Unofficial Mirror?

[monele]

Mm... Apologies ^^;... I guess my remark amounted to friendly fire, then. But a question remains, if your goal is honest and imprinted of visual novel love, why not contact the authors? Not all of them might have been available, but I'm pretty sure some could have answered ... and this whole thread would not even exist ^^

[PyTom]

I think a second, yet still important, issue is that on the page in question, it says that all of the games are authored by "mutio", one of the v-n staffers. Now, I realize that he's the author of the articles about the games, but the table does not make that clear.

(I'll also point out that none of our games are translations. You want the visual news forum, third door to the right.)

[Enerccio]

Just one thing ^_^
I dont mind to have My teacher there but link while clicking on bishojo games should lead to http://www.bishojo.tk

[ponydash]

Indeed, you make a very good point.

The whole reason this topic came about is actually due to a quirk of international law. That being, in Germany, anything advertised for free download apparently is eligible to be hosted by other sites, without permission from the original author. This obviously leads to the belief from mutio, who put these files on the website, that it was fine to redistribute these files without having to check for permission.

Now I am aware that, in England where I live, the rules are different, and you do need permission to redistribute these files. I assume that the laws are the same in America.

After I hit him around the head with a big hammer (alright, that didn't happen) mutio has taken all of the files down and is now only hosting links (he did this of his own accord without me saying anything actually). I don't know what he's going to do about contacting authors about the original files, but there is now a system in place whereby authors will be contacted BEFORE we host anything else.

"Third door to the right," I like that one! As for the authoring issue... ummm... I'll pm mutio and see what he can do.

Ah, and I'm sure you know that mutio's not just a staff member, he's the leader of the pack, right?

[Misuzu]

One thing that kinda bugged me though is how my email was not hanlded properly. On the topic of Plain Song, I sent this email to V-N.

Uh... frankly, I'm not terribly happy that you did not seek permission
from me to host my release of Plain Song.

I would prefer if you took down the download link on your page and
replaced it with my preferred distribution method.

Please link to this page for Win/Mac/*nix downloads.
http://visualnews.net/doujin-downloads/#song

And please remember, ask permission whether you can just take peoples
work and post it up. You may think everyone appreciates what your
doing, but thats far from the truth a lot of times. There are a lot
of factors out there and thats why you ask to check with the original
author/translator/creator.

Thank you very much.

As I stated before, they did remove the hosting, but put the actual link to the insani al|together page instead of the one I requested. Now, I don't think I need to explicitly stating why I want something I worked to be linked to a spefic place, but since they didn't comply, I figure I'll state it flat out.

It's okay to link to the insani page, but for the at2k5 releases, it is no preferable. The insani torrents are occasionally not seeded as there is no need to seed old torrents that no one is downloading anyways. There is also no link to the VisualNews direct download mirrors, so users may hop onto the torrent and find out they can't even download the file becuase there are no seeders. Secondly, I like to see numbers for how well my project is doing, and on downloads.visualnews.net, there is a pretty advance set of statisitics applications so that I can track how well it does versus other releases and what not.

Then again, as I stated above, I dont think I needed to mention all that in my email as I hope that a webmaster of a site would comply with the wishes of an author/translator of a specific work becuase of general curtousy.

[monele]

I find it pretty cool that everything seems about to be resolved ^^...

... oh and... DESU!...... (had to XD)

[Misuzu]

Me too desu~
=P

[mikey]

OK, some not-so-organized thoughts:

That being, in Germany, anything advertised for free download apparently is eligible to be hosted by other sites, without permission from the original author.

Apparently, this is also true for the Czech Republic, where three freeware gaming sites are simply taking games from renai.us and hosting them. There isn't really anything that can be done about that though, they are not going to pull down games, even if they would be responding to e-mails.

BUT - is wild mirroring such a terrible thing? Just from the moral (not legal) standpoint.

For one, it is good publicity, the Czech sites are not treating the games unfairly, and the second thing is that trying to force pull-down action is going to generate very negative publicity, especially as this type of at-will mirroring of freeware games is common practice in CZ and Slovakia and I believe in many other countries.

I guess thats what really just bugs me about their acting... thinking that "Oh, everyone wants their stuff mirrored!", while not actually thinking about it a bit more to realize that not everyone does appreciate it.

And to be frank, I don't really understand this. If the game is free, it's free. I realize that all this "treating it as your child" is an important factor, but personally, I'd feel a bit awkward about actively limiting the places and channels where one could get our games - there may be justification for this of course - such as promoting a website ("exclusively made for blahblah").

But in the majority of cases, I'm not so sure - I don't really like it when makers restrict the availability, especially when their files are hosted by people who themselves are fans. For me generating exclusivity is kind of the first step of being elitist, and it doesn't really matter what excuse they come up with. At the very least, it's an annoying practice when you have to do procedures and go through channels. Yes, it's THEIR game and all that, but I still think getting free games should be as unbureaucratic as possible.

Yes, I for instance don't support mirroring ATP's games on the download.com network. This is a principle on my side, as I don't like the generic nature of the site - and I'd like to officially associate my site only with renai.us as far as mirroring is concerned - but I won't (and don't want to) stop others from submitting the ATP games to download.com, especially not the respective team members who worked with us. You will make me happy when you don't submit it there, but if you do, the world doesn't end. For me, this is limiting it, but only from my side, passively. Also, I have nothing against mirrors of our files, but I don't search and update our game pages whenever a new mirror pops up - since I like to have as little work with our site as possible and concentrate on other things.

For the record, VisualNews has seeked and gained permission to mirror every file we have available, and we are proud of it.

So are we at renai.us. This is of course a completely different story and approach, as RAA is a mirror site per se, and a mirror site that will respect the wishes of the original creators - and I like that idea very much.

And it was especially important for me when I was contacting the makers not from this forum - and I am very glad that all of them have given permission. Zeiva Inc's games were a particularly strong examples, they have it clearly stated on their site (or/and the DA site) that people must obtain permission before redistributing. Same goes, more or less, for AI Project's games.

It's naturally quite unfair, when you consider that we write personally to authors and try to obtain these games for the Archives, and then there are those who simply take it and mirror it. So as someone who values RAA as a site that respects the games, I would never like it to host something without permission. But as someone who makes his own projects, I wouldn't see a big deal in it if RAA would host my files without explicit permission - I'm trying to be realistic - it's the internet and people who ask your permission are a privilege and I'm happy for every request like that, because it shows respect.

What should we, as a community, do about this. I'd hate there to be a precedent that it's okay for our games to be mirrored without permission.

Just to come back to the traditional wild mirroring from RAA on the Czech sites - while this may or may not be a moral problem, I don't see this as a problem of the RAA or this community. There is no way that we can police this or go after people who are violating rules, and I don't even think this is our responsibility (or rather, I don't think it's our place to go after those who don't adhere to these rules).

Even more so since the RAA isn't the creator. It should always be the creator's policy and responsibility to monitor what happens with the games. I can't imagine me or someone else going around and defending moral rights on behalf of people who didn't specifically ask for defence. In any case though, you can't make the RAA staff responsible for looking after what happens when people download mirrored games.

Furthermore, I personally dislike when people defend the rights for me. It's okay if a fan points out to a wild mirror owner that they should get permission, because it's not nice, but I don't like anything more than that. It should always be my decision and this is what I didn't like in the Wind patch flamewar - if I were the company that made the game, I'd be displeased with people who take away the freedom of whether and how I choose to defend my rights (now ignoring the legal issues with unauthorized translations in the first place) by controlling people and the authenticity of the product by themselves. If fans start to for instance go after wild mirrors of SecretaryOfDeath, then it will look like ATP Projects is going after them, or that ATP Projects somehow only wants official mirrors. Again, it won't be something I could prevent from happening, but I'd not be happy about overactivity in this area.

From my perspective, v-n can freely directly host the ATP games, Ren'Py or non-Ren'Py ones. It's not a disrespectful site, it doesn't steal anything the way I see it, so I'm okay with that.

What should we, as a community, do about this. I'd hate there to be a precedent that it's okay for our games to be mirrored without permission.

(back to this quote) It may sound a bit cheezy, but - for me and maybe even generally for the community, the best practice is to try to form a sense of respect for the games. The way they are presented, the way that we treat them, I think this community is one of the few that can do this simply by posting and talking about the games the way we do - we love them and we care for them - and create a situation where people who play the games, and also would want to mirror them will naturally ask their creators, because it's the right thing to do.

[Blue Lemma]

On the other hand, just because something is free doesn't mean there aren't reasons to not want it spread around without permission. For instance, say you're running a site where you host your games, and/or you buy sound effects, music, or other media to use in the games. This costs money, and perhaps you're recovering some of that money with ads on your site. Clearly there is an argument to be made against other people hosting the games on their sites, since it could deprive you of visitors to your site. It would really twist the dagger in your heart if the other site that leeched your games was profitting from them, too, at your expense >_<

I'm actually kind of surprised about the European laws regarding this, especially about liability for free software (the creator seems to be on the hook). It sounds somewhat dangerous to release software to Europe, from what I've read... (nothing against Europeans personally ^_^ )

I suppose there are some things people could do if all these matters bothered them enough:

1) Charge a tiny amount for the download (say 1 cent) - The drawback is that it requires a credit card or something... Unless maybe it is stipulated that a donation be made somewhere or the money be sent in somewhere? Not like most would do it, but it would keep it from being free software, I guess (maybe?) It could also discourage some people from playing.

2) Stipulate that the software is not to be used outside of [insert countries here]. In an extreme case, one could block by IP address to give the statement some muscle, although that isn't even close to 100% effective.

Enforcement is a problem in any case, although I suppose it *might* switch the situation from being legal for the distributors to illegal.

Then again, there's always...

3) Release games anonymously, through circuitous channels - Hard to be held liable for something when no one knows you are! Of course, there goes credit.

Well, whatever ^_^; Although the liability really does bother me... and the DL fee wouldn't help that one, since it would be "commercial software". But if you release something for free and say it might cause problems on a computer, I don't see how anyone can rightly sue later on and hold you responsible. It's not like you forced them to use your program, and if everyone was held liable for stuff that could happen to go wrong with their free software programs, it would certainly discourage developers.

Blah

*hides under a rock and hoards games (Maybe I should take my side scroller game down from my old site since it crashes XP sometimes >_<) *

[Enerccio]

On the other hand, just because something is free doesn't mean there aren't reasons to not want it spread around without permission. For instance, say you're running a site where you host your games, and/or you buy sound effects, music, or other media to use in the games. This costs money, and perhaps you're recovering some of that money with ads on your site. Clearly there is an argument to be made against other people hosting the games on their sites, since it could deprive you of visitors to your site. It would really twist the dagger in your heart if the other site that leeched your games was profitting from them, too, at your expense >_<

From my personal experience nearly noone is clicking on ads these days...

[mikey]

I'm actually kind of surprised about the European laws regarding this.

That is just common practice, not the actual law. The law protects your IP, although I don't have the (will to update myself on the) latest Author's Codes of the countries to give you the specifics, the basics are always there - the author has the sole right to handle his work, except the exceptions for education, journalism, etc... the classic thing.

That example when people get some return money for ads is good, I haven't seen this from this angle, although that's indirectly got something to do with money, so technically your game is freeware, but your production does have something to do with money (that you want to make).

[monele]

I'm actually kind of surprised about the European laws regarding this

Just for info, that wouldn't work in France, and... I believe, in many other European countries. As mikey say, it might be common practice... but law is stricter than this.

Another example of wanting to control where it's distributed is about statistics. If you want to know in a precise way how many downloads you get and from whom... mirrors will totally destroy that.

[DrakeNavarone]

Also consider the feedback. If some website you've never heard of and will never visit decides to host your project without your permission or even knowledge, and all questions and comments are directed there, you will never get to see those words of praise, answer the questions posed, or even simply take part in discussion about the story. In fact, mikey, didn't you just make a post about how reassuring and valuable comments truly are? And on the technical side, if someone finds a bug, you'd never know and therefore never get to fix it.

[monele]

That's why it's important to put such information right in the game and in a ReadMe. Contact info, website address.

[mikey]

In fact, mikey, didn't you just make a post about how reassuring and valuable comments truly are? And on the technical side, if someone finds a bug, you'd never know and therefore never get to fix it.

You're right, restricting accessibility may force more people to use one channel for getting the game, and help reduce discussions over several other forums and keep it central and clear - but can that really work in the long term or with any popularity level? There are so many comments on Narcissu everywhere.

And I'm just thinking about what message people are sending when they burden their games with restrictions about download places, or want to have exclusivity where it's not really needed. If there are people who like the games enough to want to mirror them, and are not unfair, will I really tell them that they can't because I want control over my download stats or harvest as many comments as I can for some reason? Or that my team wants to exercise their exclusivity rights just because they now actually have them?

As for me, I am thankful for every comment, yes - and I want to provide the players the opportunity to comment - but not anything else. I don't expect them to comment, and I don't want to use some mind games to get them to comment. I'd like a reasonably dignified environment where they can download the game and then give them as much freedom to take or leave the game as possible. Sure it probably isn't going to make ATP Projects a "circle" with some sort of cool charisma and moral principles, but the fact is ATP Projects isn't such a thing, and for me it's the more rewarding when people give feedback out of their own initiative.

But I understand that this whole unauthorized mirroring is a sensitive topic.

Just for info, that wouldn't work in France, and... I believe, in many other European countries. [].. law is stricter than this.

And more or less it's there to serve the artist - basic copyright law protects you sufficiently and automatically in almost every country and that's the point of it - so you don't have to think about that and can release your works without worries.