I believe this new EULA may be cause for concern among modders. Now mind you I may be either reading to much into this or completely misinterpreting it. Yet I am going to post a section of the EULA for minecraft that may concern modders and I would like to hear their feedback.
CONTENT
If you make any content available on or through our Game, you must give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content. This permission must be irrevocable, and you must also let us permit other people to use, copy, modify and adapt your content. If you don‘t want to give us this permission, do not make content available on or through our Game. Please think carefully before you make any content available, because it will be made public and might even be used by other people in a way you don‘t like.
If you are going to make something available on or through our Game, it must not be offensive to people or illegal, it must be honest, and it must be your own creation. The types of things you must not make available using our Game include: posts that include racist or homophobic language; posts that are bullying or trolling; posts that might damage our or another person‘s reputation; posts that include porn, advertising or someone else‘s creation or image; or posts that impersonate a moderator or try to trick or exploit people.
Any content you make available on our Game must also be your creation. You must not make any content available, using the Game, that infringes the rights of anyone else. If you post content on our Game, and we get challenged, threatened or sued by someone because the content infringes that persons rights, we may hold you responsible and that means you may have to pay us back for any damage we suffer as a result. Therefore it is really important that you only make content available that you have created and you don‘t do so with any content created by anyone else. Please watch out if you are talking to people in our Game. It is hard for either you or us to know for sure that what people say is true, or even if people are really who they say they are. You should think twice about giving out information about yourself.
Mind you that is copied directly from the Mindcraft EULA. here is the full link if you wish to verify what I have posted.
Considering how Mojang almost got nailed for people making miniature golf courses in minecraft and the legal whining that followed from 'Putt Putt, Inc', I don't see anything out of line with the EULA.
In a game where anyone can make nearly anything and call it anything, then put it out as a download, I can't blame Mojang for covering their butts.
Nearly getting sued makes one cautious, especially since so many try to put copyrights on some of their Minecraft related creations and then throw them out for download, or, as in the above-mentioned incident, infringe on other's Tradenames, etc., in downloads or on servers that make money.
Considering how Mojang almost got nailed for people making miniature golf courses in minecraft and the legal whining that followed from 'Putt Putt, Inc', I don't see anything out of line with the EULA.
In a game where anyone can make nearly anything and call it anything, then put it out as a download, I can't blame Mojang for covering their butts.
Nearly getting sued makes one cautious, especially since so many try to put copyrights on some of their Minecraft related creations and then throw them out for download, or, as in the above-mentioned incident, infringe on other's Tradenames, etc., in downloads or on servers that make money.
Tell me about it; companies will get money any way possible. When I was in college, I fixed computers for the school and students while I attended. I thought it would be cool to make business cards and I put ElecTech or something on it stupid. A year after I was out of school, I got some mail from a company called that threatening to sue me. I guess they found out that I rarely made jack fixing computers for friends and they stopped bugging me.
If you make any content available on or through our Game, you must give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content. This permission must be irrevocable, and you must also let us permit other people to use, copy, modify and adapt your content.
There's a reason for this, and that reason is "people are greedy."
I'll tell you a story. My story is about a writer named Marion Zimmer Bradley, and the world she created and let other people write in, and what one of those people did to her. MZB wrote SF stories about a world called Darkover, and its interaction with the Terran Empire, and its telepaths, and so on. These stories attracted a lot of fans, and those fans wrote stories of their own. MZB thought this was a good thing, encouraged fanzines, and started publishing anthologies of Darkover stories by other writers. This was a wonderful thing for the readers (who got more stories), for the writers (who, in some cases, got their first professional publication), and for MZB herself (who got, as she put it, to read Darkover stories without having to write them herself). Everyone wins, right? Well ... not so fast. It seems that one fan writer decided to sue MZB for writing a story of her own set in the same period of Darkover's history. Her world, mind you. Her characters. Her imaginary history. But this other person -- and I don't know all the details -- sued MZB for "stealing her idea." And when something like that happens, it doesn't matter if they're going to win in court or not. The person being sued has to pay a lawyer a lot of money to defend themself. They have all the hassles of being sued -- which, for a professional writer, with the resulting threat to her own intellectual property, can be not just an annoyance but a threat to their livelihood. In MZB's case, she had to discard a novel that she had been working on. It was never published, possibly never finished, and those of us who would really have liked to read it will never be able to, thanks to one greedy person who wanted half of the money MZB would have gotten for a book she spent years writing, for an idea that was in a short story that she probably wrote in a week of spare time. It was nothing short of a money grab ... and after that, MZB didn't read fan fiction anymore. There were no more Darkover fan anthologies. And a lot of rights owners got paranoid about fanfic ... and, sadly, with good reason.
That's why Mojang has that statement in there. They don't want to be sued -- and have to pay lawyers to defend against a lawsuit -- because they put slime golems in their game and some mod writer whose mod they never even saw also had slime golems, and he sees deep pockets and hopes that Mojang will pay him not to be a nuisance. You think it won't happen? Google "Mojang" and "Putt-Putt".
I want to add a bit about stealing ideas.
I used to be a small software company. At game conventions, time after time -- and I'm told that this sort of thing happens even more often to writers -- I'd have someone come up to me and say "I have a great idea for a program. How about if I tell you the idea, and you write the program, and we split the money?" My stock answer was "How about if you don't tell me the idea, and you write the program, and you keep all the money?" They never wanted that, of course; they imagined the idea was what mattered, and, apparently, I was so desperately short on ideas that I would need theirs. As it happens, ideas come from everywhere. I had far more ideas for programs than I ever had time to code.
It's a sad commentary on affairs that Mojang has to write something like that. 99.9% of the people out there know that ideas are nothing; it's their implementation that matters. But that .01% of people are enough to foul things up for the rest of us. They're the reason that Mojang has to have that in their EULA. They're the reason that so many writers don't have the privilege that the rest of us enjoy, of reading fanfic set in their worlds (and why some prohibit fanfic entirely). They're why people like me couldn't even discuss an idea with someone, probably far more to that person's benefit than my own, because I would be opening myself up for future lawsuits if they decided that anything I did looked kind of sort of like it resembled something they did. Is it right? Not in my opinion. But it's how it is.
There's a reason for this, and that reason is "people are greedy."
I'll tell you a story...
That is thoroughly depressing. Definitely explains the EULA though.
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One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. My Plugins: http://dev.bukkit.or...s/Numenorean95/
If you make any content available on or through our Game, you must give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content. This permission must be irrevocable, and you must also let us permit other people to use, copy, modify and adapt your content.
The first sentence I fully understand and have no problem with, but the second seems to me to have a hitch. By "let us permit other people", does it mean only Mojang (or, obviously, you) could extend the permission to use/copy/modify/adapt your content, and must explicitly do so? Or would the full permission implicitly be extended to everybody without Mojang even having to say or know about it?
I.e. Let's say someone makes a private server-side plugin under a deal to get a cut of the profits made by using the plugin. If the server owners decide they don't need the plugin creator anymore, can they merely make some small modification to the plugin, call it their own, and stop splitting profits with the plugin creator? Or would Mojang have to step in and grant the permissions to the server owners before they can do this?
And regardless of how many people are granted permission to use, copy, modify, and adapt the content, the original expression (i.e. the original plugin, in my example) still remains copyrighted by the original creator, right? Although, I suppose in a more Creative Commons-like form, as the normally exclusive rights have been irrevocably given away.
The first sentence I fully understand and have no problem with, but the second seems to me to have a hitch. By "let us permit other people", does it mean only Mojang (or, obviously, you) could extend the permission to use/copy/modify/adapt your content, and must explicitly do so? Or would the full permission implicitly be extended to everybody without Mojang even having to say or know about it?
Basically by creating content for the game, you're granting Mojang license to do whatever they want with it, including share it with other people. But you're not necessarily granting those other people the same right, unless and until Mojang decides to share it with them.
Basically by creating content for the game, you're granting Mojang license to do whatever they want with it, including share it with other people. But you're not necessarily granting those other people the same right, unless and until Mojang decides to share it with them.
I don't know... that EULA is nothing like I've seen before. The writing style, I mean. Seems poor at places and rather, err, childish.
How many times do I need to read that it must be my own creation?
"Posts"? I think they mean "content"...
"Posts that impersonate a moderator"? err.... what?
"Please"? In a EULA, that's new.
"If you post content on our Game, and we get challenged". Challenged... what? Challenged?
The bold text... That's not even EULA material.
Anyways, I don't think that's just it. With the mod API done, it's possible Mojang may deny any other methods of game modding. MCP, while brilliant and necessary, revolves around reverse engineering the game.
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I was trying to think of a signature and this is what came up.
CONTENT
If you make any content available on or through our Game, you must give us permission to use, copy, modify and adapt that content. This permission must be irrevocable, and you must also let us permit other people to use, copy, modify and adapt your content. If you don‘t want to give us this permission, do not make content available on or through our Game. Please think carefully before you make any content available, because it will be made public and might even be used by other people in a way you don‘t like.
If you are going to make something available on or through our Game, it must not be offensive to people or illegal, it must be honest, and it must be your own creation. The types of things you must not make available using our Game include: posts that include racist or homophobic language; posts that are bullying or trolling; posts that might damage our or another person‘s reputation; posts that include porn, advertising or someone else‘s creation or image; or posts that impersonate a moderator or try to trick or exploit people.
Any content you make available on our Game must also be your creation. You must not make any content available, using the Game, that infringes the rights of anyone else. If you post content on our Game, and we get challenged, threatened or sued by someone because the content infringes that persons rights, we may hold you responsible and that means you may have to pay us back for any damage we suffer as a result. Therefore it is really important that you only make content available that you have created and you don‘t do so with any content created by anyone else.
Please watch out if you are talking to people in our Game. It is hard for either you or us to know for sure that what people say is true, or even if people are really who they say they are. You should think twice about giving out information about yourself.
Mind you that is copied directly from the Mindcraft EULA. here is the full link if you wish to verify what I have posted.
https://account.moja.../minecraft_eula
In a game where anyone can make nearly anything and call it anything, then put it out as a download, I can't blame Mojang for covering their butts.
Nearly getting sued makes one cautious, especially since so many try to put copyrights on some of their Minecraft related creations and then throw them out for download, or, as in the above-mentioned incident, infringe on other's Tradenames, etc., in downloads or on servers that make money.
Tell me about it; companies will get money any way possible. When I was in college, I fixed computers for the school and students while I attended. I thought it would be cool to make business cards and I put ElecTech or something on it stupid. A year after I was out of school, I got some mail from a company called that threatening to sue me. I guess they found out that I rarely made jack fixing computers for friends and they stopped bugging me.
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Retired StaffThere's a reason for this, and that reason is "people are greedy."
I'll tell you a story. My story is about a writer named Marion Zimmer Bradley, and the world she created and let other people write in, and what one of those people did to her. MZB wrote SF stories about a world called Darkover, and its interaction with the Terran Empire, and its telepaths, and so on. These stories attracted a lot of fans, and those fans wrote stories of their own. MZB thought this was a good thing, encouraged fanzines, and started publishing anthologies of Darkover stories by other writers. This was a wonderful thing for the readers (who got more stories), for the writers (who, in some cases, got their first professional publication), and for MZB herself (who got, as she put it, to read Darkover stories without having to write them herself). Everyone wins, right? Well ... not so fast. It seems that one fan writer decided to sue MZB for writing a story of her own set in the same period of Darkover's history. Her world, mind you. Her characters. Her imaginary history. But this other person -- and I don't know all the details -- sued MZB for "stealing her idea." And when something like that happens, it doesn't matter if they're going to win in court or not. The person being sued has to pay a lawyer a lot of money to defend themself. They have all the hassles of being sued -- which, for a professional writer, with the resulting threat to her own intellectual property, can be not just an annoyance but a threat to their livelihood. In MZB's case, she had to discard a novel that she had been working on. It was never published, possibly never finished, and those of us who would really have liked to read it will never be able to, thanks to one greedy person who wanted half of the money MZB would have gotten for a book she spent years writing, for an idea that was in a short story that she probably wrote in a week of spare time. It was nothing short of a money grab ... and after that, MZB didn't read fan fiction anymore. There were no more Darkover fan anthologies. And a lot of rights owners got paranoid about fanfic ... and, sadly, with good reason.
That's why Mojang has that statement in there. They don't want to be sued -- and have to pay lawyers to defend against a lawsuit -- because they put slime golems in their game and some mod writer whose mod they never even saw also had slime golems, and he sees deep pockets and hopes that Mojang will pay him not to be a nuisance. You think it won't happen? Google "Mojang" and "Putt-Putt".
I want to add a bit about stealing ideas.
I used to be a small software company. At game conventions, time after time -- and I'm told that this sort of thing happens even more often to writers -- I'd have someone come up to me and say "I have a great idea for a program. How about if I tell you the idea, and you write the program, and we split the money?" My stock answer was "How about if you don't tell me the idea, and you write the program, and you keep all the money?" They never wanted that, of course; they imagined the idea was what mattered, and, apparently, I was so desperately short on ideas that I would need theirs. As it happens, ideas come from everywhere. I had far more ideas for programs than I ever had time to code.
It's a sad commentary on affairs that Mojang has to write something like that. 99.9% of the people out there know that ideas are nothing; it's their implementation that matters. But that .01% of people are enough to foul things up for the rest of us. They're the reason that Mojang has to have that in their EULA. They're the reason that so many writers don't have the privilege that the rest of us enjoy, of reading fanfic set in their worlds (and why some prohibit fanfic entirely). They're why people like me couldn't even discuss an idea with someone, probably far more to that person's benefit than my own, because I would be opening myself up for future lawsuits if they decided that anything I did looked kind of sort of like it resembled something they did. Is it right? Not in my opinion. But it's how it is.
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Curse PremiumThat is thoroughly depressing. Definitely explains the EULA though.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
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Curse PremiumThe first sentence I fully understand and have no problem with, but the second seems to me to have a hitch. By "let us permit other people", does it mean only Mojang (or, obviously, you) could extend the permission to use/copy/modify/adapt your content, and must explicitly do so? Or would the full permission implicitly be extended to everybody without Mojang even having to say or know about it?
I.e. Let's say someone makes a private server-side plugin under a deal to get a cut of the profits made by using the plugin. If the server owners decide they don't need the plugin creator anymore, can they merely make some small modification to the plugin, call it their own, and stop splitting profits with the plugin creator? Or would Mojang have to step in and grant the permissions to the server owners before they can do this?
And regardless of how many people are granted permission to use, copy, modify, and adapt the content, the original expression (i.e. the original plugin, in my example) still remains copyrighted by the original creator, right? Although, I suppose in a more Creative Commons-like form, as the normally exclusive rights have been irrevocably given away.
Basically by creating content for the game, you're granting Mojang license to do whatever they want with it, including share it with other people. But you're not necessarily granting those other people the same right, unless and until Mojang decides to share it with them.
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Curse PremiumAlright, that's what I was hoping. Thank you.
Anyways, I don't think that's just it. With the mod API done, it's possible Mojang may deny any other methods of game modding. MCP, while brilliant and necessary, revolves around reverse engineering the game.