A Chinese FE8 hack---the Crystal of Wisdom

[Klokinator]

@Arch

Nobody should go to jail for pirating a movie, which is why those laws aren’t enforced.

While I agree with most of what you said, this part isn’t exactly true. It happens. Not often, but often enough to be a thing that does in fact happen.

https://www.google.com/search?q=man+goes+to+prison+for+pirating+a+movie&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Worth pointing out the majority of those people being punished were piracy distributors, and not piracy users, so it’s like taking down the drug dealer instead of worrying about the users themselves.

But let’s be honest, the drug war is also a failure so not a perfect analogy there either.

[Primefusion]

Hi slippery slope fallacy, how are you?

The reason it doesn’t matter whether we classify this hacker who is using other people’s work without permission is because we will judge them the same regardless. We, as a community, do not appreciate people using other people’s stuff without permission. Whether you classify them as a thief or a pirate is irrelevant.

All you’re doing is arguing whether we should use blue-tinted tar instead of standard black for our feathering session.

[Arch]

@Klokinator

Worth pointing out the majority of those people being punished were piracy distributors, and not piracy users, so it’s like taking down the drug dealer instead of worrying about the users themselves.

But let’s be honest, the drug war is also a failure so not a perfect analogy there either.

It’s the same way drug dealers get slammed with possession charges and distribution charges. Most of the time, the possession charges are used as plea bargaining chips - usually get dropped by admitting guilt.

And I agree that the war on drugs is a failure on multitudes of levels; but after learning about the process behind prosecutions, at least they’re structurally efficient at throwing dealers in prison.

[Lisandra_brave]

But clearly the whole community doesn’t feel this way. If they did, we would never have this discussion, instead of having it every single time something like this comes up.

[Klokinator]

Let’s be honest, it’s usually me VS the community. I don’t see any others speaking up other than a tepid 'I kinda agree with klok" and the agreement with me is hardly uniform with the disagreement with me.

[Klokinator]

@Primefusion

All you’re doing is arguing whether we should use blue-tinted tar instead of standard black for our feathering session.

Actually, I don’t think there should be a feathering session at all.

Let me make this clear, as someone who’s been in the community for 12 years maybe longer, I’ve seen “the process” happen dozens of times. It never changes, with maybe two exceptions.

1. Guy posts on forum “Hey everyone, I made a hack and look at all these cool mugs”
2. Person recognizes the mugs, maybe just one of them. “OH MY GOD YOU STOLE THOSE FROM MAGEKNIGHT!!! FUCKING SHITLORD THIEF!”
3. Whole community jumps in at this point “OH MY GOD I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO THAT WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!”
4. Guy apologizes profusely, but everyone keeps jumping on him. He finally leaves.

Number 4 changes sometimes. For example, it could go more like:

4. Guy sees anger directed at him. “Hey who gives a shit, my hack is great and if you don’t like it you’re a shitty dickwad!” and he leaves.

or even

4. Guy leaves the community immediately, no follow up posts after initial community gangbang.

Assuming the person never apologizes, fuck 'em. I don’t care, they deserved what they got. But on the other hand, two instances come to mind where this thing did not go down that way.

1. Guy posts hack. “Hey guys check out my hack I made! It has animations and mugs and stuff.”
2. Person posts in thread. “Oh hi there JimBob1401, I’m not sure if you realize this, but you’re not really allowed to take animations from the community without asking for permission. Please remove them.”
3. Guy replies “OH gosh, sorry. I didn’t realize that was bad. I’ll remove them immediately.”

This is what I want to see. I’ll admit, I’ve historically been part of the problem. I started some threads fairly recently including the big art theft thread at SF from that one obscure forum. I let myself jump in on the community gangbang, but I decided explicitly after the last thread not to do that anymore.

Now let’s look at this recent example. Let’s say the guy who posts his hack is politely told that he shouldn’t take from other hacks without asking, and his response comes out more like:

3. “Fuck you! I worked hard ripping these animations with FEditor [lol] so they’re mine to use! Piss off you blimey cuntwagon!”

Well, I don’t care. I say jump his ass, mock him, shit on him, etc. But for god’s sake, we need to as a community stop jumping all over people for ‘stealing’ and give them time to apologize and not feel unwelcome. Most people don’t read the rules, and people certainly don’t read all the stickies. A slight clarification can make all the difference in a new hacker being booed out, or apologizing, changing his ways, and sticking around.

Now if only I could find those two exception threads. I feel like one was on Blazer’s forum, and I can’t recall the other one much at all.

[Arch]

@Klokinator

Now let’s look at this recent example. Let’s say the guy who posts his hack is politely told that he shouldn’t take from other hacks without asking, and his response comes out more like:

“Fuck you! I worked hard ripping these animations with FEditor [lol] so they’re mine to use! Piss off you blimey cuntwagon!”

Well, I don’t care. I say jump his ass, mock him, shit on him, etc. But for god’s sake, we need to as a community stop jumping all over people for ‘stealing’ and give them time to apologize and not feel unwelcome. Most people don’t read the rules, and people certainly don’t read all the stickies. A slight clarification can make all the difference in a new hacker being booed out, or apologizing, changing his ways, and sticking around.

Okay, so let’s talk about this part. You’ve basically put the burden on the victims of “crime” to accept the offender back into the community. From what I can gather, it seems like this guy (who we didn’t know about until this thread got posted) responded to “you don’t have permission to use those” with “Fuck you!” as his first reaction. Acted like enough of a shithead to get banned, so my sympathies are definitely lessened.

If someone gets called on it, the proper response is: remove the work when asked! Respecting the artist’s wishes, that’s all it really takes. But I do agree on one point, public shaming isn’t productive. It makes a stronger statement to simply remove the topic and move on. Handle it through PMs, and if a resolution happens and they repost their project with the content removed, just carry on and “welcome back.” But when this becomes a pattern of behavior, or when people respond to these situations with more undesirable behavior, it becomes a problem. That’s when fools need to get banned. We want people to learn from mistakes, but at the same time, letting people get away with this sets a poor example.

[Klokinator]

Oh, I should be clear that I don’t care about the guy quoted in the OP. He’s a dick, fuck him.

I’m talking about people in the English community.

@Arch

You’ve basically put the burden on the victims of “crime” to accept the offender back into the community.

Not really. Most people who use sprites from other romhacks don’t know it’s bad to do what they did. A polite call-out should set them on the straight and narrow. If it doesn’t, then fuck 'em.

@Arch

letting people get away with this sets a poor example to the community at large.

How is calling someone out for bad behavior politely and them apologizing/removing the offending works ‘allowing bad behavior’? If a child grabs a cookie out of the cookie jar the first time and you swat his hand and tell him “don’t do that”, I would say that’s not letting him get away with it. On the other hand, if he does the exact same thing again and you repeat the same action, then you’re letting him get away with it.

One might argue ‘these people aren’t children!’ but then again, a recent survey on the FE subreddit showed some 16% of all respondents were 12 years old or younger. I started hacking when I was about 13. Not to mention, that even if they are older, many people still don’t “get” the nature of the internet. Why scream and berate them from the get-go rather than allowing them the benefit of the doubt? If you allow them the benefit and they THEN go on and say ‘fuck you bleh bluh’ then yeah, who cares? They deserve it. Give them hell.

And if they apologize and remove it, but you catch them doing it again later on, then you should jump down their throat ten times more, because now they know and there is no excuse for that behavior.

[Klokinator]

On a side note, wtf happened to quotes on FEU? There’s a whole string of letters and numbers/other bullshit in the top section of every quote. I blame Cambama.

[Arch]

@Klokinator

Most people who use sprites from other romhacks don’t know it’s bad to do what they did. A polite call-out should set them on the straight and narrow. If it doesn’t, then fuck 'em.

Ignorance is not innocence, but the “first offense” should be primarily educational, yes.

@Klokinator

How is calling someone out for bad behavior politely and them apologizing/removing the offending works ‘allowing bad behavior’? If a child grabs a cookie out of the cookie jar the first time and you swat his hand and tell him “don’t do that”, I would say that’s not letting him get away with it. On the other hand, if he does the exact same thing again and you repeat the same action, then you’re letting him get away with it.

I agree with that. Mostly, I was talking about repeat offenders. There’s gotta be punishment at some point for a pattern of behavior.

Procedural response to these situations should be:

1. Close/hide topic.
2. Contact the original artist.
3. PM the offender, issue warning, and provide contact details for the original artist (if the artist wants to handle it themselves, otherwise the staff member should articulate the artist’s wishes).
4. If topic is reposted in compliance, good on them! They learned their lesson and hopefully there won’t be a future issue.

That’s the ideal outcome. Which, again, is why I advocate for building more open-source resource compilations. Ideally, having prominent open-sourcing will help newcomers realize that not everything they see is up for grabs.

[Klokinator]

That’s pretty fair to me. Well, other than this part.

@Arch

if the artist wants to handle it themselves, otherwise the staff member should articulate the artist’s wishes

What does this mean? So if the artist screams “BAN THE SUMBITCH!” we just ban them? I doubt any would, but this reminds me of the controversy in how some countries allow victims to decide the fate of the accused when a criminal act has occured. They can offer leniency or they can punish harshly, at their own discretion.

I was going to look up data for what generally occurs since I read about this last year, but now I can’t even think of the term for it. In any case, it’s generally perceived by most people as an unfair system and generally punishes the offender much more harshly than most would consider ‘fair’.

Unless you meant something else?
Edit: He meant something else.

[Kiseki]

So I’m not the only one here, huh. I’ve been taking out the name and timestamp of the original post because of it.

But can’t we try to not decimate and maul the offender of said sprite piracy? I’ve never seen a single instance where the person was like “Oh, this was made by (insert artist here)? Alright, I’ll remove it.” after one post.

Anyways, you two are pretty much talking to a brick wall up to this point. Wouldn’t it be better to move that conversation elsewhere?

[Klokinator]

Arch makes the rules in the community, so if the discussion makes him decide to change the rules, it’s not exactly a brick wall scenario.

@Kiseki

But can’t we try to not decimate and maul the offender of said sprite piracy? I’ve never seen a single instance where the person was like “Oh, this was made by (insert artist here)? Alright, I’ll remove it.” after one post.

Give it a few more years. I’ve seen it happen at least twice.

[Arch]

@Klokinator

What does this mean? So if the artist screams “BAN THE SUMBITCH!” we just ban them?

Just like: “The artist wants you to take their sprite out of your hack, and a patch cannot be posted on FEU until their content has been removed.” Or hey, maybe they’re nice enough to let the person off with a warning and grant permission at the same time. So long as the newcomers are learning that sprite galleries aren’t a free buffet, it’ll hopefully lead to better habits either way.

[Klokinator]

Fair enough.

[Jiege]

As a Chinese FE8 Hacker，I am so sad for this person，He is a bad FE8 hacker.Sorry，my English is not very good，please forgive me.@zhawhjw.（I just want to @beijunan）

[Jiege]

Hello，la qie er，S dark.

[Crazycolorz5]

Theft applies to excludable, rivalrous goods.

Copyright and piracy applies to (usually)excludable, non-rivalrous goods. It’s different in nature because it’s infringing on intellectual property rights and nor the right to property (er, the physical kind).

So really how we enforce this as a community should 1) be different from treating it as the same thing as theft. We can have the same punishments, sure, but it’s inherently a different thing. 2) reflect how our community views the intellectual property rights of modders. This is a sketchier point since we are already reusing a lot of IntSys’s intellectual property. A certain degree of fair use exists, but reusing the whole FE7/8 engine is more borderline.

[m0rogfar]

[quote=“Crazycolorz5, post:54, topic:1009, full:true”]2) reflect how our community views the intellectual property rights of modders. This is a sketchier point since we are already reusing a lot of IntSys’s intellectual property. A certain degree of fair use exists, but reusing the whole FE7/8 engine is more borderline.
[/quote]

This is pretty important. At this point modders pretty much demand more rights than Intelligent Systems. For example I don’t think anyone has asked IntSys for permission to use their stuff. IntSys also can’t really say no in practice and expect people to listen. That’s pretty weird to me when you consider that IntSys also has a relatively large monetary interest in this game (it’s on VC) and it’s one of IntSys’ biggest series. Sure you can always be nice but the community is kinda forcing it on you (i can totally see the issue of directly claiming you made it but let’s be honest even the dick referred to in the OP awknowledged he didn’t make everything so that’s mostly a non-issue) and i think that most people who actually try to make full hacks would do that anyway. It’s probably only for hacks with people still trying to learn hacking where things like using sprites and animations where the creator dosen’t want it (in the case of sprites they may even be temporary) happens. All in all i think that it’s dumb and it holds back the community.

[Klokinator]

I had a silly idea actually. Let’s say someone posts some new project and it has sprites from DoF in it, maybe some animations, idk. Anyway, you, intrepid reader, notice it’s clearly not the creators work. Instead of saying “Hey I caught you, thief!”, instead, try saying something like “Wow! Cool sprites/animations/whatever! I can’t believe you made those yourself!”

When the person reponds, if they correct you and say “Oh no, actually I didn’t make those! Those came from some other hack.” then you should respond with “Ohhh okay. You should ask the original hack author for permission and then post credits, otherwise it will confuse someone. Plus, it’s also against the rules.”

Why do this? Because if you jump out and attack them claiming you know it’s stolen, they do not have the chance to clear up confusion. You essentially make them the ‘bad guy’ no matter how they respond. If they get ‘caught’ and they say “Oh gosh, sorry!” then it looks like they’re just sorry they got caught, but if you do it the way I just outlined, and they mention another hack, you give them a chance to mention they didn’t make the sprites, you clear up confusion about unspoken rules, and best of all nobody ends up being the bad guy, no shitstorm, no banning, no ruined reputations.

Furthermore, if you do as I outlined and they simply respond with “Thanks! I worked really hard on those sprites/animations/etc” then CLEARLY they just took the sprites and claimed credit. At this point, they ARE the bad guy. You gave them a chance to come clean, and they’re a liar. It’s your discretion how to act after that.