Minecraft Forums

Quote from Robijnvogel»

1. 9minecraft is already on the list.
2. It's not an impersonation. They just correctly state that you're the one who made it.
Barely any content page on 9minecraft has been created by the original content creator. It's just people, most of which I assume are staff from 9minecraft itself, copying over content from CurseForge and Planet Minecraft.

I did post my Map to Planet Minecraft, and now I know why I saw it. Thanks for Telling me!

They stole my mod to it's not even a week old

Quote from Robijnvogel»

Who did? What mod?

And yes... some of these websites seem to keep a close watch on whatever new mods are uploaded to sites like CurseForge and then simply copy those, yet there's not a lot you can do about it, sadly. If the website that is rehosting your mod is not on the list yet, please report it, so the browser plugin will blacklist it.

my silmarillion mod every website thats allready on the blacklist it's so heartbreaking that they do this

I would like to have a website that has rehosted my mod removed from Google Search. I would use this form from Google for this.

My questions to you:
-Has anyone of you ever had experience with it?
-I'm from Germany and I do not know American copyright very well. Do websites that rehost mods against the will of the creator violate American copyright law? Of course, I am aware that I will not receive legal advice here as from a lawyer. Nevertheless, I would be interested in your opinion.

Quote from Robijnvogel»

1. Software copyright does work a little different from copyright for text and pictures.
2. And there's a big difference between copying large bits of the source code and re-using it for your own profit and re-hosting the compiled mod.
3. Re-hosting the complete mod does not claim author-ship or ownership over the product, it simply re-distributes a file that was free for anyone to download in the first place. It's just a Jerk move because it deprives the original author/owner of add-revenue.
4. The fact that the compiled mod can only work in conjunction with the base game Minecraft, which has its own rules for these "modifications" only further complicates properly copyrighting it.
5. I think the best hopes you have for getting downloads from a source that you control is by uploading your mod to CurseForge, like about 99% of all popular mods does.
6. Closing these other websites down would be very hard to do since it's really hard to point out what legal rule they are breaking. And for every redistributing website we'd take down, another thousand will pop up.

Sorry for being such a downer.

Thanks for the answer - unfortunately I am a bit disappointed, but of course that's not your fault.

It is a shame that the rights of free software developers are not protected. But then that's how it is.

Parts of my mod would work without Minecraft. I use this for testing some functions and would only need to be released with an update. But that wouldn't make sense because of your mentioned 3rd point.

I will soon offer my mod on Curse too.

I think it is less bad if many pages rehost my mod as long as it does not generate the bulk of the downloads. But with one site I've been in contact twice already in recent years, after which they removed the download and added it back a few weeks later. But it is also positive that some sites link to the right source after contacting them which results in higher download rates. So it pays to contact the site operators.

#STOPMODREPOSTS

Has anyone reported their work as stolen to what seems to be 9minecraft's domain registrar? Seems they have a copyright infringement policy: https://publicdomainregistry.com/legal-agreements/#infringement

I don't know if you know about this, but http://minecraft-forum.net has apparently distributed malware, it may be worth checking to see if they also steal mods. Hope this helps.

K thanks I didnt see it so i just was trying to make sure

All the creators of the world say 'thank you' !

unsure if it's a repost site but looks like one because it doesn't give the author's name

here is the link

http://modsforminecraft.com/add-exotic-birds-to-minecraft-1-7-101-8/

How do I remove these reposting websites from my search results? (I'm russian, and it always suggests sites from my country)

It's kinda annoying when searching for plugins/mods, especially when you open the first link (Want to install a mod fast) and you see this:

And that's for every search result. I need to go further down to find an official website! It's annoying for me. And for mod creators too, I already heard complaints from some of the mod authors

That is a bad idea, because:

*There are so much reposts, and removing all of them would take years.

*Freedom 2 states that anybody can "repost" software (includes game mods)

*Most of modders do it for fun

Due to those, I license my mods with licenses that allow reposting (usually GNU GPL, maybe Public Domain).

Quote from UnloadedChunk»

That is a bad idea, because:

*There are so much reposts, and removing all of them would take years.

*Freedom 2 states that anybody can "repost" software (includes game mods)

*Most of modders do it for fun

Due to those, I license my mods with licenses that allow reposting (usually GNU GPL, maybe Public Domain).

What about if somebody decompiles your mod, and not just any mod but an extensive mod you'd spent the past 8 years developing, and distributes their own version without your permission, and worse, in ways that break the EULA?

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/mods-discussion/3160789-somebody-is-modifying-and-distributing-my-mod-in

Also, https://stopmodreposts.org/ gives many reasons why reposting mods is bad:

Malicious software
If a mod gets reposted, the mod author doesn't have any control over the files on the reposting site. This means that malware/adware could get on your computer when downloading/using the mod.

No income for Developers
Developers live from income. If you download from reposting sites, they won't get any revenue, which could mean less mods from them in the future.

Outdated versions
Reposting sites might link you to outdated versions, which could mean more bugs, crashes and errors for you.

(I should note that that the EULA technically forbids you from making money off of mods; "Any Mods you create for the Game from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them"; at the very least, anything more than site ads, and arguably, donations, as long as there is no benefit in return, similar to how server monetization must work)

Likewise, you'll usually see advice to only download mods from trusted sites like CurseForge or the modder's own web site (e.g. https://optifine.net, being careful to make sure you entered it correctly as people can and have made sites with similar names with the intent to redirect them to a malicious site/download - and yes, it does happen).

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

What about if somebody decompiles your mod, and not just any mod but an extensive mod you'd spent the past 8 years developing, and distributes their own version without your permission, and worse, in ways that break the EULA?

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/mods-discussion/3160789-somebody-is-modifying-and-distributing-my-mod-in

Also, https://stopmodreposts.org/ gives many reasons why reposting mods is bad:

(I should note that that the EULA technically forbids you from making money off of mods; "Any Mods you create for the Game from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them"; at the very least, anything more than site ads, and arguably, donations, as long as there is no benefit in return, similar to how server monetization must work)

Likewise, you'll usually see advice to only download mods from trusted sites like CurseForge or the modder's own web site (e.g. https://optifine.net, being careful to make sure you entered it correctly as people can and have made sites with similar names with the intent to redirect them to a malicious site/download - and yes, it does happen).

That applies to your question- mod repost and EULA violation are two independent situation. Also EULA violates Freedom 2- that is another reason to go to Minetest.

"Worse"? That would be so exaggerated. I do not trust repost sites (I only download mods from CurseForge), I am not trying to say "reposting is good". I am just saying, if there is no malicious software put in the reposted file, and if it is a non commercial repost, that should be tolerated. -i do not care if my mod(s) is/are reposted-

I saw that my "Obtainable Technical Blocks" mod has been reposted. That is not a problem for me, I do not do it for any income, just for fun. In EULA, there is statements that copyright law does not allow (for instance, "you can not sell account(s)". That is what called "copyright fraud".

Copyright fraud is a serious problem as copyright infringement, in some circumstances, even more serious. Ignore copyright fraud in EULA and continue as you did.

If it is any kind of data, it does not matter if you spend 30 minutes or 10 years. All data can be copied, reposted, modified, reverse engineered, decompiled infinitely and you (or me, or somebody else) cannot prevent it.

Decompilation of mods is so easy that anybody can do. Did you see BON2? It deobfuscates mods with Forge/MCP mappings and generates near-to-source code. It might be useful when you lose the source code of your mod, or you want to learn modding from other mods. But if people use BON2 to redistribute the source code of mods, that is a problem.

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

What about if somebody decompiles your mod, and not just any mod but an extensive mod you'd spent the past 8 years developing, and distributes their own version without your permission, and worse, in ways that break the EULA?

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/mapping-and-modding-java-edition/minecraft-mods/mods-discussion/3160789-somebody-is-modifying-and-distributing-my-mod-in

Also, https://stopmodreposts.org/ gives many reasons why reposting mods is bad:

(I should note that that the EULA technically forbids you from making money off of mods; "Any Mods you create for the Game from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them"; at the very least, anything more than site ads, and arguably, donations, as long as there is no benefit in return, similar to how server monetization must work)

Likewise, you'll usually see advice to only download mods from trusted sites like CurseForge or the modder's own web site (e.g. https://optifine.net, being careful to make sure you entered it correctly as people can and have made sites with similar names with the intent to redirect them to a malicious site/download - and yes, it does happen).

"What if somebody decompiles your mod?" I can answer you as that: "What if you decompile others mod?". Decompiling mods is so easy that anybody can do. You just need a good decompiler and a SRG -> MCP deobfuscator.

Decompiling mods should not be a problem, because it is their right to see how does the mod work. If it is a problem for you, that is your problem.

Quote from UnloadedChunk»

"What if somebody decompiles your mod?" I can answer you as that: "What if you decompile others mod?". Decompiling mods is so easy that anybody can do. You just need a good decompiler and a SRG -> MCP deobfuscator.
Decompiling mods should not be a problem, because it is their right to see how does the mod work. If it is a problem for you, that is your problem.

I never said that was a problem; in fact, this is part of my mod's license (amended to add "private"):

Otherwise, you are free to decompile and modify this mod for personal (private) use, and I will even provide code examples for any features/bugfixes you want to implement in your own mod, as long as you give credit to me.

This is similar to the license by the creator of Optifine (which I had at one time decompiled and modified to add my own optimization and bugfixes, before later splitting them out; all the features I've added in place of Optifine's, like improved video settings, zoom and Better Grass, are not implemented using Optifine's code (you can't claim that such features are copyrightable, if that wee the case then Mojang themselves would be in trouble for ripping off most of Optifine's advanced settings, like fine render distance, mipmaps, more fast/fancy toggles, even a brightness slider and vsync, heck, even zoom, via spyglasses. I also mention this because at one time Mojang actually wanted to buy Optifine so they could implement its features directly, instead of writing their own code):

The mod OptiFine is Copyright © 2013 by sp614x and the intellectual property of the author. It may be not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use as long as it remains in its unaltered, unedited form.

(that said, the way this is worded makes it sound like they forbid you from modifying it even for personal private use, which is simply nonsense; of course, this doesn't stop people from illegally distributing it, including the decompiled source)

Likewise, I'm sure you can find tons of mods with features very similar to ones in TMCW, but I/they never took any code from each other (it is possible, and certainly is the case, that simpler pieces of code may be identical simply because it can't be written in many different ways).

Some mods containing code taken from TMCW (or a derivative of, TMCW Underground), or other mods I've made, all with credit/permission:

Some of this mod's code is taken from the amazing mod The Master Caver's Underground 4/2. Permissions: https://i.imgur.com/WiCwxNZ.png and https://i.imgur.com/pQVSNKe.png

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/immersive-cavegen

TheMasterCaver is a co-author on this mod, and thanks to RedstoneVet for some prodding!

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/random-biomes (I originally made a non-Forge version)

Credits
TheMasterCaver, for writing very informative posts on several vanilla issues.

https://github.com/embeddedt/ArchaicFix (this mod has many bugfixes and optimizations and even some minor features taken from TMCW, for example. I'd also given them many examples of my fixes)

The issue in my previous post was because they had, without any permission, decompiled and made public the entire source and compiled jar for TMCW, not even a "derivative" but the entire mod, with improvements (multiplayer, shaders, LWJGL3) which would no doubt simply crush the original into oblivion, and they would probably gain credit for it (I doubt it has even had 1000 downloads in the 9 years it has been public, there is literally only one YouTube channel that made any videos, and just a crude timelapse mostly spent building something that could easily be vanilla, as opposed to a showcase/mod review/playthrough), in addition to modifying and distributing it in ways that are clearly not allowed; what if Mojang decides to also take down the original (such things can and do happen)? MCP doens't allow you to distribute the source either, which is why TMCW is closed-source (the code that I have posted is either only the parts I modified or my own classes. Exactly how much your code has to differ is in question, many people have posted slightly modified sources/assets without issues and there have been many arguments over this, but an entire repository including all the unmodified sources is definitely a no-no), and they had modified it to not need a launcher at all (not even to download assets/libraries, which had been placed inside a single massive jar file):

You are NOT allowed to:
- Use MCP to do anything that violated Mojangs terms of use for Minecraft.
- Release Minecraft versions or modifications that allow you to play without having bought Minecraft from Mojang.
- Release the decompiled source code of Minecraft in any way.

Also, due to the way TMCW is coded it would be very hard to work with the decompiled (not original) source, not just due to lacking the numerous comments I add to document it but my extensive use of constants which get stripped out at compile time, and compilers can and do make errors when decompiling, which is why MCP warns you if you decompile a modified jar, and when I decompiled Optifine there were rendering errors with several blocks:

If you still don't see the problem then I don't know what to say.

Quote from TheMasterCaver»

I never said that was a problem; in fact, this is part of my mod's license (amended to add "private"):

This is similar to the license by the creator of Optifine (which I had at one time decompiled and modified to add my own optimization and bugfixes, before later splitting them out; all the features I've added in place of Optifine's, like improved video settings, zoom and Better Grass, are not implemented using Optifine's code (you can't claim that such features are copyrightable, if that wee the case then Mojang themselves would be in trouble for ripping off most of Optifine's advanced settings, like fine render distance, mipmaps, more fast/fancy toggles, even a brightness slider and vsync, heck, even zoom, via spyglasses. I also mention this because at one time Mojang actually wanted to buy Optifine so they could implement its features directly, instead of writing their own code):

(that said, the way this is worded makes it sound like they forbid you from modifying it even for personal private use, which is simply nonsense; of course, this doesn't stop people from illegally distributing it, including the decompiled source)

Likewise, I'm sure you can find tons of mods with features very similar to ones in TMCW, but I/they never took any code from each other (it is possible, and certainly is the case, that simpler pieces of code may be identical simply because it can't be written in many different ways).

Some mods containing code taken from TMCW (or a derivative of, TMCW Underground), or other mods I've made, all with credit/permission:

The issue in my previous post was because they had, without any permission, decompiled and made public the entire source and compiled jar for TMCW, not even a "derivative" but the entire mod, with improvements (multiplayer, shaders, LWJGL3) which would no doubt simply crush the original into oblivion, and they would probably gain credit for it (I doubt it has even had 1000 downloads in the 9 years it has been public, there is literally only one YouTube channel that made any videos, and just a crude timelapse mostly spent building something that could easily be vanilla, as opposed to a showcase/mod review/playthrough), in addition to modifying and distributing it in ways that are clearly not allowed; what if Mojang decides to also take down the original (such things can and do happen)? MCP doens't allow you to distribute the source either, which is why TMCW is closed-source (the code that I have posted is either only the parts I modified or my own classes. Exactly how much your code has to differ is in question, many people have posted slightly modified sources/assets without issues and there have been many arguments over this, but an entire repository including all the unmodified sources is definitely a no-no), and they had modified it to not need a launcher at all (not even to download assets/libraries, which had been placed inside a single massive jar file):

Also, due to the way TMCW is coded it would be very hard to work with the decompiled (not original) source, not just due to lacking the numerous comments I add to document it but my extensive use of constants which get stripped out at compile time, and compilers can and do make errors when decompiling, which is why MCP warns you if you decompile a modified jar, and when I decompiled Optifine there were rendering errors with several blocks:

Original source:

// Used by Mesa biomes to get a hardened or stained clay block based on its y-coordinate
public short getMesaBlock(int y)
{
    switch (this.mesaData[(y & 127) + this.mesaColorIndex[y & 15]])
    {
        default:
        case 0:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_hardenedClay;
        case 1:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_whiteStainedClay;
        case 2:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_orangeStainedClay;
        case 3:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_yellowStainedClay;
        case 4:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_lightGrayStainedClay;
        case 5:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_brownStainedClay;
        case 6:  return (short)BlockStates.biomeStone_redStainedClay;
    }
}

// Returns actual (not biome stone) block
public short getActualMesaBlock(int y)
{
    switch (this.mesaData[(y & 127) + this.mesaColorIndex[y & 15]])
    {
        default:
        case 0:  return (short)BlockStates.hardenedClay;
        case 1:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_white;
        case 2:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_orange;
        case 3:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_yellow;
        case 4:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_lightGray;
        case 5:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_brown;
        case 6:  return (short)BlockStates.stainedClay_red;
    }
}

Decompiled code:

If you still don't see the problem then I don't know what to say.

Decompiled code of mods? All open-source mod authors release the original source code of the mod.

Do not care MCP ToS, because minecraft eula allows to distrubite the source code of any mod that belongs to you:

Any Mods you create for the Game from scratch belong to you (including pre-run Mods and in-memory Mods) and you can do whatever you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money / try to make money from them and so long as you don't distribute Modded Versions of the Game. Remember that a Mod means something that is your original work and that does not contain a substantial part of our code or content. You only own what you created; you do not own our code or content.

Nobody can claim ownership in your content {including MCP devs}, unless you license as "public domain", "copyleft" or something like that.

If you used CurseForge to publish your mod, you could see how many times it has been downloaded, but unfortunately this forum does not have a similar functionality.