30 réponses à ce sujet

[Androrc]

Has there been a loss of NW Vault content? I searched for an old prefab for NW, the Red Wizard Enclave (of 2002), but it was nowhere to be found. Luckily, I still had the file in my external HD. Should I send it to someone for a reupload?

[Jackal_GB]

Sometimes authors delete their work for various reasons. There was a scripter who used to throw tantrums because he wouldn't get any votes and keep deleting and re-uploading his work. lol

If you have a file that is not breaking any copyrights (another reason some files are deleted) and you feel it has value to the community, by all means upload it yourself. If you have the original authors name, be sure to credit that person.

Modifié par Jackal_GB, 16 décembre 2010 - 11:01 .

[Androrc]

The file was from 2002, and I downloaded it in 2009... well, maybe the author was still active and decided to delete it for some reason. I think it has value to the community because it is a translation to NWN of the principal location of the basic 1st-level adventure of Forgotten Realms for 3rd edition, "The Color of Ambition". I don't think there would be a cause for copyright infringement, as there are many modules that translate 3rd edition adventures, like "The Sunless Citadel" from then which have been kept.



Thanks for the advice

[TSMDude]

Jackal_GB wrote...

There was a scripter who used to throw tantrums because he wouldn't get any votes and keep deleting and re-uploading his work. lol

[420]

TSMDude wrote...

Jackal_GB wrote...

There was a scripter who used to throw tantrums because he wouldn't get any votes and keep deleting and re-uploading his work. lol

Genisys/Guile/Galefer, is that you? Shall I add another Sockpuppet name to your list?

-420

[kalbaern]

420 wrote...

TSMDude wrote...

Jackal_GB wrote...

There was a scripter who used to throw tantrums because he wouldn't get any votes and keep deleting and re-uploading his work. lol

Genisys/Guile/Galefer, is that you? Shall I add another Sockpuppet name to your list?

-420

I think TSM Dude was merely poking fun at the same target as you 420. He and the various "G" incarnations are not one and the same. (TSM Dude does have a few dozen more alias' though )

[420]

kalbaern wrote...

(TSM Dude does have a few dozen more alias' though )

TSMDude, is that you?

-420

[TSMDude]

420 wrote...

kalbaern wrote...

(TSM Dude does have a few dozen more alias' though )

TSMDude, is that you?

-420

No I am not Guile at all nor Kal. I do have a lot of names and some are more well known than others but this is my only one on this board.

On the CEP Boards I am crazedmages. On the Vault I have 5 though have never pulled any of my content except for one under a different name when I screwed something up and could not fix it.

[420]

TSMDude wrote...

420 wrote...

kalbaern wrote...

(TSM Dude does have a few dozen more alias' though )

TSMDude, is that you?

-420

No I am not Guile at all nor Kal. I do have a lot of names and some are more well known than others but this is my only one on this board.

On the CEP Boards I am crazedmages. On the Vault I have 5 though have never pulled any of my content except for one under a different name when I screwed something up and could not fix it.

Is that you 420?

-420

P.S. Oh, and just to sort of steer this thread back toward the topic. I find the search tool for NWVault kinda iffy. Even when you type in the exact title of a post it sometimes just can't find it but if you type in some other thing that is sort of related, like it may be a word in the description or the author's name, then it can find it.

[Androrc]

I looked at the full listing for prefabs and looked at the dates corresponding to the last modification of the files inside the .zip, though, so it seems like the original file's post is really gone.

[Invisig0th]

Let me state up front that I'm not sure I would personally consider a prefab to be "original custom content". In my mind, prefabs fall into a gray area in between. That said....

Jackal_GB wrote...
If you have a file that is not breaking any copyrights (another reason some files are deleted) and you feel it has value to the community, by all means upload it yourself. If you have the original authors name, be sure to credit that person.

I completely disagree with this advice.  Re-uploading someone else's unmodified custom content work with the intent of circumventing their decision to not make that content available online is a very bad idea, for several reasons.

To start with, certain content authors have removed particular content for very good practical reasons  The example above of an unfixed bug which was found only after the upload was posted is a perfectly valid reason to remove soemthing. If the author does not feel that the work is up to their quality standards, you should obviously respect their wishes on that matter.

Reposting an author's pulled content with no modifications shows a complete disrespect for that author's opinion on whether or not that content should be available. You run the very real risk of making that original author extremely angry with you (and possibly many other NWN custom content authors and community members as well) if you do not respect the wishes of the original author regarding the content they created.  Whether or not you agree with their decision is irrelevant. It's their work, not yours.

If you do upload someone else's original work without modifications, you may also run into some amount of trouble with the NWVault staff. If the author was upset enough to remove their content, it's a safe bet they will be even more upset by your attempt to repost their work contrary to their wishes. And if that original author asks the staff of NWVault to remove what you uploaded,  I'm quite confident it will be removed immediately. So your upload would in most cases just get deleted anyway.

So as tempting as it may be, uploading someone else's unmodified work when it is likely that the original author explicltly wishes it to not be available is just not a good idea.

Modifié par Invisig0th, 18 décembre 2010 - 10:35 .

[kalbaern]

Invisig0th wrote...

Let me state up front that I'm not sure I would personally consider a prefab to be "original custom content". In my mind, prefabs fall into a gray area in between. That said....

Jackal_GB wrote...
If you have a file that is not breaking any copyrights (another reason some files are deleted) and you feel it has value to the community, by all means upload it yourself. If you have the original authors name, be sure to credit that person.

I completely disagree with this advice.  Re-uploading someone else's unmodified custom content work with the intent of circumventing their decision to not make that content available online is a very bad idea, for several reasons.

To start with, certain content authors have removed particular content for very good practical reasons  The example above of an unfixed bug which was found only after the upload was posted is a perfectly valid reason to remove soemthing. If the author does not feel that the work is up to their quality standards, you should obviously respect their wishes on that matter.

Reposting an author's pulled content with no modifications shows a complete disrespect for that author's opinion on whether or not that content should be available. You run the very real risk of making that original author extremely angry with you (and possibly many other NWN custom content authors and community members as well) if you do not respect the wishes of the original author regarding the content they created.  Whether or not you agree with their decision is irrelevant. It's their work, not yours.

If you do upload someone else's original work without modifications, you may also run into some amount of trouble with the NWVault staff. If the author was upset enough to remove their content, it's a safe bet they will be even more upset by your attempt to repost their work contrary to their wishes. And if that original author asks the staff of NWVault to remove what you uploaded,  I'm quite confident it will be removed immediately. So your upload would in most cases just get deleted anyway.

So as tempting as it may be, uploading someone else's unmodified work when it is likely that the original author explicltly wishes it to not be available is just not a good idea.

I only partially disagree with reposting someone elses stuff. I'll avoid the age old arguements on "who owns what" when it comes to content though.

Would I repost an old module? I can't envision an instance where I might. Then again, I rarely download modules either and prefer to make my own stuff.

Would I repost deleted scripts? If I used them already and knew they filled a gap that nothing else on the Vault did, then Yes, there's a good chance I'd repost them for others as well.

Would I repost deleted haks? In most cases I would in a flash, but only if I knew that someone else's posted module or an active PW required them.

In all cases I'd attempt to PM or Email the original creators as well as make sure they are creditted in the reposts. I actually had a case happen a few years ago when a certain author deleted their haks from the vault. After Emailing them though, they reposted them themselves. Had they not, I know I would have as they were a requirement for an active PW at the time. Whether something gets reposted on NWN Vault or just posted as a download on someone's private forums, I consider it a repost and follow the same logic.

[Invisig0th]

And in the case you cited, if the author had decided not to repost and if you had then proceeded to upload it contrary to their wishes, they almost certainly would have complained to the NWVault staff and the item almost certainly would have been removed immediately. Thank you for demonstrating my point so clearly.

Whether or not something is allowed to be available on the NWVault site is based on the decisions of the original author and the staff of NWVault. If an author explicitly states that they do not want their work on NWVault, having third parties upload that same unmodified content only results in extra work for the NWVault staff when they are forced to either dis-approve or delete that submission after the fact.

Modifié par Invisig0th, 19 décembre 2010 - 12:27 .

[420]

Invisig0th wrote...

So as tempting as it may be, uploading someone else's unmodified work when it is likely that the original author explicltly wishes it to not be available is just not a good idea.

Too late.

-420

[Jackal_GB]

In a perfect world, I could agree that getting an authors permission would be the right thing to do. But, the NWN world is far from perfect.

I had one guy throw some extra tiles in one of my submissions and he released it as his own hak. I had worked on it for hundreds of hours and only it had been on the vault for a month. I hadn't even gotten the chance to add to the content. My disapproval at his submission resulted in comments to the effect of "get over it" from who people I considered respected content makers. The attitude seemed to be, once it's on the vault it becomes fair game. Not an attitude that I, nor most others would agree with, but it happens.

No-one has ever asked my permission to repackage what I created. All I ever expect is to be credited for my work. The CEP never contacted me when they used my content in their haks.
I was honoured to be included, but it would have been nice to be asked. They did credit me, so it was all good.

This particular prefab in question is 8 years old, I left it up to the OP to decide it's worthiness. If the author of the prefab claims ownership and wants it removed, I'm sure if he/she is still around can contact the vault administrator an have it deleted.
just my 2 cents on the matter. It is based on my experiences as a custom content maker, not some black and white idea of what should or shouldn't be. I wish things were that simple.

Modifié par Jackal_GB, 19 décembre 2010 - 01:41 .

[TSMDude]

I agree with invisigoth in theory. I truly do. Yet when I post ANYTHING to the Vault I understand it is no longer mine and if I pull it down and someone else repost it even with nothing changed I can only shrug and go oh well.



When the orginal mod was made and then released in the toolset to us a rare thing was born...a true NWN Community and many of us share in a few 1000 inside jokes and such. It is dysfunctional at times but in the end there is not many gaming communitys outside of RPGs that are still going strong as long as we have.



Sorry...off my soapbox and back into me ale.

[Androrc]

Invisig0th wrote...

Let me state up front that I'm not sure I would personally consider a prefab to be "original custom content". In my mind, prefabs fall into a gray area in between. That said....

Jackal_GB wrote...
If you have a file that is not breaking any copyrights (another reason some files are deleted) and you feel it has value to the community, by all means upload it yourself. If you have the original authors name, be sure to credit that person.

I completely disagree with this advice.  Re-uploading someone else's unmodified custom content work with the intent of circumventing their decision to not make that content available online is a very bad idea, for several reasons.

To start with, certain content authors have removed particular content for very good practical reasons  The example above of an unfixed bug which was found only after the upload was posted is a perfectly valid reason to remove soemthing. If the author does not feel that the work is up to their quality standards, you should obviously respect their wishes on that matter.

Reposting an author's pulled content with no modifications shows a complete disrespect for that author's opinion on whether or not that content should be available. You run the very real risk of making that original author extremely angry with you (and possibly many other NWN custom content authors and community members as well) if you do not respect the wishes of the original author regarding the content they created.  Whether or not you agree with their decision is irrelevant. It's their work, not yours.

If you do upload someone else's original work without modifications, you may also run into some amount of trouble with the NWVault staff. If the author was upset enough to remove their content, it's a safe bet they will be even more upset by your attempt to repost their work contrary to their wishes. And if that original author asks the staff of NWVault to remove what you uploaded,  I'm quite confident it will be removed immediately. So your upload would in most cases just get deleted anyway.

So as tempting as it may be, uploading someone else's unmodified work when it is likely that the original author explicltly wishes it to not be available is just not a good idea.

Nowhere has the author explicitly expressed desire to pull the content from the vault; on the contrary, the author had left it in the Vault since 2002; I had downloaded it in just last year. Given that it was first posted in 2002, the author may very well not be active in the community anymore. However, if the author ever expressed any anger over this, I would remove it immediately.

In any case, I sincerely doubt the author has taken this down. I think what is more probable it disappeared through an internet error or something of the sort.

[eeriegeek]

From the IGN User Agreement Section D:

"You may Post only User Content which you own, have created or which you have clear permission to Post."

[Jackal_GB]

I think Napster, The Pirate's Bay and Limewire had similar statements to that affect too, IIRC

Modifié par Jackal_GB, 19 décembre 2010 - 04:10 .

[Invisig0th]

Submissions do not disappear from the NWVault website due to "some internet error". That is not how it works. If this particular content was available for download in the past and it is now not available, then it was definitely either removed by the author or the NWVault staff. That being the case, it is not wise to ignore that fact and attempt to circumvent it.

As others have stated above, it's also very easy to think something is not on NWVault just because you don't know exactly what to search for. Authors often complete the upload form poorly, resulting in a diminished ability to find their submission using the NWVault search feature (which isn't that great to start with). Needless to say, there is no reason for a third party to upload something again if it is already available on the site.

So either someone explicitly removed that content for a specific reason (in which case it is a bad idea to upload it again), or it is available but just hard to find (in which case it is also a bad idea to upload it again).

Please note that repackaged content or altered content is quite simply not what the OP asked about here. Trying to steer this thread in the direction of the wider  "who owns what? who needs permission for what?" discussion is a disservice to this thread. that subject has been debated in many other threads, but it is not the subject of this thread.

In the very SPECIFIC case of simply re-uploading another person's work in unmodified form (as described in the first post), the concerns are much more clear and not really open to debate.  It is a fact that doing this is most likely contrary to the wishes of either the author or NWVault staff (or both). It is also a fact that a large portion of the NWN Community would not approve of folks uploading that kind of stuff UNMODIFIED if they can't manage to find it on NWVault for some reason. At best, doing something like that is controversial, and quite likely to ****** some people off.

I'll state it again -- personally, I really couldn't give a flip about prefabs in particular. I doubt there is a single prefab author who would get upset about this. However, the advice I objected to was much more broad, and included pretty much any custom content. That goes too far. Others in this thread have specifically mentioned stuff that is clearly "custom" content like custom scripting systems and custom tileset HAKs. Rest assured that re-uploading stuff like that when you are not the author is frowned upon by a large portion of the NWN community.

So as you can see, the issue of uplaoding someone else's work for archival purposes is not quite as clear-cut as others have described above. Uploading a prefab probably isn't going to lead to much trouble, but people should be aware that doing anything beyond that is likely to lead to some amount of controversy, up to and including the deletion of your submission.

Modifié par Invisig0th, 19 décembre 2010 - 01:57 .

[Birdman076]

Invisig0th wrote...

Submissions do not disappear from the NWVault website due to "some internet error". That is not how it works. If this particular content was available for download in the past and it is now not available, then it was definitely either removed by the author or the NWVault staff. That being the case, it is not wise to ignore that fact and attempt to circumvent it.

So your saying the vault is immune to any kind of database corruption, dos attack, hacking, hardware issue, software issues, human fallibility, etc that could theoretically make submissions disappear? If thats the case i'll switch from my current web host immediately.

[kalbaern]

Actually, firstly the Vault has "lost" previous content and have made posts asking if folk had copies they could use to repost it. So it's not out of the realm of possibility that this may have been the case. We might never know and the original author may be unavailable to reached at this time.



Secondly, in the specific case of a hak being removed. If it was used in accordance with the authors wishes and/or any restrictions and then later removed ... a repost should not violate IGN's terms. Afterall, it is now a requirement for a greater enhanced work somewhere whether as part of a downloadable module or to enter a PW. There's alot of "what ifs" though and even more assupmtions, but ... entries removed that others depend on and used in good faith and within the authors original terms would be legally forfeit if later removed and the author would have no recourse to follow for someone reposting them unless the work(s) were now falsely claimed as other than the original author's.



Now, if a hak is made specifically for a module or PW and the author states it may not be used for other than that purpose, that's a whole other issue. If another module maker or PW adopts the work despite the authors wishes and its later removed, they would simply be "SOL". They have no recourse legally as they violated the use of the material already.



Lastly, there are currently already haks on NWN Vault that meet my specific example above. They were used in good faith originally and the users abided by the authors restrictions and requirements if any. Then when the author later deleted them, they were reposted by others with a clear explanation that it was a repost and credits made to the original author. If I post a hak tommorrow of my own creation and grant folk free use of it ... I'd have no standing to complain if a month later I want to "take my hak and go home" after others have adopted it and now depend on it as part of a greater work. If I chose to delete it, others could repost it and simply give me credit for it and there's nothing I could do. I would have been the one "breaking the contract" and not them.

[Invisig0th]

I am forced to assume that you are not a lawyer, which of course renders what you said above as mere speculation and conjecture from someone who doesn't actually have the background necessary to establish what is or is not legal (or what is and is not a violation of IGN rules). Regardless, what is and is not legal in the context of reusing NWN Custom content is not something that is going to be answered in this forum. Many other threads have tried and failed. That's why I haven't wasted my time talking at all about the legal issues in this thread. That's completely pointless.

Instead, my posts have specifically addressed the completely separate topic of what is appropriate according to community etiquette. It may be perfectly legal to completely disregard an author's wishes, but you can rest assured that NWVault staff will delete anything they find to be questionable, and you can also rest assured that some NWN community members will respond in a negative way if someone uploads someone else's work contrary to the author's wishes.

At this point it should be very clear to the OP that re-uploading someone else's work is at best a controversial issue that could potentially upset people. Those people include the original author and the NWVault staff. Some of the poor advice posted above completely failed to mention these very real concerns. Hopefully now we all have a more nuanced understanding of what is obviously a much more complicated issue.

You're certainly welcome to say that you, personally, do not care at all about the concerns I have raised here. Good for you. However, there is a big difference between choosing to ignore the risks and not being aware of the risks.  The things I mentioned are quite real concerns, and anyone considering uploading someone else's work deserves to at least be made aware of them.

Modifié par Invisig0th, 20 décembre 2010 - 03:02 .

[Invisig0th]

Birdman076 wrote...
So your saying the vault is immune to any kind of database corruption, dos attack, hacking, hardware issue, software issues, human fallibility, etc that could theoretically make submissions disappear?

So you're saying that the people over at NWVault aren't smart enough to keep simple, periodic backups of their content so that they can restore lost data in the extremely unlikely event that one of those things happens and blows away a submission? Pardon me if I'm skeptical.

Modifié par Invisig0th, 20 décembre 2010 - 03:01 .

[HipMaestro]

Once one places anything into the public domain, regardless of the effort gone into the design, it becomes part of the public's domain.  At that point there is no longer any legal ownership and that fact can be easily tested by an attempted litigation to prove damages.  Lotsa luck with that suit.  Hope you have spare funds earmarked for frivolous ventures, if so.

The Vault is essentially working under the honor system where subscribers are presented with a template of an actual legal process but has no true legal basis yet reads with legalese.  The site owner, i.e. the god, has the arbitrary power to delete information couched by a set of contrived guidelines.  This may or may not coincide with the general preference or consensus of the community, but that exercise is that person's/those persons' self-defined managerial function.

The clouded issue with content ownership occurs when those who submit their work for public consumption presume they retain some sort of copyright protection.  This is simply not true.  Depending on one's perspective, the Vault contains NO original content since it is all based on the original engine, toolset and database.  And, in that case, all custom content is defying standard copyright laws. The fact that the original owners (Bioware/Atari) chose to set up a EULA to redefine plagiarism as far as their product is concerned doesn't hide what the actual activity involves... copying a database or files, making modifications (ideally!) and then providing public access to the "new" content. 

Should the Vault policy seem too arbitary or biased it is a simple alternative to provide access by another means, another site. And in that case, once again, only the original providers have any legal claim or copyright ownership.

Modifié par HipMaestro, 20 décembre 2010 - 04:02 .