The author of the area would only need to enforce their rights if they were arguing that they hadn't given the mud owner permission to use the area at all. If they were happy for the mud to using the area, but didn't feel it should have exclusive rights, then it would be the mud owner who would need to do the enforcing (by taking action against whoever else was using the area).


That rather reminds me of a post made around five years ago, when someone pointed out the following clause in the Ack!Mud licence: "All area files created through the use of this codebase become the property of the game administrator and not the property of the builder."

As it so happened, I'd created an area for that mud a few years earlier (a headquarters for my clan) - yet I'd never seen the licence, heard of the clause, or even made any agreements with the mud. I didn't mind them using my work, or even releasing it with their codebase, but I certainly wouldn't think twice about using my area elsewhere if I wished.

Admittedly that's not quite the same thing, as they were attempting to retroactively claim ownership of my work via a licence I'd never even seen, let alone agreed to. But still, the same could be claimed by people who had read such a clause - and it would be up to the mud owner to prove otherwise.



That's actually what I was referring to - when I started University, I was forced to sign a document stating that I agreed to the University terms and conditions. Not only did those terms and conditions cover the usual liability things (which I imagine every University would require every student to sign for), but it also covered ownership of works produced for the courses.

I know that not all Universities demand the ownership of works produced by their students, but even those that don't would, I imagine, explicitly require non-exclusive rights.

That's a pretty interesting clause in the Ack!Mud license. It's the kind of invalid clause I was referring to, FWIW: as you pointed out, the law says explicitly that you need to actually sign something to transfer ownership, the license can't just grab it because it says so. (But, also, as you point out, you hadn't seen it, and if you had signed it, it would amount to signing away ownership, I suppose.)


You'd think, heh, but I guess mine doesn't follow those rules. :smile: They require, for instance, that patents be transferred to them, unless the authors decide to make the material public domain. Admittedly, that's not the same as ownership (copyright), and they do leave that with the authors. But even for copyright,



and, more specifically,



So I guess they're more draconian than the people you had in mind. :wink:

welll as for commands and such liek /credit keep in mind i have done any mudding in about 5 years so im a bit rusty rembering what commands and such show what but generaly sjut w/e area builders credits go ( although i think on several muds ive worked on they amended buildersa nd coders to the end of the /redit command


that said as for the spelling and grammar well i suffer a condition called dyslexic dysgraphia so when building i usualy use a program like word or something to spelling and grammar check everythinga fefw times b4 copying it over
but in a forums setting thats far more informal its jstu not wortht he time and effort as long as my point is readable :)

So, you're saying that as long as the credit is given to you in an appropriate place, that still meets the conditions you're setting forth? (If so, fair enough.)

Ah, I wondered if it was going to come down to something like that, and I'm glad to hear that when actually building you do spell/grammar check everything better than you do for forum posts (which I can whole heartedly understand and appreciate as well). Compensating for your condition indicates, to me at least, that you do care enough about your works (building an area is still creating something to my thinking) to ensure that they're higher quality works despite personal challenges.

Though you still might consider Firefox's built-in spell checker (Opera has support for Aspell built in too) since this last post of yours comes awfully close to actually saying several things I don't believe you mean simply because of minor errors that a spell checker would haev helped avoid, which means that it's starting to encroach on that readability limitation you're watching for. Please keep in mind that I do not mean this as a personal jibe at all, though I could easily see it being taken that way, just as a friendly bit of advice based on what I can see in your last couple of posts. Hope that is reasonably apparent already just in the fact that I am responding to what you appear to have meant rather than what you've actually said…

Well at least they didn't forget and include that in the public distros. A clause like that is meaningless as far as the law.

yes you are pretty much right on key with what i ment

basicaly where ever the mud has set up a list of credits for builders the builders should get a permanent credit i.e. if say i build a new main city somewhere there should be a credit stating so and if someone makes changes to teh city w/o totaly removing the one i made then it should be listed int he credit as x city created by lspiderl and renovated by x

or somethign to that effect

basicaly as a builder if we put a lot of effort and time into an area and were proud of it we want people to know who made it

as for the firefox spell checker unfortunately i usualy post from work and we dont have firefox nor are we able to download or install other programs , that and even if we did have some form of spell checker i could use the restrictions on my time to post between doing differnt functions of my job would make forums posting extreemly difficult .

however in the future since your willing to atleast meet me halfway ill try to sqeeze a bit more focus into my posts and seperate my typing with spacing for easier reading

For what it's worth, lspiderl, this last post was leaps and bounds beyond the previous posts for readability. As for the rest, it sounds like we're in a fair consensus so not much more really need be said.

heh i do ok if i can take an obscene amount otf time to type it all out unfortunatly i usualy requires that i read it and re-read it many times to make sure its correct

because when i read it even if its wrong it looks fine to me

its kinda like the reverse of dyslexia in taht rather than looking jumbled when wright it looks normal weather its right or jumbled

sadly enuff i can read at a college masters level but I essentialy write/type at about a 4th grade lvl unless i dictate to someone else lol

The Firefox spellchecker that Conner mentioned actually does real-time checking, highlighting words as you type, so you don't have to take extra time to see what you misspelled.

Believe it or not, I understand completely. Especially for forums, no one's saying your typing needs to be perfect, in fact few of us can boast that we don't make typographical errors or even outright spelling/grammar errors at all, or even only rarely, but if you can manage to keep it to the point where, like in this last post, there are just minor things that can be easily glossed over, no one will really even pause to think twice about it most of the time. I also realize that means it's probably much slower for you to post than for some of us, but it does mean that you will get a more reasonable response most of the time without having to seperately post to explain your condition as we're all used to folks who just don't type well or who try to abbreviate things routinely or .. well, you get the idea. Basically, like you said earlier, when it comes to the forums what counts mainly is that it's readable, not that it's perfect. And once the bulk of the group is used to you and has gotten to know you, you'll find that in those instances where someone does try to jump at you for stupid stuff like minor typos, you won't even get the chance to have to explain yourself because others who are here more frequently will jump to your defense for you. It's just the kind of folks that most of us are. :smile:

As for the reading/typing levels, don't feel too badly, I am also able to read (and write) at college levels but between having five children spanning from 4 months old to 18 years old and having been active in the online community for decades now, I'm very used to reading at the 3rd grade level all too much of the time. :wink:

hehe well thanks for being understanding and i will do waht i can to make it as legibel as possible

and for the last gentelman to recomend firefox sorry bro im at work no firefox for me :(

It's too bad you don't have firefox or opera there at work as firefox does offer built in spell checking that's fairly reliable and opera supports the addition of aspell even under windows, but since it sounds like your circumstances force you to live with IE, you might find out of something like ieSpell is an option for you.