Empire of the Iguanadons

So there's apparently some controversy brewing over Kayle and I exercising our legal rights under copyright law to have the SmaugFUSS distribution removed from MudBytes. Tangentially this seems to extend to AFKMud as well and supposedly some horrid dangerous precedent is now being set by this. If this bores you to tears or makes you want to pull your hair out, don't feel bad. For some odd reason there was even mention of QSFP but I fail to see why as it's not even related.

First off, let me get this out of the way now: I am not a lawyer and my analysis does not constitute legal advice. This is merely one author's opinion on the matter based on my own research into copyright law. If you have an IP related issue regarding licensing and copyright, consult an IP attorney and don't blame me or the MUD community for passing off conjecture as real advice.

So to get things rolling, we need something to analyze.

The DIKU License:

/***************************************************************************
 *  Copyright (C) 1990, 1991                                               *
 *  All Rights Reserved                                                    *
 ***************************************************************************/

                             DikuMud License

                      Program & Concept created by


Sebastian Hammer
Prss. Maries Alle 15, 1
1908 Frb. C.
DENMARK
(email quinn@freja.diku.dk)

Michael Seifert
Nr. Soeg. 37C, 1, doer 3
1370 Copenhagen K.
DENMARK
(email seifert@freja.diku.dk)

Hans Henrik St{rfeldt
Langs} 19
3500 V{rl|se
DENMARK
(email bombman@freja.diku.dk)

Tom Madsen
R|de Mellemvej 94B, 64
2300 Copenhagen S.
DENMARK
(email noop@freja.diku.dk)

Katja Nyboe
Kildeg}rdsvej 2
2900 Hellerup
31 62 82 84
DENMARK
(email katz@freja.diku.dk)


This document contains the rules by which you can use, alter or publish
parts of DikuMud. DikuMud has been created by the above five listed persons
in their spare time, at DIKU (Computer Science Instutute at Copenhagen
University). You are legally bound to follow the rules described in this
document.

Rules:

   !! DikuMud is NOT Public Domain, shareware, careware or the like !!

   You may under no circumstances make profit on *ANY* part of DikuMud in
   any possible way. You may under no circumstances charge money for
   distributing any part of dikumud - this includes the usual $5 charge
   for "sending the disk" or "just for the disk" etc.
   By breaking these rules you violate the agreement between us and the
   University, and hence will be sued.

   You may not remove any copyright notices from any of the documents or
   sources given to you.

   This license must *always* be included "as is" if you copy or give
   away any part of DikuMud (which is to be done as described in this
   document).

   If you publish *any* part of dikumud, we as creators must appear in the
   article, and the article must be clearly copyrighted subject to this
   license. Before publishing you must first send us a message, by
   snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us what, where and when you are
   publishing (remember to include your address, name etc.)

   If you wish to setup a version of DikuMud on any computer system, you
   must send us a message , by snail-mail or e-mail, and inform us where
   and when you are running the game. (remember to include 
   your address, name etc.)


   Any running version of DikuMud must include our names in the login
   sequence. Furthermore the "credits" command shall always cointain
   our name, addresses, and a notice which states we have created DikuMud.

   You are allowed to alter DikuMud, source and documentation as long as
   you do not violate any of the above stated rules.


Regards,



The DikuMud Group


Note:

We hope you will enjoy DikuMud, and encourage you to send us any reports
on bugs (when you find 'it'). Remember that we are all using our spare
time to write and improve DikuMud, bugs, etc. - and changes will take their
time. We have so far put extremely many programming hours into this project.
If you make any major improvements on DikuMud we would be happy to
hear from you. As you will naturally honor the above rules, you will receive
new updates and improvements made to the game.

The MERC License:

Merc Release 2.1
Sunday 01 August 1993

Furey	mec@shell.portal.com
Hatchet	hatchet@uclink.berkeley.edu
Kahn	michael@uclink.berkeley.edu



=== Copyright and License Terms

Diku Mud is copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert,
Hans Henrik St{rfeldt, Tom Madsen, and Katja Nyboe.  Their license agreement
is in the file 'license.doc'.

Merc Diku Mud is a derivative of the original Diku Mud and is subject to their
copyright and license agreement.  Merc Diku Mud contains substantial
enhancements to Diku Mud.  These enhancements are copyright 1992, 1993 by
Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse.

In order to use Merc you must follow the Diku license and our license.  The
exact terms of the Diku license are in the file 'license.doc'.  A summary of
these terms is:

	-- No resale or operation for profit.
	-- Original author's names must appear in login sequence.
	-- The 'credits' command must report original authors.
	-- You must notify the Diku creators that you are operating a Diku mud.

Our license terms are:

	-- Copyrights must remain in original source.
	-- 'Help merc' must report our help text, as shipped.

Notice that our license terms don't include keeping our names in the login
sequence.  If you want to keep a line in there referring to Merc, or referring
to us by name (Furey, Hatchet, and Kahn), we'd appreciate that, but we don't
require it.  But you must keep the original Diku authors in the login sequence.

If you do not follow these license terms, we will ask you to comply.  If that
doesn't work, then we will talk to your system administrators (not about your
running a mud, but on the grounds that you're using our copyrighted software
without permission).

These are very generous terms for any software.  If you don't want to accept
them, feel free to run some other software, or write your own.

The SMAUG License:

 ****************************************************************************
 * [S]imulated [M]edieval [A]dventure multi[U]ser [G]ame      |   \\._.//   *
 * -----------------------------------------------------------|   (0...0)   *
 * SMAUG 1.4 (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998 by Derek Snider |    ).:.(    *
 * -----------------------------------------------------------|    {o o}    *
 * SMAUG code team: Thoric, Altrag, Blodkai, Narn, Haus,      |   / ' ' \   *
 * Scryn, Rennard, Swordbearer, Gorog, Grishnakh, Nivek,      |~'~.VxvxV.~'~*
 * Tricops and Fireblade                                      |             *
 * ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *

=== Copyright and License Terms

Diku Mud is copyright (C) 1990, 1991 by Sebastian Hammer, Michael Seifert,
Hans Henrik St{rfeldt, Tom Madsen, and Katja Nyboe.  Their license agreement
is in the file 'license.diku'.

Merc Diku Mud is a derivative of the original Diku Mud.  Merc Diku Mud contains
substantial enhancements to Diku Mud.  These enhancements are copyright 1992,
1993 by Michael Chastain, Michael Quan, and Mitchell Tse.  Their license
agreement is in the file 'license.merc'.

SMAUG is a derivative of the version 2.1 distribution of Merc Diku Mud.
SMAUG contains substantial enhancements to Merc Diku Mud, including some
features of the original Diku Mud that were removed by the Merc team.

In order to use SMAUG you must follow the Diku license and our license.  The
exact terms of the Diku license are in the file 'license.diku'.  A summary of
these terms is:

        -- No resale or operation for profit.
        -- Original author's names must appear in login sequence.
        -- The 'credits' command must report original authors.
        -- You must notify the Diku creators that you are operating a Diku mud.

Our license terms are:

        -- Copyrights must remain in original source.
        -- 'Help smaug' must report our help text, as shipped.
        -- A mention that this is a SMAUG based MUD must appear in the
           login sequence.
        -- You must not block access to your SMAUG mud from the SMAUG
           development site (game.org).
        -- You must not operate your mud with any contraband area files
           and must remove any areas in question immediately upon request.
        -- You are requested to notify us that you are operating a SMAUG mud,
           to include the address of the mud, and whether or not you want us
           to put a link to your mud on our SMAUG mudlist webpage.

SMAUG makes no effort to retain compatibility with any original Diku code,
Merc code, any patches, upgrades or code snippets designed for any Diku
derivative other than one designed for SMAUG.  (See 'smaug.txt').

The question at hand is distribution rights. Do Kayle and I have the right to revoke distribution rights? According to copyright law, only we as copyright holders ever had those rights to begin with. Throic and his team in turn hold those rights to Smaug, the Merc guys hold those for Merc, and the Diku team hold those rights for the Diku codebase. Without a license of any sort, there are no rights beyond those given by law to the authors.

You require a license in order to grant rights to others. Restricting rights is legally redundant as nobody has them to begin with, so right off the bat, any clauses which restrict are out. The DIKU license, which is the root of the tree, only has this to say:



If you give away a copy, their license must be included. This is the only clause which specifically mentions distribution rights of any sort that aren't a restriction. This is pretty shaky ground to stand on since it only implies that you have the right. An explicit clause stating you have distribution rights is almost certainly necessary. Given the language barrier issues we can't even be entirely sure what this clause is saying. The license is also likely written with Danish law in mind rather than US law, so there's no way to know without consulting an attorney what rights this license is giving you under US law. Remember, copyright has international treaties covering it, but that isn't necessarily true of licensing which many people regard as part of civil contract law.

The rest of the things mentioned in the DIKU license are irrelevant since they deal with use, modification, and publication in "articles" which I'm assuming means newspapers, magazines, and the like. So let's move on to Merc.



Those two additional clauses meant to cover rights granted under the Merc license do not pertain to distribution. So there's really nothing to see here. Pay attention ROM users, as so far you're not any better off than Smaug users. I digress.

From the Smaug license:


Again, none of Smaug's additional terms pertain to distribution. So again there's nothing really to see here. For the curious, the AFKMud license is also guilty of mentioning restrictions on what you can't do and mentions nothing about your distribution rights. Unless you take that "do whatever the hell you want with it" clause literally.

So where does that leave us? Playing dangerous legal games with nothing but conjecture as an anchor, that's where. The entire DIKU branch distribution chain is hinging on an iffy clause that doesn't come right out and explicitly grant you anything, and under the law, you explicitly have nothing. So we come right back to the rights given to copyright holders under the law, one of which is the right of distribution.

Kayle and I have chosen to remove the SmaugFUSS and AFKMud codebases from MudBytes as per our rights under the law. The site rules governing uploading only grant them a non-exclusive right to distribute anything that is submitted there. They do not grant that right in an irrevocable fashion. I should know, I wrote the rules there. So if they don't like it, then they need to change the wording of the rules to include "irrevocable". chances are that wouldn't hold up though even if it was there as an irrevocable license can only be enforced either via a signature on a signed document or a legally recognized e-signature on an electronic document. MudBytes collects neither.

Bottom line: The DIKU license does not bar us from exercising our copyright rights.
.........................
RIP United States of America

July 1776 - November 2012.

orly David? Cratyfuck does that all the time.

wait wtf? they deleted ur account Sam! no reason, they just did it and now the forum is all fucked up

LOL i dont know what David has been smoking, but i want some. What a total load of fooee. The very mention of names like Vryce, Locke or The_Fury, or the mention of the dikhu license and who has inadvertantly broken it at some time will bring out the troll in just about everyone at MB and bring out all the old posts, emails and arguments that none of you can ever let die.

MB community does not just hold up their eternal war horses as trophies, it keeps on flogging them, well after death.

Heh. So they actually did delete my account. That's pretty funny because while it was something I asked for in the heat of the moment back in October, the timing of doing it today or yesterday or whenever it was seems suspicious to me. I guess that makes me officially on the blacklist in their little cesspool of a community

Oh, and some of them will also go beyond simply archiving things for use years later. Some, like Cratylus, will alter them before presenting them to the public.

Cratylus has his own version of history, one in which he is pumpkin pie and all that is nice. Must me hard to be humble when you are correct about everything, everyone else is wrong or at fault. No wonder some call Crat the white Mohammad.

See, for a change I was going to try to restrain myself enough to not bother commenting on our Anonymous friend's posts but Fury went and did it already so now there's no harm in my commenting too, I expect.

I agree, Fury, it's really ludicrous for David to say that given how long he's been on MB to watch just how quick folks are to drag up their dead horses for another round of flogging when those topics get broached yet again. I have to assume, given how common it is for folks at MB to also traffic TMC, that David's also been around long enough by now to see that at TMC they're actually even worse (if that's possible) about bringing back the dead threads when it comes to topics like that.

Oh heaven forbid! Not you, Samson, they couldn't blacklist you at MB, could they? </sarcasm>

Sadly, we can't really prove that he does that, as demonstrated with the whole post editing claim, we know it's the indisputably most likely scenario, but none of us are apparently actually able to prove that Cratylus alters that which he brings up when it's time for the next round of flog the dead horse....

You slipped a post in while I was posting, it seems.. you sly ...


Actually, those calling him that are part of that pretty little world that only he actually lives in, as far as I know. But, otherwise, yeah.. Wasn't there a song that had a similar line... "Lord it's hard to humble, when you're perfect in every way..." If Cratylus was considerably older, you'd have though this was written just for him...

Just how "considerably older" is he supposed to be?

Also, The_Fury, though it isn't exactly important, he can't really be a "white Mohammad" because he's not white. He could be a "brown Mohammad" though. It doesn't have anything to do with his character in any case, which he's very clearly demonstrated is flawed beyond repair.

I don't know how many people remember it or not, but when TMC had that social network online he made a posting to his blog section there where he had written a sort of song-like thing bragging about how TMS had banned him and how he'd get himself banned from MB too. He probably wishes he'd never posted that, because everyone saw it, and it was during the whole image fabrication incident.

Well, the song was released back in 1980 and I didn't think Cratylus was that much older than us - I was only 9 years old most of 1980 so I can't quite imagine Mac Davis (having been born in 1942 and thus 38 years old in 1980) having written a song about some 8-10 year old that he didn't likely know at the time. I know, it's those pesky details that get so very much in the way of real life every now and then..

I sure remember it, Samson. I don't imagine that he regrets posting it though, it got him exactly the attention that he craves so constantly at the time, much like the image fabrication incident as a matter of fact.

FWIW, some guy identifying himself as Deimos says they deleted my account the other day in response to the flow of traffic coming here, to this very topic, and folks apparently making a lot of fuss about the license or something.

Looking at my Analytics data, I can see a pretty direct correlation starting from Feb 22 up until Monday where there was elevated referral traffic coming from MB. That dropped suddenly after that and has stayed down until the huge incoming spike that followed the Sandbox 2.0 release. Looks like they were engaged in their usual suppression of the truth is all.

Wow, that's pretty amazing that deleting your account over there would've caused a significant drop in the traffic related to here. Were folks, do you suppose, following the link in your profile/signature to get here?

LOL! yep, that's why they deleted him. Davion even admitted it! made em look bad to see thr truth here!

Cratyfuck sez Sam is mentally ill too, what a hoot. they're all in their own little fantasy land at moodbites. Cratyfuck is so delusional he can't even see that hez the crazy one.

You know, the sad part is that psychological "normal" is defined by the crazies that make up the majority of society...

Honestly, I wasn't surprised to hear that was why they deleted his account but that deleting his account would directly impact the traffic significantly between there and here.

Analytics does show a pretty significant number of referals from from MB, so yes, I have to assume people were clicking on my homepage link on a regular basis. Obviously that's dropped quite a bit since they lanced my account from the system, but it hasn't dried up entirely.

@Anon: Yeah, for Cratylus to call anyone mentally ill is laughable. I think it's really just a matter of they didn't like what I had to say here, so they feel the need to make snide comments about me rather than addressing the substance of the argument.

I would've thought there were other references to your blog over there (perhaps plenty of them by now, in fact) and that anyone who'd been at least once could find their way back without needing links in your profile there. Especially with them now making fun of the name of your site in the main thread that was related to this, how hard could it be to locate the site??

There's plenty of references. So why they'd axe my account in an effort to block links to it is beyond me. Honestly I wasn't expecting they'd actually ever delete it since doing so severely disrupts the continuity of the forum. There are now big holes in the conversations attributed to "guest". It's one thing to drop someone like Locke that way, but quite another when I was the second highest post count on the site, even after I stopped participating in October 2009.

If a disgruntled member had come to me with a request/demand/rant/whatever to delete their account from the forum, I would have simply denied it while at the same time blocking access to it. They had already blocked access after the supposed hacker thing. So that should have ended it. I think we all know though that the administration there is entirely clueless about how to run a site effectively.

You'd think, if anything, they'd have just edited your account to not include links to this site, or, even more extreme, possibly blocked outgoing referrals from following links to here. Though, honestly, I'd question how it really helps them to stop traffic to this site from their own anyway, if anything it just encourages people to skip MB on their way here.

I could see deleting an account upon request/demand and being stuck with the guest atribute for all their previous posts, but you'd better believe that the higher their post count the harder I'd try to dissuade them from their decision before acting upon it.

lawl, if only Cratyfuck knew just how stupid it makes them!

@Conner: Nope. Turns out he simply did it to be spiteful for whatever reason. Can't really be undone in any case now though, member deletion is a one-way street unless they restore a backup, and I don't really care enough either way.

Yet another reason to try extra hard to dissuade someone from that choice before acting upon it then. You couldn't even "fix it" in the database directly? I would've thought you could still at least partially undo it by editing the database in phpmyadmin as long as you know what userid they'd previously had, though I suppose at least some info would likely be lost forever short of an actual backup restoration like the person's password and anything else you no longer knew to be able to restore, but you should still be able to make all the posts by that userid go back to saying they were by that person.. unless you'd also have to go fix the id on each of their previous posts.. that'd be a royal pain in the ass, still not an impossible task, but damn close.

I'm not even talking about at MB specifically now, who cares what they decide to do regarding having deleted your account at this point, I'm just talking hypothetically for any QSFP install.

I don't think the issue of deleting a user account causing disruption of the flow is limited to just QSFP. I'll wager any forum application that deletes a user is going to do something similar to what QSFP does, which is:

* Sets all posts by that user to Guest.
* Sets all topics by that user to Guest.
* Sets all files by that user to Guest.
* Expunges all topic and forum subscriptions once held by that user.
* Expunges all poll votes made by that user.
* Expunges all file ratings made by that user.
* Expunges all PMs held by that user (some of which I was not able to retrieve because they blocked me)
* Expunges all "you read this" markers for that user.
* Deletes all file uploads or updates from that user which have not been approved yet.

So no, as far as QSFP is concerned, it's a done deal. All of that would have to be manually restored. They should consider themselves lucky that the code didn't also include deleting all files ever submitted by a particular user, because a sizable portion of the repository would have vanished in a heartbeat because of Davion's childish act. Mainly because I almost put that feature in at one point.

The reason all that happens is because stuff needs to belong to someone, anyone, valid. Guest was simply how QSF and Mercuryboard both handled it and I didn't change much about that with QSFP either. If you think seeing holes with guest posts is disruptive, imagine the disruption of losing 30% of your posts entirely because the forum will no longer display them at all since the user_id is invalid.

Looking in phpBB3, there are two modes for removal of a user. "Retain" and "Remove". Retain does what QSFP does, assigning everything important to the Anonymous user account. Remove wipes it out entirely.

While I could laugh at the notion of what would've happened to the content they're offering over there if you'd set QSFP to also remove all the files and posts ever submitted by the person being deleted, but I'm also quite glad that you didn't do that in case I ever have a situation arise of needing to delete someone.

I imagine that you're right that all forum software has to take an approach similar to that, or a variation based on that one anyway, because as you say, the database and forum software have to be able to assign everything to someone. I suppose that Guest really is the logical choice because the only real alternatives would be to assign it to the admin user account instead or to have a "system" account other than guest which exists solely for that purpose.

I do think it's neat that phpBB3 offers the choice to the admin of which of the two methods to use when removing a member though, and I thought QSFP had the option of automatically deleting all posts by a user in the admin CP too.

Then he must think everyone is indignant.

You had a doubt that he might think someone wasn't?

Funny thing about Crat is he treats you in a less hostile manner once he's driven you off the forums.