/sigh ... Here we go again
 

Another site violating author intellectual property rights. :mad:

Have at 'em guys: World of Addons

So far they have about 810 addons that they have scraped from wherever and uploaded to their site. According to them, they want you to sign up on their site so that you may 'claim' your addons.

I guess they are hoping to get away with that old adage of "It's easier to ask for forgiveness [after the fact], than for permission [beforehand]."

As always, if there is anything we can do to help you guys, just let us know.

*starts rooting around for the old C&D and DMCA take down templates*

Is this really TenTonHammer or is that an ad at the bottom of the page?
I thought they were somewhat respectable?

I got an email from them about a month ago that asked me to opt in. It seemed like a pretty obvious automated spam message so I ignored it, but a lot of good that did me.

Also a site called AllAddon, which in my eyes is a bit worse.

Yup, it really is TTH.

Saiket,

Yeah, sorry about that. We weren't informed of them spamming everyone for a while, so they were able to get a bunch of PMs out. Sorry. =/

Well, I seem to have been ignored on both sites so far, but have on Scott's behalf asked worldofaddons to either take down the nUI files they have belonging to him until they get his permission or link to the official download page here. Alladdon has an author page set up for him so not 100% sure that he didn't give permission there.

Oh, that was an email. I didn't get a PM, so thanks for stopping them on that front. :)

The site's by Ten Ton Hammer - you would think they've been around long enough to know better. It looks like they scraped the downloads from Curse, since SM-Blizzard is the only addon of mine that they've got. And they don't list author names at all unless they happened to pick up a commit log from Curse as well. argh

Saiket: I didn't get any such email, but I don't have my email address out there for my addons. In which case, I didn't reply to "opt-in" either.

Qupe: It really looks to be Ten Ton Hammer. The "About Us" and "Legal" links go to that site and the copyright is the same company that owns Ten Ton Hammer.


I contacted them using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page with this message:

I don't see contact info for the other site p3lim linked. Could someone post it if they find it? I have to get a few things ready before the first day of school (with kids) tomorrow.

That would explain why they don't have any of mine yet as I don't host on curse now and had mine removed from there.

For anyone that wants, here's the thread that has the sample DMCA take down notice: http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=22595

You can find it by querying it on http://who.is/

Here are the relevant URLs and contact information. They're not linked to avoid giving them page rank on Google/other search engines, so you'll have to copy and paste.

alladdon.com
No contact informating is listed on the site, but the administrative contact for the domain name is listed as [email protected], and the website is hosted by EraNet, who can be contacted at [email protected] or by other means listed on www.eranet.com/customer/contact.net.

worldofaddons.com
A number of email addresses are listed on their "About Us" page at www.tentonhammer.com/aboutus. You can also contact them through the "Claim An Addon" page at www.worldofaddons.com/claim. You can contact their web host (Convoke) at [email protected] or mail it to the address listed on their www.convoke.com/Contact_Us page.

I also contacted Razer at [email protected] and informed them what the douchebags at TenTonHammer were using their products to promote. Not sure whether they need approval from Razer to use their brand and products that way or not, though.

Also added both sites to the "Unauthorized Addon Sites" thread over on WowAce:
http://forums.wowace.com/showthread.php?t=16062

Phanx: Let me know if any way of removing addons from alladdon will work.

I've sent them a DMCA takedown notice, I'll let you know if I get an answer from them.

The person that was responsible for addons.hotwow.com is also the person responsible for alladdon.com.
A simple who.is search confirmed that.

http://www.who.is/domain_archive-com/hotwow.com/
http://www.who.is/domain_archive-com/alladdon.com/

I got a mail from them, too, but with a slightly different text than the one Saiket posted:
So they turned the opt-in into an opt-out...

Which is so completely wrong ...

I like how they have a whole page on their site just for claiming that all the "original" material on the site is copyrighted by them, but they apparently have no idea how copyright actually works.

They must have some clue, seeing as they trademarked their "main attraction".

I was originally emailed by Memnock, and I did not respond at the time because frankly I am busy and I did not want to support my addons on another website at the time.

It is clear that this was an empty gesture, since they knew very well they needed to ask for a license to distribute my addons and chose to do it anyway in violation of my addon licenses.

Jason's information is as follows:

Jason Bechdel
[email protected]

Please keep it civil and professional. If you don't have a reason to be contacting him, then don't.

This is just sad, doesn't TenTonHammer know better? They obviously should since their PlayerScore addon and site is trademarked by them, so why didn't they consult their lawyers before doing this?

While I agree with them on the problems with Curse (Have to pay for one-click-update) ... I disagree with them in their tactics on how they obtain their addons. They even have an entire section under their "Author Tab" where you can import an addon from another site. ... How the heck does that work? *Goes to uninstall PlayerScore*

My story is even funnier.
I was also contacted by Jason, asking for permission to host Bartender4, and his mail did not have the "if you don't reply, we'll take your addon" clause, it read like a normal mail asking for permission.
In any case, i responded and denied the permission to host Bartender4 on some random addon page which i have never seen or heard of.

Now the fun part.
Bartender4 is not hosted on their page. BUT, all my other addons are. Denying permission for one addon apparently did not make it clear to them that this would apply to all my addons.

I already contacted Jason again explaining my disappointment in their actions and demanded immediate removal of my addons.

I would issue a Cease and Desist letter to Jason, and then contact the ISP hosting their site(s), forwarding a copy of that letter and requesting that the sites be taken down for copyright infringement. This is one case where the DMCA could actually be used for good.

That two-pronged approach should bag this kitty up fairly quickly, especially since they emailed letters with that "opt-out" line in it, which is illegal, and hosting companies are required by federal law to keep copies of all emails sent for a specific period of time.

Did anybody else get an e-mail yesterday about their new project "Spark"? The first I heard of it was last week and I thought it was a joint effort with the likes of Curse and WoWInterface to have a centralized updater. Never did I ever expect this to happen. Reminds me of the WowMatrix fiasco.

When I received the announcement e-mail, I was in disbelief. Usually there is some "buzz" about such projects. While I am not very active in the posting side of the add on community, but I visit all the major sites daily and I am pretty much up on anything new.

As soon as I checked out the site I knew immediately something wasn't right. Vast majority of the add ons there are NOT latest releases, as they state. And I was immediately drawn to the fact that NONE of them had given any credit to the authors! Which, is a MAJOR slap in the face. if they expect anyone to trust and respect them, they are going about it in the complete opposite direction!

I am in the midst of preparing for the release of my first major add on myself (When MoP releases). I would never allow it to be posted on a site like that! I expect it will not be around very long though. Without the support of the authors and the add on community it doesnt stand much of a chance.

Although, I have to say that Playerscore being the Editor's pick made me laugh uncontrollably. Biased much?

gameinworld.ru
Their website contact form is useless, as it apparently does not accept URLs; you can contact the domain name registrant through the form at www.reg.ru/whois/admin_contact?dname=GAMEINWORLD.RU. Their host can be contacted through the "report abuse" form at vps2fast.com/kontakti/.

Retweet:
@TenTonHammer hosting @WorldOfWarcraft addons without the addon authors permission. Addon author community is outraged!

Not really related, but I personally don't mind any Chinese/Korean addon sites rehosting (clean) addons, since in general their userbase isn't proficient in English, and the addon description is mostly translated into their native language ..

Edit: Referring to sites like http://wowui.w.163.com (chinese) and http://wow.inven.co.kr/addon.php (korean)
Please don't target such sites >.<

The agreement I had made with hotwow in the past was that they not host my addons themselves, but instead link to WowInterface for the download.

When I looked up alladdons host it lead me to Sharktech Inc o_O

Yo
 

Hey all, I found this after doing about 5 minutes of searching online. I thought it was truly hilarious. I'm guessing this is a letter he wrote the author of "GearScoreBreaker". An addon designed back in the day to prevent gearscore from returning correct values on your personal gear.

So this guy thinks its ok to steal other peoples work unless someone steals his own work?

I don't really mind that either, in theory, but would it really kill them to ask, or just provide a link instead of rehosting the files?

Looked it up where? Their domain's nameservers point to EraNet's servers. Or rather, the nameservers are owned by now.net.cn, which is in Chinese but is obviously advertising web hosting, and clicking "English" on that site redirects to eranet.com.

That would be the theory. Hypocrisy, all around there.

There is a long history of people that have created popular "things" believing they are a law unto themselves. Some do it better than others for a while.

I looked up the webhost not the place that the domain was registered with.

Well, i found one of my addons on alladdon.com, i've sent them an email, lets see what happens.

For the future, i'm thinking of adding a new windowframe in my addon.
It will appear for the user ingame on each new release with something like this:

Ofc, this doesn't do anthing about the websites themselves, but it hopefully will make the user a bit more aware.

any thoughts?

If that pops up automatically you'll get dinged for advertising. That's exactly what Blizzard wants to stop with the addon policy, among other things.

Well, for MoP releases I personally added a popup warning user that my addons will not work with GearScore enabled and 2 buttons to disable GS or my addon.
Can't think about anything better then that at the moment.

hm. would it constitute as 'advertising'?

it simply states where to get offical updates for this specific addon to hopefully make users aware that there exist sites out there that like that russian one that give you a trojan.

it does not mention donations, payment, or anything else.

I belive that it will adhere to the policy, as it is stated here: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1820963720


ofc it wont appear each time you login (that would annoy the h... out of everyone). only each time the addon is updated.

A popup will either anger Blizzard and/or the users. Putting that in an About or Help section of your menus should be perfectly fine.

Would be nice if we could get a definitive answer to this one. I did some research myself and I could only find links to EraNet myself. Has anyone had success with contacting the people behind 'alladdon' or their host?

It looks like they're starting to respond to removal requests, the email I just got was: https://gist.github.com/9e663036fa85d2693a20

I don't really know anything about copyrighting, nor what you put in your letter Shadowed, but surely one should not have to prove ones identity? Bar to override a previous stating that they have the right to publish your addons? On the contrary, couldn't we instead ask them for the legal proof that they have obtained such rights? Are you not allowed to ask someone to take down something for which they don't have distribution rights, if it's not your own work?

You're correct, but that only matters if they care about the legality, which they have proven they don't.

Ooohh, that sounds like a nice idea. Is this actually allowed within the addon tos? If so, more people ought to do this.

That's pretty scummy demanding that you show proof of ownership before they even consider doing anything.

Okay, but where did you look that up?

A domain's nameservers are not the place the domain was registered. The nameservers are the actual servers that the domain name points to when you type it into your browser -- eg. where the content is. Usually, a host will have a couple of nameservers, which will then do the further work of resolving to the current location of the actual content on one of the host's content servers.

My domain name is registered through DreamHost, but I use a different company for my actual hosting. If you WHOIS query my domain, and look at the nameservers, they will point you to my actual host, not to DreamHost.

I sent my NOTICE OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT email from the same address that's listed in the TOC and README files of all of my addons, so hopefully they won't try to pull this crap.

Posting a few points from IRC for everybody to see. Specifically about DMCA.

WoA is claiming they have 10 days to comply with any requests to remove content under the DMCA.

Master Games International is incorporated in Texas. They own TTH so all US laws apply to them.

TTH/WoA does not have a DMCA Registered agent, they do not have any protections under the DMCA.

WoA is hosted in Canada but by Tucows. Tucows has a DMCA Registered agent and does have DMCA protection and will comply with DMCA takedown notices.

The final most important point. It was WoA/TTH employees that uploaded the copyright content without permission. If they normally had protection under the DMCA, which they dont, they now have ZERO protection under the DMCA because they violated it themselves.

DO NOT ACCEPT ANY BULL**** FROM THEM ABOUT VERIFYING AUTHORS OR DELAYS IN REMOVING CONTENT! Send your DMCA takedown requests to Tucows for best results. WoA/TTH are legally up **** creek without a paddle in a kayak made of cardboard.

Tucows DMCA agent email: [email protected]

Their latest response on the comments page for their announcement of World of Addons

http://www.tentonhammer.com/playersc...welcome?page=2

The heck are they smoking here ?

/facepalm

Totally missing the point as per usual.

Forcing anyone to stay ?

We'll leave them alone when they remove our copyrighted work thankyouverymuchandgooddaysir

Ah, a reply from wowaddons in response to my request that for the time being he turns nUI's download link into a link to the wowinterface page until Scott is able to make the decision himself whether he wants to host his addons there.

And my reply to that email is going to be ..

What's Truly Awesome (TM) is that they illegally grab All Rights Reserved materials, then require the authors to verify they own them before they'll remove them!

Hey guys? I've had Blizz actually reach out to me to ask that you not do this. So please don't, okay?

I got the same email that Shadowed did. This was my response:

I didn't get an e-mail, but I did send one (my second):

Well I was correct on the host as I sent an abuse report in that the site is hosting files they didn't have permission to and they suspended the sites IP and contacted the owner.

That's great, but you still have not answered the question -- where did you find the name of their web host? I've WHOIS queried their domain on a dozen different lookup sites, and saw nothing mentioning "Sharktek" on any of them.

Normally to find the webhost you ping their domain to get their ip. Then do a IP Information on their ip address to see who its assigned to.

Great success :)

It's no fun in not doing this :D
Anyway no such stuff was accessible for downloading so I'm clean :P