06 Apr, 2009, Dean wrote in the 1st comment:
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Yes, Diku license violation threads have been done time and again, but one thing I have never seen come up in any discussion involving this is; One player selling his/her gear or something else ingame to another player for payment of real currency. Now I'm pretty sure that the intent & spirit of the license doesn't cover this, so what is everyone's thoughts on this practice?

Personally I think it to be quite laughable if someone is willing to pay another player for their gear, or to be leveled, on a MUD, as much as I think it is rather laughable for people to do it on MMOs.
06 Apr, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 2nd comment:
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A player character or general immortal staff are not bound by any aspect of the license and thus can do whatever they like with their gears, characters and time, , players are however bound by whatever rules the game owner has set up for their games, the only person who is bound by the license is the game owner, who must abide by all aspects of the license in how they operate their games. I agree i think its laughable for a player to be selling in game items in a mud, mostly because generally there is not enough critical mass to make it worth while. If i ever found a staff member of doing anything like this they would be dismissed immediately for bringing the game into disrepute, because lets face it, having a staff member selling off items is going to make for a nice thread on TMC from license vigilantes.
06 Apr, 2009, Guest wrote in the 3rd comment:
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Your players are not bound by the license and therefore can sell virtual gear to each other for whatever compensation they feel is appropriate. Even if it's criminal, because you'd have no means to regulate such activities. And by criminal I don't mean violating the license either. I mean as in arranging sex in exchange for virtual gear or something like that, ala Craig's List.

It's less clear if staff working for the MUD would be covered by the license. The owner is covered for sure, but there's no clear cut answer as to whether or not your coders and builders are covered as well. I'd imagine the coders are more likely to be bound by it by virtue of working on the code itself, but builders usually don't do that and stick to generating content of their own.
06 Apr, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 4th comment:
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My first response is: stop, stop asking a bunch of programmer nerds on the Internet who don't have the first freaking clue about law, and ask a lawyer. If you really really care, you can probably find an IP lawyer willing to give you his legal opinion of the license and its consequences for relatively cheap.

From my own understanding of law (which, like most the other people who are going to post here, comes solely from forum debates, news articles, and the odd law site), the license ONLY covers (re)distribution of the copyrighted material, and nothing else. Unless player are redistributing Diku material, the license has absolutely no sway over them. The same goes for immortals. The only person who is performing any kind of copying is the MUD admin/owner who installs the MUD and who starts the daemon process (copying it to memory). Making source modifications also counts, although really comprehending what the consequences of being an ex-coder for a Diku MUD means truly does require a lawyer. (Technically, if you violate the license, you are requires to cease distribution of the work or any modifications, and you are liable for damages… but if you already stopped distributing your code, and the Diku coders haven't lost any money because of your violation, what then? NOBODY HERE CAN ANSWER THAT FOR YOU. We can guess, but not a damn one of us is qualified to give you an answer you should trust as reliable.)
06 Apr, 2009, Cratylus wrote in the 5th comment:
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Quote
My first response is: stop, stop asking a bunch of programmer nerds on the Internet who don't have the first freaking clue


This is fair.

However, by now it's (I think) well established that the community's general
sense of "what the DIKU team meant" is what is of relevant discussion, as well
as whether that intent is meaningful, and if so, to what extent.

I think that if the question is intended to elicit a legal determination,
that is indeed pointless and doomed to error.

If, however, the question is more about "what do you guys think is right
and just?", then I think it's a perfectly reasonable consensus prod.


Quote
the license ONLY covers (re)distribution of the copyrighted material


Are you sure that licenses don't cover the manner in which software
is used, as well as its (re)distribution?

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net
06 Apr, 2009, Dean wrote in the 6th comment:
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Cratylus said:
If, however, the question is more about "what do you guys think is right
and just?", then I think it's a perfectly reasonable consensus prod.


That was indeed the intent of my raising the question.

Teh_Furey said:
If i ever found a staff member of doing anything like this they would be dismissed immediately for bringing the game into disrepute, because lets face it, having a staff member selling off items is going to make for a nice thread on TMC from license vigilantes.


There is hope for you yet. :lol:
06 Apr, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 7th comment:
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Since there are at least fifty other codebases that can run under no commercial restrictions why even bother with a Diku?
06 Apr, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 8th comment:
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Cratylus said:
Quote
the license ONLY covers (re)distribution of the copyrighted material


Are you sure that licenses don't cover the manner in which software is used, as well as its (re)distribution?


Distribution is only one of the rights granted under copyright law. See: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf

Quote
Section 106 of the 1976 Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:
* To reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords;
* To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
* To distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
* To perform the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works;
* To display the work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and
* In the case of sound recordings,* to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
In addition, certain authors of works of visual art have the rights of attribution and integrity as described in section 106A of the 1976 Copyright Act. For further information, see Circular 40, Copyright Registration for Works of the Visual Arts. It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the copyright law to the owner of copyright.


So obviously the MUD owner cannot legally "perform the work publically" or "display the work publically" without first agreeing to the licence. But equally, the coder cannot legally "reproduce the work in copies" or "prepare derivative works based upon the work" without first agreeing to the licence. If your activities don't require any of the above rights, then you don't need to follow the licence - so a builder creating their own areas would fall outside the scope of the licence.

So for example if you want to modify, compile, or run the MUD, you need permission from the copyright holder - which means you need to agree to the licence. If there's no licence (eg, the code was stolen) then you can't legally use the code (unless it's public domain). But the activities of a regular player are highly unlikely to infringe the Diku copyright, and would therefore almost always fall outside the scope of the licence.
06 Apr, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 9th comment:
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Noob said:
There is hope for you yet. :lol:


What are you trying to insinuate?
06 Apr, 2009, Dean wrote in the 10th comment:
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The_Fury said:
God said:
There is hope for you yet. :lol:


What are you trying to insinuate?


I was vaguely referring to that one particular thread on TMC. :surprised:
06 Apr, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 11th comment:
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If you were referring to my license violators club, then you will be happy to know it was sarcasm.
06 Apr, 2009, Kayle wrote in the 12th comment:
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Can we not bring that here? There's a reason I avoid TMC's forums, and this is precisely one of the reasons.
06 Apr, 2009, The_Fury wrote in the 13th comment:
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Kayle said:
Can we not bring that here? There's a reason I avoid TMC's forums, and this is precisely one of the reasons.


You going to ban us for civilized conversations ;) LOL
06 Apr, 2009, Dean wrote in the 14th comment:
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I figured that the License Violators club was sarcasm, my comment was tongue in cheek.
06 Apr, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 15th comment:
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"Publicly perform a work" is really just another means of distribution, hence it being covered by copyright law. Note that private use of a work is NOT covered by copyright law, hence why you can use a copyrighted work you legally obtain in almost any way within your own home. For software, there are old rulings that copying into RAM when running a program is covered by copyrights, and though I've heard reference to some recent cases refuting that under fair use laws, I haven't found a court case reference to prove it. Additionally, the DMCA adds some software-specific limitations to fair use that are not part of general copyright law, unfortunately, such as making it illegal to reverse engineer or attempt to break ANY form of security or encryption device (there has been debate as to whether or not breaking ROT13 even falls under that restriction if it is used for something tangentially "security related").

The restrictions that EULAs force on you are debatably enforceable on jurisdiction, but in general they are considered to be contracts, not licenses. Contracts can place almost any restrictions on you they want, but they are not part of copyright law at all. The big difference is that you have to actually agree to a contract (by signing, or by clicking an I Agree button in some jurisdictions), but you are automatically covered by the terms of a license whether you agree to them or not if you attempt to redistribute the work in any way. The license cannot remove any rights that you automatically have, however; a license can only GIVE you rights that you don't already have, e.g. the right to redistribute the work under some varying set of conditions such a non-commercial use (since by default you have no right to redistribute the work at all).

There's a lot of legal theory (no court cases to refute or back it up that I know of) that running software on a server does not count as publicly performing the work, because the users are not interacting with the work (e.g. the code or the binary) but with a network protocol that is independent of the work itself. Some of the data communicated may be copyrighted, of course (e.g., Diku stock room descriptions). I would err on the safe side though and assume it counts as redistribution.

If you want to be safe, ask a real lawyer and not a bunch of computer nerds all totally untrained in law. Or do what Tyche said and leave that Diku shit alone. ;)
06 Apr, 2009, Dean wrote in the 16th comment:
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Or look behind behind door number 3 and pay for Diku Valhalla. :D
06 Apr, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 17th comment:
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If one were inclined to do so, one could argue that the Diku license assumes/requires that the owner places the players under an EULA for many of the points, especially the no-profit one – it seems clear that their general intention is that people don't make money off of the codebase, and I'm not sure why they wouldn't include players in that group. If the question is "what is the legal status of this?" I think the answer is what Elanthis already gave. If the question is "should players be doing this?" I guess the answer is up to the individual MUD admins but I would be inclined to say that if admins can't make money off of it, it doesn't feel appropriate for players to be making money off of it. :shrug:
06 Apr, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 18th comment:
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elanthis said:
"Publicly perform a work" is really just another means of distribution, hence it being covered by copyright law.

The purpose of the Copyright Act is to prevents unauthorised copying of a work of authorship. Section 106 very clearly lists distribution and performance as two (out of six) separate exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder.

elanthis said:
Note that private use of a work is NOT covered by copyright law, hence why you can use a copyrighted work you legally obtain in almost any way within your own home

You don't automatically have the right to use something just because you own a copy of it - if you're using licensed software on your home computer, and that licence expires, you're no longer legally permitted to continue using it.
06 Apr, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 19th comment:
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KaVir said:
You don't automatically have the right to use something just because you own a copy of it - if you're using licensed software on your home computer, and that licence expires, you're no longer legally permitted to continue using it.

… but this is not due to copyright law.
06 Apr, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 20th comment:
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elanthis said:
You don't automatically have the right to use something just because you own a copy of it - if you're using licensed software on your home computer, and that licence expires, you're no longer legally permitted to continue using it.


If you read more than one sentence in you'd see I did address that. You cannot continue using the software in a meaningful way because running software requires making copies into RAM, which has been deemed a reproduction under copyright law, which I said. That fucked-up ruling is the only reason a software license can include a limitation on use. Were you to install the software into RAM while you legally had the right to do so – and running the software did not entail making a second copy into RAM – then the license would not be able to stop you from using it after an expiration date. If you are not reproducing/copying/distributing the work or a derivative then you can use it in any way you want in private, and that fully includes software – there's just not many valid uses for software that you can't run because of the MAI vs Peak ruling.
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