pdf files.

perhaps a better anology would be "every applet written in java belongs to sun microsystems"

perhaps it's the fact that i am primarily a scripter, and the overwhelming majority of my work thus far is in scripts, but it seems quite.... backwards that some entity can claim ownership of the code i wrote just because my program (read: script) was designed to run in their software.

to use yacoby's example, can you imagine if every song in .mp3 format was claimed by the MPEG group as their copyrighted work?

to use my example, can you imagine microsoft claiming ownership of every piece of software to run on windows?

i also did a little poking around in the EULA, i think this is the relivant passage that has some of us up in arms.



we must remember how exact a language legalese is. any materials created with the editor become the property of bethesda. what can you create with the editor? can you create textures in the editor? is there a sound editor in there that i've been missing? can i make meshes in the CS?

RAKninja, I was wondering, would scripting for Morrowind be similar to scripting in any other language? Do the owners of PASCAL own everything written in that language? What about HTML? I don't recall the Dreamweaver EULA claiming ownership of webpages made with it and people *do* make money off of those. Of course, you are supposed to pay for commercial licenses when you are using these programs for commercial purposes. That's really at the heart of it. People who sell products made in file formats owned by others (.wav for instance) have to get permission from those owners to profit off of them, but not necessarily to use them. Therefore, Bethesda has every right to say no one may *profit* from what they have created in the CS without claiming ownership of it.

I think most modders fall into a bit of both. And I can understand both. When I was working on the Forsaken Isles mod for Oblivion, I kept my textures and files all to myself and requested that if anyone need any changes, they contact me and I would make them as snappily as I could. I asked that no one else modify my textures. I did this for two reasons: one, I wanted to be able to give out an example of what I thought was my best work. If there was an artifact or a seam, I wanted to correct it, not have someone else have to do it. And the other reason is that I wanted to be able to later say "this is an example of my work. No one else worked on this texture" in case I needed to show someone else a demonstration of my texturing ability. Adding on "it's my work, except for modder A and modder B and etc etc" lowers the perceived value of a "portfolio piece."

(It's worth mentioning here that I did all of my textures without normal maps. Phitte, a wonderful modder, took care of the normal maps. Those would be his work.)
(EDIT: It's also worth mentioning that I left a while ago. Textures that formerly were made by me + another modder's normals may have been changed by now.)

But. I am no longer working for that project, due to time constraints. My ability to make textures on demand started to slip, so I left rather than claim a project and then fail to deliver. When I left, I stated explicitly that my textures were free to be used or modified on that project, and that if the project came out in pieces or released tilesets I'd worked on (the daedric and velothi tilesets, and the stronghold and dwemer, a bit) that my textures were welcome to be used. While I consider it my right to restrict access to my artwork while I was around to edit and update it, and help if someone found a problem, it would have been incredibly rude of me to leave and not provide support, and then tell people they couldn't fix up anything that needed it. You can see from that list that if I pulled all of my textures, I'd put a dent in that mod.

So. I think it's fine to have a parlor sort of thought. I think it's fine to want to make your work exclusive-- modding isn't necessarily an altruistic thing. I know I mod my games because I personally want to fix something. I release my mods onto the internet as-is and if anyone else wants to use them, sure, but I'd prefer they be left intact. I leave multiple contacts on the readme so that people can reach me if they want something changed.

I also think that it's essential to understand that when you release a mod into the internet, it gains a life of its own through the interactions of other people with it. And I think that if you contribute to a project or another mod that you should leave your work open. There's a part to it where you own your own work, but this is a fluid game, a moddable game, and a complex game. It's complex enough that you may have made an error or missed a possibility or simply the mod needs a graphical update or to be organized better.

I know it's a violation, technically, of copyright law to use another person's work without explicit permission. But. I also think that having proof that you repeatedly tried to contact the modder in question and got no response makes updating a mod defensible. Maybe not in court, but I think if you update a minor part of someone's work or even overhaul it and give main and full credit to the original author, then you have not done a bad thing. I think that if you do that, you need to be ready to take down your edited versions if the original modder comes back and objects.

I know, though, that if anyone loved my mod enough to want to expand and improve it, so long as they kept my vision intact, I'd be flattered. I'd be less enthused if they bent it out of shape, but I don't think I'd force them to take it down without a good discussion beforehand.

I think there's both the room and the necessity for these modding styles. Parlor thoughts make people drive onwards and put soul into their work because of their pride and the personal identification with the output. Cathedral thoughts make people contribute soul to the community and the game as a whole.

I'll leave you with this thought.

A parlor full of disjointed, unmeshable artworks is an uncomfortable and fractured place to be. A cathedral made of straw and twine is unstable. What we need is a cathedral made of art.