[Religion and Revolution]: Sorry, but I leave ...

Hallo everybody,

due to the recent discussions in this thread, I will not be involved in any more publications / releases here in this forum.

2 Claims simply make it impossible for me to uptain my work here:

Claim A:

Anything included in our mod is free for the taking, once linked to this forum.
Explicit rights of usage / terms of permission can be ignored.

This simply makes it impossible for me to protect the music from René Osmanczyk
for example who has only given rights of usage for his music to our mod but still holds the copyrights.

Claim B:

Modders do not hold any rights to their own work at all.
No matter what they did, may it be code, graphics, ... because it is made for a mod working for a commercial game.

Well, I am willing to share and I never wanted to make money with my work.
But I insist, that I still hold some basic rights about my own work.

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Summary:

It has been a good time and I had a lot of fun creating this mod.

More or less, I had become old and tired anyways.
I had been thinking about retiring from public modding for a while already.

It really is a pitty however, since I would really have liked to publish at least a good Release 1.3 with the team.

@team:

1. I asked infracta, to delete our download.
I have informed them, that we will not host another download at their site.

2. I must ask you to remove all our Soundtrack, if you want to continue publishing the mod and
never ever upload a version of our mod again, that contains the Soundtrack.

3. I will continue to be modding a bit myself and I am willing to share my future work with you guys for personal usage.
However, I must ask you to not be publishing any of my future work.
Because it seems that publishing means loosing all (even the most basic rights) about your work.

4. If you cannot agree with point 3. then please let me know.

@community:

Hope you had some fun with the mod.
Hope you will also continue to have fun modding.

What on Earth is going on !

raystuttgart said:

2 Claims simply make it impossible for me to uptain my work here:

Claim A:

Anything included in our mod is free for the taking, once linked to this forum.
Explicit rights of usage / terms of permission can be ignored.

This simply makes it impossible for me to protect the music from René Osmanczyk
for example who has only given rights of usage for his music to our mod but still holds the copyrights.

Claim B:

Modders do not hold any rights to their own work at all.
No matter what they did, may it be code, graphics, ... because it is made for a mod working for a commercial game.

Well, I am willing to share and I never wanted to make money with my work.
But I insist, that I still hold some basic rights about my own work.

Click to expand...

Hum. These two claims seem odd indeed. What does "linked to civfanatics" mean?
Anyway! If we disagree, why don't we:
1) Say so and post a message on the thread you linked.
2) When do these changes apply? We can simply remove all files here on civfanatics and end Religion and Revoluiton here... And start it elsewhere (or technically speaking I should say, start something else elsewhere ).
3) I don't get the Infracta part? Why do we have to remove the upload there and not simply here [You must be right because I don't understand this stuff very well...]
4) Legally René's Osmanczyk work is protected, isn't it? I mean since we're talking of a change of rules, the old rules applies in this case (that's why you're right we should delete everything ASAP). Indeed, in law there is a non-retroactive clause. Isn't there?

Please do not do thsi until a final decision has been made by the mods.

Takhisis said:

Please do not do thsi until a final decision has been made by the mods.

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If they would disagree with that, they would / should already have said something.

Robert Surcouf said:

Legally René's Osmanczyk work is protected, isn't it?

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Yes it is, but it seems as if people here in the forum simply believe this can be ignored.
The other big problem for me, is that basic rights of a modder about his own work should be denied ...

Robert Surcouf said:

We can simply remove all files here on civfanatics and end Religion and Revoluiton here... And start it elsewhere (or technically speaking I should say, start something else elsewhere ).

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Basically that is more or less, what I will do.
I will leave this forum and continue working on the mod in private with the friends that still want to work on it with me.
I will simply not publish it anymore.
(And everybody else working on it with me, will need to promiss me to not publish my work either.)

So the team will move the RaR to a new forum?

Do those rules apply to a new forum?

Thanks for your work and dedication.

The whole thing was started by bored moderators that have nothing better to do with their time but "Blah blah blah" and start stupid conversations. Theres no change, since no decision made yet.

So I'm waiting for an official decision, and if they do like they were thinking, I'm going to contact all the companies who have copyright on models, derivatives, and animations, and graphics which are posted on this site; so I can let them know that suddenly CFC is claiming them as public. I'll do it just to see what happens towards CFC.

Pallando said:

So the team will move the RaR to a new forum?

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I do not know what the team will do with Religion and Revolution.
Maybe they will stay here, simply remove the Soundtrack and continue publishing the mod.

I however, will leave the public CivCol-Modding scene.
I will continue modding a bit for myself and share my work for private usage with some friends.
However, nothing I will create myself from now on, will be published.

You're free to do whatever you want and respond in whatever way you want to the discussion in SF. But let me at least clarify that the claims listed in the OP here are just that - claims that individual members have made. They're not site policy.

We haven't yet made a decision about what change, if any, to make to the rules. The purpose of the discussion is to see what the modding community thinks best and try to reflect that in the site policy as best we can. And evidently that discussion is still ongoing.

Plotinus said:

You're free to do whatever you want and respond in whatever way you want to the discussion in SF. But let me at least clarify that the claims listed in the OP here are just that - claims that individual members have made. They're not site policy.

We haven't yet made a decision about what change, if any, to make to the rules. The purpose of the discussion is to see what the modding community thinks best and try to reflect that in the site policy as best we can. And evidently that discussion is still ongoing.

Click to expand...

I fully respect your freedom of discussing things.

Please understand however, that I will protect this mod and the work of people that have been generous and given us rights of usage.
I will not wait for some new rule that might not make this possible anymore.

What I really don't understand is the lack of clear statements from moderators and administrators.
(The discussion has been going on for days and several modders have stated their concerns many times.)

Most basic rights of modders and third party Copyright-owners is nothing to temper with.

There already was an offer from infracta, which already hosts (hosted) the download to our mod.
They have offered to also host the discussion forum for our mod.
They have assured us, that they do respect basic modder's rights and 3rd party Copyrights.

All we ever asked for is that these explicit terms of usage / permission are respected:

raystuttgart said:

Is it allowed to use our work ?

Yes, generally you can use our source code, graphics, images, ...

!!! However !!!

1. We do contain music that does not belong to us.
René Osmanczyk for example has allowed us to use his music.
If you want to use and publish it as well, you need to ask him before doing so.

2. We do contain a lot of work from other modders and mod projects (especially TAC).
Please consider that, when giving credits as well.
If you are not sure, who to credit, simply ask us and we will try to tell you.


Some Remarks about Distribuiton and Rights of Usage:

Religion and Revolution is a non-commercial mod project.
If you use or distribute Religion and Revolution please pay attention to the copyright.
We allow usage and distribution as long as Religion and Revolution remains non-commercial.
As a matter of course it is permitted to use Religion and Revolution in an own mod project
as long as the copyrights are not harmed, and it is a non-commercial project too.
If you use Religion and Revolution in an own mod project you have to make clear that you have
done changes to the original Religion and Revolution and eventually also to our base project TAC.

Click to expand...

@team:

Should we move our discussion forum to infracta ?
They are a great forum and have been very friendly to us already.

However, the forum is German.
We could / would still have all our discussions in English of course.

And as I said, they have assured us to respect our basic rights as modders and 3rd party Copyrights.
We could even install a protected sub-forum that will allow access to only team members.

Edit:
infracta just told me that they would enable English in their forum for us.
Thus the language problem would be solved.

Edit 2:
The way we will handle future public releases (if there will be any) could be discussed internally with private messages.

That sounds good

I don't get this ray
If you host the files in infracta, which is a separate forum with different rules, why couldn't you protect your rights?
You simply state clearly in the download post in CFC, that there is only a link here to the mod in infracta, you can reach the mod there, but all the copyright and other issues with it are handled within infracta's own forum rules. And this is especially true for the soundtrack used, for which the author allowed specific rights for useage in RR only
I don't see any problems which cannot be solved with a couple lines

Anyway, I would really like to see 1.3 released, and modding continued even further
You guys already put so much work in it, and it's feeling more and more complete
Please don't abandon the project, especially without a release of the last few months work

Alright, I read through the thread
I'm even more confused right now why would you react like this

First, as a fellow Civ IV modder, I want to point it out that I'm absolutely agree with everything you say here:
(I did and still doing the same for all my civ creations, including thousands of hours of modding stuff for RFCE)

raystuttgart said:

I am personally very willing to share the things that I have created myself.
However, I do insist that it is my free decision to share and not something a forum rule may dictate.

I can only repeat:
Explicitly stated terms of usage / permissions must be respected.
If nothing is explicitly stated, it should be expected that free usage is allowed.

Guideline / Modiquette that says "Sharing is expected from a good community member.".
Fourm Rule that says "Modders have no rights and everything you find is free for the taking."

Click to expand...

But Ray, you are only basing this leaving the forum decision on Gary Childress responses
Everyone else clearly said that he is not right (actually I myself find him and many of his post totally annoying)
He indirectly speaks against civ modding, and I have no idea why Feels a little like trolling to me...

Just check these repsonses for his posts:

embryodead said:

In the context of user generated content, EULA is a safety measure protecting the company's interests, in case it's needed. It's not something to be enforced top-down. It never was. If you did that, consider that EULA doesn't allow:
- any music that isn't public domain, also if used with permission,
- any 2D or 3D conversions from other games, also if used with permission,
- any buttons, tech icons, wonder splashes from other games or from Google Images, also if used with permission,
- any original work/mod but based on third party IP (i.e. mods based on Star Wars, Star Trek, Middle Earth, Warhammer, Heroes of Might & Magic, Fallout, Dune), also if done with permission
- any Civ content that has not been created by the modder himself or has not been specifically released into public domain if it was made by someone else (that includes cities by Kyriakos, or terrain by Ares).

If EULA was enforced in this way, virtually all big, popular mods for Civ3 and Civ4 would have to be deleted, including Fall From Heaven, which disregards the EULA, yet has been recognized and praised by Firaxis, who then worked closely with Kael on a spin-off version included on BtS disc, free of content copyrighted by 3rd parties.

We've been able to do this for over 10 years, without Civilization publishers claiming our content or sending cease & desist letters to modders. Why all of a sudden you want the modders the enforce the EULA upon themselves when the publisher in question does not, and will not, as that would be shooting itself in the foot for no reason? It was never a problem, it still isn't a problem. We have a copyrights disagreement betwen modders, not with 2K.

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Padjur said:

It would seem to me that there is a miss understanding.
The License agreement for BTS states there should be no "violation or infringement of copyright or or other intellectual property of any third parties"
That means your ok to use copyrighted music if you have permission but no one else can use it, unless they too have permission (I believe that applies to 2K as well).
The essential words are third party, a third party is someone who is not 2K and not the modder.

Click to expand...

So ray, again, there is no reason to take such an action you planned
Don't even listen to Gary Childress, seemingly he is only trying to ruin the community etiquette with totally unnecessary debates - even if the modding etiquette has been working pretty great so far

Also, even Gary said this in his last post:

Gary Childress said:

In the final analysis we could go by something like the following maybe:

Any Mod that is developed using CivFanatics resources or is supplied by one of its authors through links in the forums or Downloads database is free to use, within reasonable limits, without permission, as long as credit is given, unless otherwise indicated by its author.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

So I really don't see a problem here ray
You can still protect your friend's copyright for his music, no changes here

Please continue developing the mod, for the colonization community
RR is one of the main reasons why is col modding still alive

AbsintheRed said:

But Ray, you are only basing this leaving the forum decision on Gary Childress responses

Click to expand...

No, my decision to leave this forum it is not related to the responses of a single user.

It is related however to:

A) admins and moderators not clearly stating that modder's rights and 3rd party copyrights must / will be respected.
B) The complete discussion from the first post of the mentioned thread about denying basic modder's rights in which moderators of this forum have been involved.

Maybe we will simply move the mod development to infracta and continue its public development there.
Maybe the rest of the team will continue public development of the mod here at CivFanatics.
Maybe there will not be any more public releases of our mod at all.

I will have some discussions about the future of this mod with the team.

AbsintheRed said:

RR is one of the main reasons why is col modding still alive

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Thanks for the friendly words.

raystuttgart said:

No, my decision to leave this forum it is not related to the responses of a single user.

It is related however to:

A) admins and moderators not clearly stating that modder's rights and 3rd party copyrights must / will be respected.
B) The complete discussion from the first post of the mentioned thread about denying modder's rights.

Click to expand...

B) But the whole conversation tends to go in the right way. And it will end there, without any doubt. Just check the last few pages clear responses of the main modders

A) And you are not completely right about admins and moderators
They just seek for a fix guideline for the community
Here is what Ainwood said, and he has the right for a final decision:

ainwood said:

I am not looking to impose a rule. I would prefer for the modding community to come up with something that they can all live with. It may be that this rule or guideline is that the modder can choose conditions of use, in which case, fine. But however it is done, it must be clear to all.

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raystuttgart said:

Maybe - in a first step - we will simply move the mod development to infracta and continue its development there.
We will see how we will handle public releases.

I will have some discussions about the future of this mod with the team.

Click to expand...

It's your decision of course. The team's decision
But CFC is a great place to mod, and it will remain that way, more or less the same way it was before. That I'm 100% sure of
Also, you have a nice RR community built up here
I would love if you stayed here (too?) in one form or another

Thanks for the friendly words.

Click to expand...

It's true
A couple facts:
You guys are getting together and also inspiring all the best work of colonization modding
Finishing and even improving all the ideas/plans that came up since the release of Civ IV Col
Adding back everything that was good in Col 94, while adding plenty of new stuff as well
Civs and diversity were always very important for me. I was really looking forward to having all 8 colonizers and 32 native nations, all with such high quality...

I for example more or less lost interest in col modding a couple years ago
Now I check these forums almost daily

As long as it is not clearly stated in this forum, that explicit terms of usage / permission have to be respected,
there will not be a public Release 1.3 in which I will personally further participate.

I cannot and will not speak for the complete team though.

As I said, that is all I am asking for:


So basically it is for sure that Release 1.3 will be finished.
However, the decisions here in the forum will decide how and if it will be published or not.

Everything else considering further public releases of Religion and Revolution or if our mod will move to another forum the team will need to clarify internally.

I absolutely agree with everything in the spoiler
I follow those rules for my mod too

About the music, I can only quote this post again:

Padjur said:

It would seem to me that there is a miss understanding.
The License agreement for BTS states there should be no "violation or infringement of copyright or or other intellectual property of any third parties"
That means your ok to use copyrighted music if you have permission but no one else can use it, unless they too have permission (I believe that applies to 2K as well).
The essential words are third party, a third party is someone who is not 2K and not the modder.

Click to expand...

But we will see what will be the end of the modiquette discussions
And what will be the RR team's decision about this