Discussing Intellectual Property

[Klokinator]

Something tells me FE7if is just as notorious in the Jap community as the English community?

[ghast]

@Klokinator

What good is a sprite by itself?

I don’t know, but its not on some guy wanted to use it to decide what’s best for someone else’s work.

@Klokinator

You see it once, you say “Wow, looks cool” and you move on

Doubt many people think like this–
there are many threads that I revisit over and over to see their work. Namely Lenh’s, Smirks’ and Merc.

@Klokinator

It means someone thought your sprites/whatever were good enough to be included in their project.

While true to a degree, that doesn’t make taking them on a whim justified.

@Klokinator

Look at Death or Glory. Initially, other than his hack, NYZ contributed nothing to the community. Over time, he gained acceptance and now he gives back with map sprites, hacking insights and discoveries, etc. What if he had initially decided to use some of Merc’s mugs? With our current mentality, we’d have driven him out and thus lost a potentially amazing game creator.

You can’t prove that this could happen. You’re just going off speculation? You even said NYZ was a smart dude yourself, so I don’t think he’s a good example.

@Klokinator

Yes, but if everyone had laughed and said “What, some dumb hack with a puppy gtfo noob” would you still be here?

That actually did happen, my hack got dismissed and continues to be snubbed by people because there’s a dog.

@Klokinator

You were smart, you learned immediately not to take what wasn’t yours

I don’t know where you’re basing these claims off. Its not like I never understood the concept of theft before and when I joined TEB I learned that theft was bad mmkay?

@Klokinator

should we have demonized you?

No. But it had nothing to do with theft or sprites. There are people on SF (less so now, thankfully) that were plain asshats to my OP on Serenes a year ago.

@Klokinator

Sometimes people aren’t raised to think of things in a “Yours/mine” way. They need to relearn

Are you implying that you’re some sort of authority on this? Most everyone learns that stealing is bad. Its even against the law, like, everywhere.

@Klokinator

but if someone forgets to explicitly credit or doesn’t think to ask, in an age where grabbing images off of google is extremely common, can we really blame them?

We can, but they can apologize and we can all be like “No problem” and give them the benefit of the doubt. There have been a few sprite threads on SF where people called out OP’s on theft. And they OP apologized, removed them. and the case is closed. The witch hunt mentality you’re insisting this community has doesn’t just poof out of nowhere.

The folks who were involved in the message to the creators of FE7if politely asked if they could ask permission/remove them. Would you consider that a witch hunt?

@Klokinator

Stop acting like when you post something on the internet, it belongs 100% to you

We’re not talking about the internet as a whole, we’re talking about Serenes, FEU, TEB, FEP and everyone other FE related fansite/forum.
And are you implying that if my Bram animation wasn’t in a project(that took months to make) then it
doesn’t 100% belong to me? Then if that’s the case then how dare you.

@Klokinator

With this in mind, you can’t expect people in this climate of internet free speech to respect your property. If you don’t want people using your mugs, don’t rely on forum rules to protect it. Share your images with a watermark, or shrink them down/jpeg them a little so as to be unusable in a hack. Stop witch hunting people for doing what the internet and years of social conditioning has taught them is acceptable, that’s all I’m saying here.

Your logic is poor. I shouldn’t need to go to such far length to protect what is mine. Especially in this community where people are hyper-aware of any theft that goes on.
I trust this community to not break rules and respect people’s work.

[MisakaMikoto]

Not exactly, because ideas vary from person to person. The hacker never hides his behaviour, instead makes it clear in the readme. In someone’s opinion, it is not such a severe problem.

The FE7if is quite popular in both Japanese and Chinese community anyhow.

By the way, the author of FE7if deleted all useful documentation included in his package and claimed not to release them again, which makes me feel a pity.(He has known your anger at his behaviour already.)

[Klokinator]

I see you lack the ability to speculate on cultural differences and what-if scenarios, Ghast. Makes for lame conversations.

[ghast]

@Klokinator

I see you lack the ability to speculate on cultural differences and what-if scenarios, Ghast. Makes for lame conversations.

1. @MisakaMikoto literally said that their community punishes sprite theft as well and value transparency.
2. Your ‘what-if’ scenario about nyz is stupid and baseless.

@ghast

Your logic is poor.

makes for lame discussions, go figure.

I’m really quite plastered and I have a bday party to go to.

[LordGlenn]

Okay, I’m bothering to take time out of what I’m working on because, as primarily an artist that contributes to projects, I feel the need to share my thoughts on this subject.

I’m just going to ignore most of Klok’s posts as a whole since it would take me far too long to point out all of instances of hypocrisy and, frankly, sheer facepalming-ness strewn throughout here.

There are three things I mainly wanted to touch on that I feel are important to the discussion at hand:

1. Differences between “contributions”

2. Artists’ decisions

3. Project uniqueness
   [4) Goes without saying that, unless something is marked as Free to Use/Open Source, it shouldn’t be used by anyone, regardless of whether it was posted on the internet or not.]

4. As ghast already covered, there is a significant difference between making a project (by which, unless you’re Blazer, you’re effectively already dead-set on the intent of the project being to make and share something with the community) and creating any semblance of art.

Off of the top of my head, I can think of at minimum three reasons why someone would create something artsy: Fun, Practice/Competition, and “Commission/Donation”. In the case of the latter-most option, that includes someone paying or trading for the person’s services to produce something for them (either just to look at or for usage) and offering up items out of the goodness of their hearts for friends/interesting projects/etc. The first two, while not necessarily being created for usage, does not immediately mean that they should be fair game to be used (more on this in #2).

As noted above, if someone is making a project, it almost goes to be certain that they are working on it with the intent of making it not solely for themselves, but such that others can play what they’ve created. Unless it’s someone doing ASM hacking (which I consider more along the art direction in this case) or creating a tool or purposefully compiling data (to share), there really is no “resource” component to making a hack/project. This almost feels like it’s falling into a “Hey, I made something! What do I get in return for it?” scenario. The answer to that rhetorical situation is “The satisfaction and fun/enjoyment of the work that you did and that others can hopefully share in that enjoyment,” not “Give me free graphixxxxxx!!!”

2. In the end, it should come down to the artist what they want to do with their works. For instance, if I were to make something for Agro (which, full disclosure, I have) and JUST for Agro, I fully expect and demand that it stays exclusive to his project (unless he were to decide to stop and cancel it, in which case I reserve the right to redistribute it as I see fit, if at all). Now, if I were to make something more “basic” to the point that it seems silly that it shouldn’t be anything but open source, then I would like to think that I would recognize this and label it as such. But, at the end of the day, even if I make something for myself, just for fun, to, say, make a mockup statsheet graphic for my signature, then my decision should be the end of the discussion, regardless of whether it’s swag enough that someone wants to use it or not (and whether they respect my decision or swipe my work and use it without my consent).

3. Tying in with #2, as one who creates things for projects, I often either don’t post those specific works online or I don’t allow them to be open source / free to use for a reason - I tailor my works to what I’m working on, therefore they should not fit someone else’s project. Furthermore, there’s a philosophy behind that: I don’t want to see 1000 cookie-cutter hacks floating around all using the same resources (albeit possibly tweaked). I firmly believe that people should be able to express their creativity and come up with something unique such that freely available resources are good for PLACEHOLDERS but should ultimately be replaced with something that matches what they actually want.

If every single sprite-based resource suddenly becomes free to use, I feel as though a majority will jump on that pool of resources and will basically strip-mine it to the point that you’ll see the same things in every third project and it will just get absolutely boring to look at after seeing it all of the time. And, to that end, yes, there will always be projects that strive to create their own content to dilute the flood of projects that use the open source resources excessively. However, I certainly don’t believe that, for example, when Dream of Five is fully finished and released, that all of their custom work should suddenly become fair game for everyone else to just jump on and use. Work that is explicitly done for a project should remain with that project even after completion, UNLESS BOTH the project creator(s) AND the artists in question agree to indicate that those or certain graphics can be used by the community at large.

---

The community is not entitled to anything, whether it be a patch release for a project, custom graphics, or even notes and documentation on something that they were debugging. In any of the cases, the people involved have put the time, effort, and work into their respective projects and it should solely be their decision what the end results are. Is it nice if they do share? Absolutely. But you can’t and shouldn’t demand that they do share or make available anything that they’ve done or found.

And, on a final note, as I just realized I hadn’t covered it above, I’m of the opinion that if you can’t do graphics or can’t write (needed) assembly, then either make do without what you don’t have or don’t bother with it at all. I’ve got documents left and right of ideas that I’ve had for functionality, weapons/items, story concepts, you name it, and do you know why I’ve never seriously worked on any of them? I don’t like doing things half-assed and I am absolutely awful when it comes to doing stuff that requires a good deal of understanding of proportions like custom battle sprites and face sprites - I just don’t have the required artistic background or training to do it well. But I don’t go around taking art I’m not supposed to or begging for people to do work for me for nothing because I realize that I’m not entitled (and no one else should be, either) to do such things. (And I’m not necessarily going to fish around for open source materials, because I take pride in my conceptual designs and how I envision characters - I’m not going to slap some random set of graphics that doesn’t fit a character on them just because I have the ability and option to use it.)

---

That took far too long to type out, so now I return to what I was previously working on. First post, possibly last post unless I see something else that might require my input. (Also, this forum software sucks for typing out really long posts. The Reply and cancel buttons are positioned directly over top of the editing area, which should be like the biggest programming taboo ever.)

~LG

[Arch]

A wild @LordGlenn appeared! Quick, somebody toss a Master Ball! But for srs come back maaaaan we love you.

I think it’s only fitting that the conclusion to a “seminar on cultural differences” is “we’re really not that different at all.” Nobody condones theft.

@MisakaMikoto

But you have nothing to do to a rule breaker.

That’s really the problem; what can be done about theft? If someone were to post a patch with blatantly stolen resources, it would be deleted from FEU. But it’s not like we can stop that patch from being distributed through other means, or force them to take the sprites out. If something akin to FE7if were published in the English community, would we actually have the collective conscious to boycott it? I have doubts.

@MisakaMikoto

By the way, the author of FE7if deleted all useful documentation included in his package and claimed not to release them again, which makes me feel a pity.(He has known your anger at his behaviour already.)

Quite a shame, yes. Do you know if he did that in response to the English community’s outcry, or was there some other reason? If so, that’s rather unfortunate.

[Klokinator]

@LordGlenn

If every single sprite-based resource suddenly becomes free to use, I feel as though a majority will jump on that pool of resources and will basically strip-mine it to the point that you’ll see the same things in every third project and it will just get absolutely boring to look at after seeing it all of the time.

We already have this issue with regular FE7 mugs. Aren’t you tired of seeing Recolored Raven 992? Furthermore, aren’t you forgetting the fact that mediocre projects will stay mediocre and they will receive limited attention? Short of an attention whore bumping their thread three times an hour while nobody else posts, if double-posting/triple posting without substantial updates is prevented or limited, then the ability to keep a project relevant when nobody is interested in it is substantially decreased. In that case, the “firsts”, those people who invent the graphics, will get the attention as they’re the first-users. The ones who use them for their intended project will have the most views while the copycats will be largely ignored. That’s how community policing/general interest always goes. (Especially in the english FE communities)

Incidentally, if we go from “The mugs in the FE games” to “Mostly any mugs made by the general community as a whole” as the resource pool for projects, I think people are forgetting that’s at least a 20x increase in the number of usable mugs. Stagnation is unlikely in the long term as more resources are always being made.

[namelessRegent]

@Arch

A wild @LordGlenn appeared! Quick, somebody toss a Master Ball!

Funny thing: On the site I met @Crazycolorz5, my username is Mudkip. But wild Mudkip don’t exist, so I must be trainer-owned, which means no capturing me! Hahaha.

Anyway, I wonder if a society could hypothetically exist that actually condones stealing. Hm, are some morals hardcoded in human nature, or are they just universal because the morals work and appear in all societies? I think the problem here is how our two societies (or rather, the people within them) define theft, not their attitudes toward it (which are the same, so it would be meaningless to discuss) - but that might be a bit obvious. (Still not quite sure whether you guys have all understood that or not. Sorry, I tend to talk on my own trains of thought during conversation.)

[ghast]

@Klokinator

We already have this issue with regular FE7 mugs. Aren’t you tired of seeing Recolored Raven 992? Furthermore, aren’t you forgetting the fact that mediocre projects will stay mediocre and they will receive limited attention? Short of an attention whore bumping their thread three times an hour while nobody else posts, if double-posting/triple posting without substantial updates is prevented or limited, then the ability to keep a project relevant when nobody is interested in it is substantially decreased. In that case, the “firsts”, those people who invent the graphics, will get the attention as they’re the first-users

I’m trying to understand this argument. Are you saying that the reason mediocre hacks stay mediocre is because they don’t have appealing graphics?

Also you literally dismissed all of my counter points to your giant post. Still waiting on that.

[Sephie]

Speaking as a part of the german FE hacking scene (Which is basically so small, that it dosen’t exist), even asking for usage is a bit of a breaking a taboo. And most of the mugs aren’t so good as the ones from the english community. But I think it’s because the scene is so small and most artist are afraid that their mugs lands up in a shitty hack that never get’s completed or the mugs are just for showcase and never mend to be in a hack.

[Siuloir]

That’s not a hardcoded moral so much as it is almost an extension of survival instinct - You’ve to defend the things you need to survive, a la food, or even things that bring you joy.

The genesis of prohibition/antipathy toward theft in early tribal civilization probably went like this:

Grugg the Caveman: "This rock is shiny. It pleases me. Since I found it, I will keep it, and admire it, for this brings me joy.
Ugg the Caveman: “Grugg has a pretty rock. I want it. I shall use stealth to take it from him.”

And then later, Grugg finds out Ugg jacked his rock, and responds by creeping into Ugg’s cave and bashing him in the head with a larger, less pretty rock until Ugg’s Neanderthal brain is a red smear on the cavern floor,. Then Grugg reclaims the rock.

And thus, news spread

Dugg the Caveman: "Shit, Ugg took Grugg’s rock, then Grugg rolled up on Ugg while he was napping and bashed his brains in.
Trugg the Caveman: “Whoa, okay, that’s intense. Maybe we should go easy on the taking of other people’s stuff.”

Still, a society could evolve with a mentality of ‘if you can’t protect it, it wasn’t yours to begin with’, but that society would not last long.

[Siuloir]

No, sorry.

Just because people want access to stuff that isn’t theirs, doesn’t mean that we should open them up under pretext of ‘community cooperation’ or some other trite falsehood.

A lot of that stuff is paid commissions. If people want access to it, they can reimburse the people who paid for it.

Also I’m surprised you care about Recolored Ravens.

[Klokinator]

No, I’m saying that good graphics won’t make the hack amazing, nor will it detract from the truly good hacks. If we allow everyone to use any mug they want, those people who spam using the same mugs over and over will be rooted out and ignored. The people who draw from the supposed ‘same pool’ will be very low, and those who do can’t make their hacks excellent just on the quality of the mugs/animations alone.

On the other hand, those newbies who have an excellent vision but can’t get any help with mugs won’t suffer from having to use the same GBA mugs we’ve been seeing for years, letting them not only develop their story/game, but also giving them access to a wider berth of mugs to use. While we CAN tell people to “Just use the original gba mugs and hope a spriter helps you out if they like the game itself”, that has proven to work out far less often than it should. We end up with people posting a game that reuses FE7/8 characters that we’ve seen a hundred times before, we give it a cursory glance, yawn, and say “Okay yeah whatever” and maybe 1 in 10 will actually get that coveted spriter.

On the other hand there are LITERALLY thousands of mugs made in this fandom, spread throughout various corners of the net, on SF, FEU, FEE, FEP, etc etc. Why are many of these old mugs also off limits? I can easily see the point that new mugs, like say DoF mugs, shouldn’t be used in any project other than DoF. After all, those mugs are being actually used. I canot accept that completely unused mugs though are 100% off limits. Can we at least agree on that? Can we at least agree to give people some leeway on the old stuff nobody cares about/will ever use otherwise?

@Siuloir

The genesis of prohibition/antipathy toward theft in early tribal civilization probably went like this:

There’s one issue with discussions of ‘theft’ relying on real world anecdotes. It’s a big issue, and it’s the exact same reason piracy is still being debated. Does theft really exist? In your example, Ugg takes the rock, depriving Grugg of it. But on the internet, Ugg copies the rock, leaving Grugg with a rock, and Ugg with an equally valuable rock. Nobody is deprived, and now 100% more people have access to the rock.

As well, in the case of piracy, like for example Game of Thrones, I would never have watched that show were it not for piracy. I’d have to subscribe to HBO, pay for shit I don’t want, etc. I ended up, however, buying the box set of the show after pirating it, because I loved the show so much. I also mentioned the show to many people after pirating and watching it, perhaps leading them to also pirate it, watch it, and then buy it. GoT is extremely successful financially, and also extremely pirated. If we translate this to the fandom here, it means maybe people who use a particular resource a lot will be drawn to the original creator, giving him more views and more fans. In an age of unlimited prosperity, why limit it?

But hey, the discussion we’re having here is literally identical to the piracy discussion as a whole. Considering that discussion has been going on for years and is still unresolved, with vitriol from both sides and both sides taking extreme stances for and against it, I have no doubt nothing that happens in this topic will change the community as a whole. A big discussion with anger, and then business as usual.

[namelessRegent]

@Sephie

Speaking as a part of the german FE hacking scene

Heh, there’s a German hacking community as well? Wow. I wonder how this place has already attracted two people from foreign hacking communities (I was going to say recently but it seems you’ve been here for a while.) Do you think that Germans are even more individualistic than English-speaking westeners? Because if it isn’t, then maybe culture isn’t the only cause for the gap between the Japanese and American community.

I’ve never really contributed anything to the community myself (can’t help, dubious at drawing and writing but I try), but i do have a mug of questionable quality I made in my art thread (look it up if you want - not that you need to - but please don’t steal it, obviously.) Might be interesting to see how bad mugs here and bad mugs in your community differ. But yeah, I’m not exactly the standard; I wonder how bad the quality really is for you German hackers. You (plural you; I sometimes resent how English doesn’t have a plural second person pronoun) might not be as bad as you think. Maybe.

[ghast]

@Klokinator

On the other hand, those newbies who have an excellent vision but can’t get any help with mugs won’t suffer from having to use the same GBA mugs we’ve been seeing for years, letting them not only develop their story/game, but also giving them access to a wider berth of mugs to use. While we CAN tell people to “Just use the original gba mugs and hope a spriter helps you out if they like the game itself”, that has proven to work out far less often than it should.

If they’re serious about their vision they should try to make their own mugs with their own concepts, get cnc’d, get them better to the point where their at least well presentable. That’s the way she goes. Maybe if you had a custom world/sprites you’d understand this concept better.

@Klokinator

On the other hand there are LITERALLY thousands of mugs made in this fandom, spread throughout various corners of the net, on SF, FEU, FEE, FEP, etc etc. Why are many of these old mugs also off limits? I can easily see the point that new mugs, like say DoF mugs, shouldn’t be used in any project other than DoF. After all, those mugs are being actually used. I canot accept that completely unused mugs though are 100% off limits. Can we at least agree on that? Can we at least agree to give people some leeway on the old stuff nobody cares about/will ever use otherwise?

No, we cannot. Because unlike you, everyone else realizes that they aren’t entitled to use other people’s work. If you want to shamelessly take other people’s work then go ahead. But can you stop fucking insisting on this selfish, shithead attitude you’re trying to push on people? Nobody here agrees with you.

[ghast]

I’ve used well thought out counter points to everything you said you have yet to follow up on them (you never do anyway, to anyone, ever) so i don’t really give a shit and still nobody agrees with you.

Done though. Not worth the time/effort gg/wp

[Alusq]

I hadn’t intended on posting here because I have nothing useful to say, but do you need to have a nap? It looks like someone needs a nap. After so much trying to argue it just looks like you’re yelling into the wind.

Also @your “Americans are cancer” remark, Ghast isn’t American but °3°

On-topic: I like the dialogue going on here, minus the rocking-out-with-one’s-klok-out. Kudos to everybody else in the thread and welcomes to Misaka.

[dancer_A]

@ghast

If they’re serious about their vision they should try to make their own mugs with their own concepts, get cnc’d, get them better to the point where their at least well presentable. That’s the way she goes. Maybe if you had a custom world/sprites you’d understand this concept better.

following up on this; just use placeholder mugs.

@Klokinator

While we CAN tell people to “Just use the original gba mugs and hope a spriter helps you out if they like the game itself”, that has proven to work out far less often than it should. We end up with people posting a game that reuses FE7/8 characters that we’ve seen a hundred times before, we give it a cursory glance, yawn, and say “Okay yeah whatever” and maybe 1 in 10 will actually get that coveted spriter.

that is so false it’s not even funny; I’m a clear example of this. I’ve been using placeholder mugs for ages because I didn’t have the resources. Mugs don’t affect progress you can make if you really want to make your project. Stop spreading this lie; I’m tired of seeing it.

[Sephie]

Hard to say. We have some big industries that want to strenghten the law regarding copyright (For example: we don’t have the fair use law like you americans have) and some media labels can send you warning letters just because you have an IP and someone downloaded something from their label over said IP and you have to pay regardless if you even have a PC.
As a software pirate you can get up to 8 years if they get you, thats more then some guys get in some child or women abuser cases, but I have to say, that these cases are extremly low and gets pushed by media.
In realtiy people don’t care much if they buy a certain song on itunes or if they downloaded them for free on the internet. But yeah, when it comes to “yours or mine” some people here CAN be really selfish. In rare cases people want something for getting somthing from them and when you give somthing for free and ask nicley for a favor instead most people just take without giving something back (It’s extremly in the Pokemon bredding community).
But when they come to know you better they like sharing in many ways. Oh but taking from the english or other foreigner community without asking is totally okay for the most hackers, which I disagree with. Most they because it’s a german hack none of the foreigner arstist would notice it.

As I said the FE Hacking community in german is VERY small and most hacker are hacking the US versions, cause there is basically no tool for the european versions. I can’t even remember that we have Nightmare Modules, Documentions, Text editor or other stuff for our versions. So you’ll see mostly palette recolors or bad splices in a EU version or palette recolors or splices with a different name, some bad dialogue changes in english (Hackers are to lazy for a translation) if they worked with a US rom. That’s also the main reason why I’m here xD The english community if far better in mostly everything (Mostly in ASM and creativity. Nether saw a german native ASM hack)