*eden translation project gets slammed by minori

[ksotaku100]

Today (or a few days ago), as all of you might know, VN Developer Minori logged in to the TLWiki as a Anonymous user and erased the whole page on the *eden project with no warning at all...
Of course, this caused an edit war, users of the TLWiki restored the page, but just for it to get erased again by minori, this continued for 2 to 3 more cycles and with arguements between and admin and the IP assuming to be minori. A little later, Moogy came in and locked the page and stripped the other admins of their privleges, I think... For more info see, http://novelnews.net/2010/04/23/eden-ed ... th-minori/ and if you login to the wiki, it'll be right on the home page, or in the news section...

In my opinion:
This stinks like roadkill!!! Of course, minori was just protecting their property... But the way they did it... basically it was like a hit and run, except someone caught them in the act and it made a heated conflict... click on the link and you'll learn more if you hadn't, but if you had, express your opinions here...

Hopefully, NNL will pick it up... because they're about to release Ef, but minori could strike first... hopefully, they'll get it released in quick time...

This really stinks because my brother just got *eden the original edition...

Oh, boy...

[LVUER]

I've read the article. Although Minori is right (from law POV), they could do it in other way, not just deleting a wiki article. And I don't know why they do that (deleting the article and forcing the project closed down) if they never have any intention to translate the game (they could just pretend to have a blind eye to the project).

[Blue Sky]

Honestly, minori is just plain stupid. You don't talk to random foreigners on the TLWiki talk page. You are a company. If you have something to say to the members of TLWiki, say it in a goddamn statement and not in a chat environment.

[papillon]

Companies are staffed with people, especially small companies who haven't hired someone whose sole job is being a stoic Relations Manager.

[Blue Sky]

True. ;p

I'm just really mad about this. Not because of what minori did, but how they're doing it. In fact, this whole thing was handled in an extremely immature way, almost like a trolling attempt.

[Samu-kun]

What's wrong? It's just the law.

Maybe Eden's considering translating their games now.

[Jake]

I'm just really mad about this. Not because of what minori did, but how they're doing it. In fact, this whole thing was handled in an extremely immature way, almost like a trolling attempt.

Picture this. You've drawn some pictures and you're really happy with them, but you feel like they only really work when they're hung against a black background, due to the colours and shading you've used, and without the black background they look pretty dodgy. So you've lent them out to a couple of local galleries, and they're selling your prints and you're getting money and you're happy they're displaying your pictures against a black background like you wanted. You know that some people in other countries like your art, but it's too much of a hassle trying to ensure that the galleries you can't visit who don't necessarily speak the same language as you are going to hang your work against a black wall.

So one day you're on holiday in another country and you wander in to an art gallery - and right in the first room, you come across copies of your art, only they're hung against a red wall and it makes them look terrible. And sure, there's a sign saying you made them, and they're pointing anyone who wants prints to the galleries you work with in your home country so you'll still get paid if people get prints, but they're not displaying them how you want and you think they're making your art look bad, which might put people off your art in general.

There don't seem to be any gallery staff around, but instead, random strangers walk in, nail hooks into the wall and hang a new picture up wherever they like, take down existing pictures - sometimes replacing them, sometimes leaving the wall empty - where and when they want to. Nobody seems to care, it's just how things are done around here. You're able to move stuff around just as much as anyone else, so there's no reason you can see not to just take down the copies of your own art that you never gave anyone permission to hang in this gallery in the first place. Why not?



Alternate answer: would you prefer Minori just grabbed a lawyer and sued the owners of TLWiki without even trying to resolve it without involving the authorities?

[Lunethex]

The only thing I understand about this is that one side is getting trolled so hard they're threatening the most useless thing on the internet: A lawlsuit.

[luminarious]

It's quite hard to understand or justify minori's behaviour, because they seem to have exactly zero interest in translating (or getting it translated commercially) themselves. Not to mention that most fan translations are released in patch form anyway, requiring that you buy the game anyway.

Basically they seem to be content in walling themselves into the Japanese market so that noone outside would never hear about them again. What kind of ridiculous thinking is that?

P.S. I am especially sad as I am a big fan of their work.

[LVUER]

Alternate answer: would you prefer Minori just grabbed a lawyer and sued the owners of TLWiki without even trying to resolve it without involving the authorities?

No, but I prefer they (Minori) goes straight to TLWiki Admin (I mean online) and send a C&D letter or something. It's faster and won't provoke anyone.

[Jake]

The only thing I understand about this is that one side is getting trolled so hard they're threatening the most useless thing on the internet: A lawlsuit.

If you want to consider 'copyright infringement' and trolling to be the same, I guess, yeah. And lawsuits are hardly useless - sure, it's pretty pointless when there's two guys arguing on a forum somewhere, but when one party is a registered company (entirely plausible in this case) with exploitable Intellectual Property rights which others are infringing upon, it's not useless at all; courts will tend to listen to companies in that situation and issue court orders to ISPs and/or hosting companies to divulge the real-life identities of the people doing the infringing, at which point they can take actual real-life people to court for their misdemeanours and get them to pay real-life compensation money and/or other real-life penalties. Usually what happens when such cases come up (and what seems to have happened here) is that the party being threatened with the lawsuit recognises the untenable position they're in and stops their infringement, and the company stops hassling them because they're not interested in punitive action, but the times when the infringing party refuses to stop, it actually quite commonly comes out in favour of the company (leaving aside murky stuff like all that mafia-esque crap the RIAA was pulling a few years back, where the supposedly-offended party didn't actually own the copyrights themselves in the first place).

It's quite hard to understand or justify minori's behaviour, because they seem to have exactly zero interest in translating (or getting it translated commercially) themselves. Not to mention that most fan translations are released in patch form anyway, requiring that you buy the game anyway.

Basically they seem to be content in walling themselves into the Japanese market so that noone outside would never hear about them again. What kind of ridiculous thinking is that?

Did you actually read the linked-to article? Presuming it genuinely is Minori speaking, they're not saying they never want to see it released outside of Japan; they're saying they want to see the title put in front of the relevant country's content-rating board before it's released in that country. They decided that their morals tell them they should get their software rated by the relevant authority regardless of whether it's legally necessary, and they stated that they'd be willing to negotiate with any party who was willing to come and talk to them and do that. They just don't want some random bunch of Internet people making it possible to play their games - however obtained - in the US without the games going before (in this case) the ESRB, because that's what they believe is right - not every decision everyone ever makes is motivated entirely by monetary greed. And since it's their game, and their copyright, they have the right to make decisions like that regardless of whether or not a bunch of Internet goons like it.

[luminarious]

The general vibe from them is still very xenophobic and lacking in the common sense department.

[Jake]

The general vibe from them is still very xenophobic and lacking in the common sense department.

One man's common sense is another man's gross stupidity, so I don't know what you expect on that front - but seriously, 'xenophobic'? How is it xenophobic to say that they're happy to entertain negotiations to publish in other countries so long as the publisher submits to that country's ratings board?

Maybe, since they sell software that includes pornographic scenes, they're just trying to avoid being at the centre of another fiasco like the one that surrounded 'RapeLay' a little while ago, for example? If they don't allow their content outside of Japan (where they know the prevailing mood) without submitting it to the other country's ratings board, they can blame the foreign ratings board if people get in a huff about the content. For example.

[luminarious]

The general vibe from them is still very xenophobic and lacking in the common sense department.

One man's common sense is another man's gross stupidity, so I don't know what you expect on that front - but seriously, 'xenophobic'? How is it xenophobic to say that they're happy to entertain negotiations to publish in other countries so long as the publisher submits to that country's ratings board?

Maybe, since they sell software that includes pornographic scenes, they're just trying to avoid being at the centre of another fiasco like the one that surrounded 'RapeLay' a little while ago, for example? If they don't allow their content outside of Japan (where they know the prevailing mood) without submitting it to the other country's ratings board, they can blame the foreign ratings board if people get in a huff about the content. For example.

That may well be the case. Just sour grapes, really, because their work is visually so much higher quality than anything else. I'll just go back to watching the OP whenever I need my fix of Tenmon and pretty colours..

[Lunethex]

This just came up on RSS Feeds...

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2010/04/2 ... tion-site/

Ahhhh I understand now.

The developers of a VN got pissed off that someone made a fan translation patch for their game, so the DEVELOPERS OF THE GAME go to VANDALIZE the fan's wiki and start threatening them.

That's pretty sad. Not to mention very racist.