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08-18-12, 01:16 PM   #81
Seerah
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So... If we say what we really want is for our addons to be removed and not for them to try to buy our compliance with a donation, then they'll say that we don't care about the community and we don't care about sick children. /sigh

Arrowmaster- This is what I got back:
Thank you,

That's what I needed except for whether you are the original author. If not, and you have their name I just need to confirm that they gave you all rights, which I assume they did.

Thanks for your prompt reply and sorry for the frustrations caused.

All the best,

John Hoskin
Creative Director
TenTonHammer.com
My response:
I am the original author of SharedMedia-Blizzard. And I know for a fact that the other authors listed on SharedMedia did not give permission for you to mine the two SharedMedia files from Curse either. I don't understand why you guys have to make this so very difficult.

I saw your note about Child's Play. Are you trying to buy our compliance or our morals? Many of the authors you have stolen from have supported Child's Play in the past. But do you also know that that PA has frowned on people trying to use Child's Play as atonement in the past? I'm pretty sure PA would be on our side on this and would dislike being used. We don't want donations in our names, we want our intellectual property removed from your site. But, hey - if you want to do both, we won't complain. But if it's just gonna be one or the other, just go ahead and delete everything you have no right to hosting and save your money.
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08-18-12, 02:02 PM   #82
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Originally Posted by Shadowed View Post
If I recall, when this has come up in the past, PA has frowned upon people who donate to Child's Play as atonement.
Good to know.
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08-18-12, 02:12 PM   #83
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Oooh, quicker response today.
Thanks for the letter and sorry for causing you frustration. I'm trying to just get it done quickly for you and the other authors. I have put forward some suggestions that I hope will be in place that will solve this once and for all. I am truly sorry for all the inconvenience.

The CP donation is regardless of whether you have your addon on our site. You don't have to host with us to have us make that donation. Does the wording of Ben's letter imply that this is the case? If so, I need to go take a look and make changes.

Feel free to send anyone my way and I'll do my best to expedite the entire removal process for them as well.

I'll ask to have the Sharedmedia files removed. Please contact me directly if you have any additional concerns.

Once again, my apologies.
Me:
Thank you, John. Out of curiosity, what were your suggestions?

Ben's letter says nothing about removing addons as part of atonement. To be quite frank, if I may, the letter comes across as him trying to cover his own butt instead of acknowledging facts. If WoA received no such permission from authors, then the addons should not have been hosted. Period. "If you don't respond, we'll take that as a yes" is not permission. No where have we been apologized to, and the proper recourse has not been taken (automatic removal of all addons that WoA was not given *explicit* permission to host that did not have licenses to allow for redistribution). As such, his letter comes off just as I said it did. And I'm not the only person who thinks so. We've discussed it in IRC and on forums, as well as here: http://www.tentonhammer.com/playersc...welcome?page=2

Again, the *correct* action from Ben or TTH/WoA would have been to swiftly apologize and swiftly wipe clean the addons it wasn't allowed to host. No ifs, ands or buts, no confirmation of author identity, no waiting periods, and certainly no excuses or poor attempts at justification. Because the "justifications" offered were not grounded in reality or the law.

Ben/TTH/WoA has not been earning author trust in the past few days, but further pushed us away. Perhaps in time, you guys can build your site up the way you should have from the start and maybe we'll come back. Maybe.
/edit: since he offered, his email is [email protected]
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Last edited by Seerah : 08-18-12 at 02:14 PM.
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08-18-12, 02:59 PM   #84
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Another reply:
Hi there,

I have asked to be given the reins and just remove whatever needs to be removed.

I do know that PMs were sent to all authors. I have a theory as to why they never arrived, but that is what it is, only a theory. I can't fix that now. The bell has already been rung so to speak. Some authors replied with OKs to host. Others asked that we not do so. Those were not hosted.

Further causing issue was that first notification that anything was amiss was a threat in an anonymous message forum. From there I think backs got up on both sides and here I am, fixing things.

Making things even more grey is the fact that nearly every addon is a derivative of work built by numerous people who used various license agreements over the course of the addons' evolution.

Even though I have removed every addon that requested removal, at least 70% of them are technically not owned by the current author. It's a mess from the inside out. Unfortunately, those same authors are very upset and I hesitate to let them know that they don't in fact have the rights that they truly believe that they have. In the future if a company were truly trying to steal their work, they probably could without recourse. We have no intention of doing that.

It's not as cut and dried as "copyright" issue as most think, but at this point explaining the underlying issues to the authors in jeopardy would only exacerbate the situation. There is a lot of legal chatter going on in your IRC and on the forums that is simply misplaced. I truly hope that the false sense of security doesn't come to haunt them. They are a fantastic group of people.

I don't expect authors who have requested removal to come back. It's a shame really as the Spark product is much easier for the player to use than what is currently out there.

For now though, I simply want to make this right for the authors, and I believe I will have the mandate to do that.

As I mentioned, send anyone to me that needs help and I'll do my best to get things solved for them.

I have flagged your files for removal. I can't do it myself or it would be done.

Good luck in the future. I apologize for how this all worked out.

All the best,

John Hoskin
Creative Director
TenTonHammer.com
I'm not entirely sure what to say to part of that. But... Hopefully this should all be sorted out soon.
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08-18-12, 03:50 PM   #85
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Originally Posted by Seerah View Post
Arrowmaster- This is what I got back:
...If not, and you have their name I just need to confirm that they gave you all rights, which I assume they did. ...
They seem to be doing that a lot lately...
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08-18-12, 04:37 PM   #86
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I have asked to be given the reins and just remove whatever needs to be removed.
Does this mean he is going to go in and delete every ARR addon on the site?


There is a lot of legal chatter going on in your IRC and on the forums that is simply misplaced.
Did anyone else twig to this?

Also, has anyone contacted Gabe & Tycho yet?

Last edited by Cairenn : 08-18-12 at 05:14 PM.
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08-18-12, 04:39 PM   #87
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Making things even more grey is the fact that nearly every addon is a derivative of work built by numerous people who used various license agreements over the course of the addons' evolution.

Even though I have removed every addon that requested removal, at least 70% of them are technically not owned by the current author. It's a mess from the inside out. Unfortunately, those same authors are very upset and I hesitate to let them know that they don't in fact have the rights that they truly believe that they have. In the future if a company were truly trying to steal their work, they probably could without recourse. We have no intention of doing that.

It's not as cut and dried as "copyright" issue as most think, but at this point explaining the underlying issues to the authors in jeopardy would only exacerbate the situation. There is a lot of legal chatter going on in your IRC and on the forums that is simply misplaced. I truly hope that the false sense of security doesn't come to haunt them. They are a fantastic group of people.
What the hell is this guy talking about? If there are multiple authors and no previous arrangement was made then multiple people hold copyright on the addon and any one of them can request its removal or sue them over it. If an addon uses a library then the library is under one license and the addon is under another license with a separate copyright.
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08-18-12, 04:52 PM   #88
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Yeah, that's the part that rendered me speechless.
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08-18-12, 06:57 PM   #89
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Even though I have removed every addon that requested removal, at least 70% of them are technically not owned by the current author.
This part of his reply to Seerah is a flat-out lie. My addons have NOT been removed.

Got another response today:

Ms. Kinley,

I'm well aware that you filled out a DMCA form. The issue is whether you are truly the owner or not.

Two quick questions and we can solve this as I did over the phone quickly and amiably with other authors.

1) Are you the original and only author of the addon?

If the answer to both is yes then this is easy and I can solve the issue straight away. I'm trying to make this problem go away, both for you and for myself.

If you are not the original author then just send me something showing that the original author passed you all rights and I can get this solved.

If we were not spammed by fake takedown requests sent by staff of competing sites this would be a much quicker process.

I apologize for causing you any frustrations. Let's get this solved so you can get back to creating addons.

All the best,

John Hoskin
Creative Director
TenTonHammer.com
Out of curiosity, has anyone talked to this guy on the phone, or is this another blatant lie?
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08-18-12, 07:02 PM   #90
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Originally Posted by Arrowmaster View Post
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.
They're actually hosted by Convoke Communications (info in my post here).

I did send a takedown notice to Tucows for good measure; their response indicated that the site in question was not hosted on their servers, but is using their "domain whois privacy" service, and that they had forwarded the message to the domain registrant.

I have not recieved a response from Convoke yet. I couldn't find a DMCA registered agent for them on the US Copyright Office list, so I just sent it to the support email address listed on their website.
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08-18-12, 07:11 PM   #91
Resa1983
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He's worried about being spammed with DMCA takedowns?

Seriously now.. I do believe the DMCA states that on receipt of a DMCA takedown request, they have to take it down - no questions asked - to not be liable for copyright infringement..
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08-18-12, 07:11 PM   #92
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If we were not spammed by fake takedown requests sent by staff of competing sites this would be a much quicker process.
I'd love to see their proof of this. I know that no one here has sent any.
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08-18-12, 07:14 PM   #93
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Originally Posted by Phanx View Post
They're actually hosted by Convoke Communications (info in my post here).

I did send a takedown notice to Tucows for good measure; their response indicated that the site in question was not hosted on their servers, but is using their "domain whois privacy" service, and that they had forwarded the message to the domain registrant.

I have not recieved a response from Convoke yet. I couldn't find a DMCA registered agent for them on the US Copyright Office list, so I just sent it to the support email address listed on their website.
Convoke is 100% Canadian - they'll accept a DMCA, and forward it to their customer, and that's the extent of their involvement. I called them yesterday and he summarized what they could & couldn't do, and sent me an email (because I said I was calling on behalf of several dozen authors who'd had their works infringed upon) and sent this to me for you all:
http://pastebin.com/MME0RytK

The lawyer I talked to last night, said that your only recourse may be to sue if they're going to pull nonsense and refuse to remove addons, despite the fact that original authors are gone, and new authors have picked up the reins.
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08-18-12, 08:19 PM   #94
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All rights reserved means.. all rights reserved!

This site World of Addons has bad taste; they will fail if they continue alienating authors by hosting addons without due permission. World of Addons is steeling from us.
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08-18-12, 10:54 PM   #95
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They finally removed my addons after I told them that I had already sworn under penalty of perjury that I was the copyright holder of the addons in question, and that if they believed I had committed perjury then the burden was on them to prove it, but either way they did not have permission from anyone to distribute those addons, and asked them to please not waste either of our time and money on attorneys and legal proceedings.

Amusingly, the final message I got from them also said "I don't want to argue with you". Bulls**t. If you didn't want to argue, you would have honored the first message I sent in which I identified myself as the addon author and requested that you remove the addons. What a bunch of snakes.

Had they actually put in some time and effort building a great site with features appealing to addon authors, and then invited us to check it out and upload our addons, they might have had some takers. But after how they've behaved, it's clear that they don't have one iota of respect for addon authors, and no addon author in their right mind will have anything to do with them.
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08-18-12, 11:59 PM   #96
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They removed 1 of mine too. It's good.
Waiting for removal of the second one.
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08-19-12, 12:16 AM   #97
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Did anyone else happen to see this...
Click image for larger version

Name:	Capture.JPG
Views:	228
Size:	98.9 KB
ID:	7081
Claim your addons for a chance to win a prize... that's just flat out insulting.
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08-19-12, 12:25 AM   #98
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After few mails my work was removed too.
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08-19-12, 04:18 AM   #99
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Originally Posted by Othgar View Post
Did anyone else happen to see this... Claim your addons for a chance to win a prize... that's just flat out insulting.
Yeah. I emailed Razer to let them know what their products were being used to promote, but I don't know that there's anything they can do about it.
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08-19-12, 04:20 AM   #100
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Well, looks like they paid attention to my request that they turn off the download option for nUI until they clear it with Scott. All links point to wowinterface's nUI page and nUIAddon.com site. I posted a comment on the page for nUI there as well that the most updated version will always be here.
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WoWInterface » Developer Discussions » General Authoring Discussion » /sigh ... Here we go again

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