zobo1942:
Perhaps “If you’re using someone else’s work, have the courtesy to ask - and abide by the response. Think of it like borrowing someone’s lawnmower.”
M4cR1II3n:
Ehm… what happened here? I just woke up, and it seems to have been a pretty big flame war or something going on?
Baggronor:
Caring about your work and how it is used is not selfish or unreasonable. Some of us even do this work professionally or part-time outside the site, where not paying attention to usage is a serious mistake.
When I put artwork on here, it is obviously with the knowledge that people can use it. I just like to be asked before they use it, most people do and that’s what I’ve always said on here.
Recently, since I actually started making and selling minis, I’m re-evaluating how I’m going about these things, not because I’ve suddenly turned into a hard-nosed, money-grabbing artist (I’d be pickling sharks or opening an exhibition about my bed if I was one of those) but because I want the artwork done for my minis to be for my minis. This doesn’t mean I’m stopping doing stuff for CDO, it just means there’ll be a clear-cut line between the two. Still not 100% on how I’ll do that, but at the point that it stops being freebies for CDO and starts to involve something that supports my life directly in some small way, I’m going to care more about it.
I can see why this kind of usage issue is harder to accept with writing though, because its so much more specific and can be taken out of context or altered far easier. A picture drawn by me will always be a picture drawn by me, no matter what text you put next to it; writing is much harder to identify once the author’s name is gone, and can be changed by absolutely anyone.
Grimstonefire:
There is a way you can disable the right click copy/save on pictures isn’t there Baggronor. I’ve seen that before, when you try it brings up a message and presumably you could add to that to say ‘copyright Titan Wargames/ John Blake 2012’ etc.
Of course it’s not going to stop determined people, but it would demonstrate your intentions.
Thommy H:
Someone can always just screendump it. There’s no way to protect what’s yours online, so we have to rely on basic human decency to ensure people respect the rights of creators. Generally this works about as well as you’d expect.
Necrotique:
And that attitude is precisely what is so very, very wrong with so many game designers.I understand your point and put a +1 to it but I have to ask, what did Thommy say in this thread to annoy you so much? I can't see any edited posts. Not trying to stir things up, just wondering where you get such a heated response from.
What you fail to realize is that, quite simply, you did not do a perfect job. And I did not do a perfect job. And, frankly, no one could do a perfect job. If things were to be left intact and not repurposed outside of their original, intended context-- quite simply the ENTIRE gaming industry would not exist. In fact, no genre of fiction would exist if that attitude had prevailed.
In this particular case though? Hell-- if ancient celtic mythology had held your attitude, Thommy, then I guarantee that Lord of the Rings NEVER could have been written. Nor could any of the other fantasy novels that took Tolkein's reinvention of mythological creatures and posited them as effectively human nationalities and then pitted them against a great evil.
And had these ideas never been repurposed beyond their original intention of selling a set of novels, Chainmail could never have existed. And had the intention of Chainmail held true-- then Dungeons & Dragons never could have existed. It just wouldn't have been a leap that no one would have been allowed to make.
And you know what? If Dungeons & Dragons had never existed, then there simply would have been no place for a company to make models for the game such as a small English company known as Citadel Models which would have become known as Games Workshop.
And had that company been forbidden to exist and had those models been marked to never be repurposed outside of D&D, then there would be no place in the world for WarHammer to begin with.
And if Games Workshop weren't such short-sighted asses so anxious to shoot themselves in the foot, then they never would have flipped off an upcoming computer gaming company that wanted to make a WarHammer game known as Blizzard... and WarCraft never would have been born.
You see-- it is all a progression of people stealing each other's best ideas and then adding their own spin and ideas and continuing forth. If you were to be honest, Thommy, TRULY honest, then your own list of credits would be nearly unbearably wrong. But instead you have stolen ideas from two dozen people who came before you and never once thought twice about crediting them or acknowledging them. I'm sure you rationalized it in some manner-- but 70+% of what you absolutely demand to receive full credit for was conceptualized, composed and actualized before you ever came to the party.
Perhaps one day you'll grow up enough to get over yourself. In fact, I am sure that day will eventually arrive even if it takes a long time. But right now your position is that of a blind, unaware, selfish ass. And probably nothing I have wrote will be able to get through to you to make you realize your own error-- but if it someone else "gets it" and stops acting as though your stance has any merit, I'll be more than satisfied.
I might be willing to go with you as far as saying it would be best for someone to go ahead and copy the figures you arrived at for the values of things in the current edition of WarHammer without specifically suggesting you endorse any changes they may have made-- but that's about it.
Hobgoblyn
Thommy H:
I deleted some of my posts, but the one that was in response to said simply that there’s a difference between wanting people to use your work and being okay with them copying and pasting everything you’ve written and putting their own name on it.
cornixt:
I don’t know how much I have missed here, but I thought Thommy was more upset about someone taking chunks of his work wholesale and using it, whereas Hobgoblyn’s points all seem to be about the ideas that he came up with, which is a completely different thing.
Hashut’s Blessing:
The problem is more the theft of direct text than the ideas within. That said, I think the topic regarding people’s thoughts on using other people’s work is exhausted, especially in this thread which is asking people for permission.
As I’ve said, best to ask people on an individual basis.
Hobgoblyn:
I want to make it entirely, unequivocally clear that…
Not only would I be absolutely fine with everyone and anyone using what I created-- I would be outright flattered. As amusing as the time I spent dissecting the Warhammer Rules, pouring over every rulebook and thinking about how to create fair and balanced rules might have been, I would be happy if the time I devoted wasn’t entirely and utterly wasted and at some point brings some amusement to someone else.
I am never, ever going to make any real use of it. I am not deluded enough to think I am going to become a fantasy game writer or something. Hell, I don’t have the damn attention span for that. I come, I do, I conquer and I move on. I already have a job I am quite happy with. So, please, by all means I suggest everyone look at what I put together at how to use hobgoblins (not that anyone necessarily does) and use it or altering and put it back as much or often as they want. I honestly don’t even care if you care if you credit me-- I go by a dozen online monikers and unless someone decided to really do some research back when that book was still up, no one really knows who I am anyway. So, honestly, I sort of prefer it in that way. I would rather be pleasantly surprised one day coming across something and knowing secretly to myself that I inspired it at some point.
Seriously, I don’t know why some people have turned selfish and gotten a big metal rod shoved up their back-end, but I was under the impression from day 1 that everything we did was an open community project for a model line that had been discontinued and, if we were ever going to be honest with ourselves, was never going to be recontinued because in the era of online electronic gaming the whole concept of dumping a thousand dollars and spending over a year individually painting models for a game where you need to spend an enormous amount of time to set up matches and 8 hours to play a game that might honestly be effectively won within the first 20 minutes is over. Chaos Dwarfs may arise again in the form of a late expansion for some online game-- if GW ever gets their act together in the electronic market, but even in that case-- everything here is really for naught if no one ever uses it.
And if you intended for it to never be used or looked at ever again-- why exactly did you make it in the first place and why not delete all threads that pertain to it now? Everything I did was to inspire people to build and try out the army or at least make their own variation of the rules. But I never even had the time, patience and attention span to finish building and painting the army I planned in the first place.
Hobgoblyn:
And that attitude is precisely what is so very, very wrong with so many game designers.
What you fail to realize is that, quite simply, you did not do a perfect job. And I did not do a perfect job. And, frankly, no one could do a perfect job. If things were to be left intact and not repurposed outside of their original, intended context-- quite simply the ENTIRE gaming industry would not exist. In fact, no genre of fiction would exist if that attitude had prevailed.
In this particular case though? Hell-- if ancient celtic mythology had held your attitude, Thommy, then I guarantee that Lord of the Rings NEVER could have been written. Nor could any of the other fantasy novels that took Tolkein’s reinvention of mythological creatures and posited them as effectively human nationalities and then pitted them against a great evil.
And had these ideas never been repurposed beyond their original intention of selling a set of novels, Chainmail could never have existed. And had the intention of Chainmail held true-- then Dungeons & Dragons never could have existed. It just wouldn’t have been a leap that no one would have been allowed to make.
And you know what? If Dungeons & Dragons had never existed, then there simply would have been no place for a company to make models for the game such as a small English company known as Citadel Models which would have become known as Games Workshop.
And had that company been forbidden to exist and had those models been marked to never be repurposed outside of D&D, then there would be no place in the world for WarHammer to begin with.
And if Games Workshop weren’t such short-sighted asses so anxious to shoot themselves in the foot, then they never would have flipped off an upcoming computer gaming company that wanted to make a WarHammer game known as Blizzard… and WarCraft never would have been born.
You see-- it is all a progression of people stealing each other’s best ideas and then adding their own spin and ideas and continuing forth. If you were to be honest, Thommy, TRULY honest, then your own list of credits would be nearly unbearably wrong. But instead you have stolen ideas from two dozen people who came before you and never once thought twice about crediting them or acknowledging them. I’m sure you rationalized it in some manner-- but 70+% of what you absolutely demand to receive full credit for was conceptualized, composed and actualized before you ever came to the party.
Perhaps one day you’ll grow up enough to get over yourself. In fact, I am sure that day will eventually arrive even if it takes a long time. But right now your position is that of a blind, unaware, selfish ass. And probably nothing I have wrote will be able to get through to you to make you realize your own error-- but if it someone else “gets it” and stops acting as though your stance has any merit, I’ll be more than satisfied.
I might be willing to go with you as far as saying it would be best for someone to go ahead and copy the figures you arrived at for the values of things in the current edition of WarHammer without specifically suggesting you endorse any changes they may have made-- but that’s about it.
Grimstonefire:
As it is relevant to people who could not see what I have written elsewhere:
As I see it, anything anyone puts on the internet in a format that can be copied faces the risk that it will be copied and either uncredited or hideously distorted outside of the original authors knowledge or intention. If you don’t protect yourself in how you present it you have to accept this is something that can happen. If you don’t accept this, either don’t put it on the internet or don’t discuss it on CDO.
So really, anyone concerned with people stealing their work in a copy and paste format should not put it on the internet in this way.
Someone said the other day you can put it on as a picture, or in an uneditable pdf format. Either of those ways will instantly stop anyone stealing large quantities of text as they will very quickly get bored retyping it.
Of course it won’t help people who have already sent it out across the internet in a way that can be copied, but going forwards it’s obviously something to consider.
Grimstonefire:
It is of course, but you are ‘lucky’ in a way that everyone you have needed to contact about using your work has been a member of CDO.
There will no doubt be people out there who see your list on Issuu and decide to use the work for their list and share it with their friends but have no connection to CDO and no intention of ever making contact with you.
Basically I’m saying that in an ideal world people would ask first, but in reality if you stop them copying then you wouldn’t risk people using it without permission.
zobo1942:
Sadly (in my opinion) the only solution is one where anyone who shares anything publicly accepts that the act of sharing material implies that anyone else can use it for any purpose, credited or not. Which sucks for the people that put the work into creating it, because most of the rewards associated with creating new and interesting content will no longer exist. It also sucks for the community as a whole, as it would be perfectly understandable if the creators of that material stopped sharing it publicly.
Willmark:
Looking at this I see two valid sides to the argument but how about we do without flaming each others opinions.
Otherwise locky locky time.
zobo1942:
Perhaps “If you’re using someone else’s work, have the courtesy to ask - and abide by the response. Think of it like borrowing someone’s lawnmower.”
M4cR1II3n:
Ehm… what happened here? I just woke up, and it seems to have been a pretty big flame war or something going on?
Baggronor:
Caring about your work and how it is used is not selfish or unreasonable. Some of us even do this work professionally or part-time outside the site, where not paying attention to usage is a serious mistake.
When I put artwork on here, it is obviously with the knowledge that people can use it. I just like to be asked before they use it, most people do and that’s what I’ve always said on here.
Recently, since I actually started making and selling minis, I’m re-evaluating how I’m going about these things, not because I’ve suddenly turned into a hard-nosed, money-grabbing artist (I’d be pickling sharks or opening an exhibition about my bed if I was one of those) but because I want the artwork done for my minis to be for my minis. This doesn’t mean I’m stopping doing stuff for CDO, it just means there’ll be a clear-cut line between the two. Still not 100% on how I’ll do that, but at the point that it stops being freebies for CDO and starts to involve something that supports my life directly in some small way, I’m going to care more about it.
I can see why this kind of usage issue is harder to accept with writing though, because its so much more specific and can be taken out of context or altered far easier. A picture drawn by me will always be a picture drawn by me, no matter what text you put next to it; writing is much harder to identify once the author’s name is gone, and can be changed by absolutely anyone.
Grimstonefire:
There is a way you can disable the right click copy/save on pictures isn’t there Baggronor. I’ve seen that before, when you try it brings up a message and presumably you could add to that to say ‘copyright Titan Wargames/ John Blake 2012’ etc.
Of course it’s not going to stop determined people, but it would demonstrate your intentions.
Thommy H:
Someone can always just screendump it. There’s no way to protect what’s yours online, so we have to rely on basic human decency to ensure people respect the rights of creators. Generally this works about as well as you’d expect.