You better start being judgemental otherwise you'll end up with a circle of low class cretins around you. If you can't make a distinction between the guy who littered in your yard and the guy who burned down your house then you have a moral problem. I mean hey they're both vandalism of property right?

Now the Mercthievia code stealing thing would be like me starting a Star Wars mud and claiming I created a muppet named Yoda and Luke and an asthmatic evil fellow...forget his name...and the force ...and well it's NOT Star Wars... oh no nothing at all like Star Wars 'cause I wrote it from scratch and it's just a happy cooincidence that the Lucas fellow used the same names and world. Maybe just inspired from Star Wars if you please. Yeah that's the ticket.

That doesn't appear to fit the mold of "all copyright infringement is the same". But the above describes Mercthievia pretty well and not "fan fiction". I guess stealing 600K of copied code was one heck of an inspiration from the Diku and Merc groups. And it's a swell perversion of inspiration too. You see then all the really really stupid kiddies say well that's okay 'cause the Diku group say theirs was "inspired" from Aber. And being that suddenly "inspired" is a filthy word, a psuedonym for thievery. And that's where moral equivocating gets you, nothing left but meaningless euphemisms in a totally gray world.

[the_logos]

*Sob* My attempts at humour seem to be meeting with a brick wall! Good thing I haven't quit my day job with IRE. My dreams of being the next Richard Pryor have been dashed, by YOU, on the jagged rocks of hopelessness! I hope you're happy with yourself.

[Fifi]

This is a very long thread, and I don't have the energy to try to read it all. Are you looking for MU* based fiction? I'm happy to give some of mine providing this doesn't cause any conflict on the mud I play (one is being used in a clan doc.)

If you're not soliciting fiction, just ignore please. If you are please point me toward the contact person.

[Molly]

Thanks for trying to set the thread back on track, Fifi.
I gave up that long ago, it's beyond salvation. We are taking the serious discussion to an e-mail group instead, and leaving this thread to the trolls.

Sanvean is setting up a Yahoo mail group to discuss how to proceed with this idea, and we'll be happy to add your name to it. And of course anyone else, who is seriously interested in the idea of promoting text muds by publishing good fiction, and who would like to help out.

Just message me or him with your e-mail and we'll forward the application form to join.

[KaVir]

One administrator of a game where approximately 0.5% of the world is non-commercial credited fan fiction is criticising the administrator of another game which took around twenty six thousand lines of source code, stripped out the credits, and used it to earn a huge amount of cash.

But you're promoting it, and therefore supporting it, despite the fact that it does the same thing you're accusing Molly of but on a larger scale - and you're still promoting it, even after having it pointed out to you.

As I've said in the past, I don't generally have a problem with fan fiction as I consider it to be a completely different kettle of fish.  However I do have a problem with your hypocracy on this issue, particularly when you're accusing other people of doing exactly what you're supporting.

I'm also rather amused by your current trend of playing as , a role in which you've become so predictable in recent months that I can literally count the posts on one hand from the time he posts one of his "I'm great" flames to the time that you jump in to back him up and polish his boots.

[Raezon]

Honestly I think the best promotion you could possibly do would be creating actual novels printed for the regular public a la Warcraft, Halo, etc... The model would be similar in that it uses the games history to create a story that can be read by the general public, but linking it back to the game so people can "experience" the same events. Much like the Magic: The Gathering CCG spawning several novels, the difference would lie in the fact that MUDs' similarities towards novels is much greater than that of a card based game.

I ultimately thought that was the end-result of many MUDs contests for short stories and such. Take such short stories, combine them into an anthology of <insert name here> MUD and you have a ready made book.

[Hephos]

I think we have lots of stories and short novels in our forums. They are stories people have written to attain special titles or lastnames for their characters.

I'm sure they would be happy to contribute (at least some of them are i know).

So if you decide to put something together with stories and similar let me know and il scrounge up some of the better ones we have.

Maybe we should make some kind of united attempt to create a "compendium" sort of thing, printed in rl paper, or atleast some good pdf files that CAN be printed on paper, and together start spreading it out to RPG groups and game stores etc in our local towns.

(This is something we have planned to do ourselves anyways, but might as well make it as a united attempt and maybe raise the quality of it).

One extremely important thing for the success of something like that is ART. Any type of material used for advertising and promotion should have good art, wether it is a webpage, pdf or paper printed document. Simple text without good graphics to lift it up won't catch anyones attention.

[Jazuela]

I read a book, and for the life of me can't remember what it's called, about Doug Adams' attempt at a new Infocom game. It was more about him, than the game. I -believe- it might have been Neil Gaiman's "Don't Panic" but I'd have to re-read that to be sure (I've read all of the works written by or about Doug Adams).

The point is, it was a book -about- a game, and all the joys and heartaches that go with it.

I can see a compendium of snippets written by mud owners/admins, that tells a collective story about muds as a genre.

[Molly]

the_logos Dec. 06 2004,04:58
Tyche;
Dec. 06 2004,22:22
That is a great explanation, Tyche, the best one I have seen so far.

I think you are wasting your breath trying to explain this to the_logos though. To understand the distinction - (and also to use the word ‘hypocricy’ in its right sense) - you need to be able to distinguish between ‘right and wrong’ or ‘ethical and unethical’ rather than just ‘legal and illegal’.

Judging from what I have seen of the_logos postings over the years, he lacks that ability.

For those that have it, and since the integrity of my mud has been questioned; here are the policies of my Mud, and my own line of thinking about the matter:

1. I don’t really see fan-fiction as very wrong, although we don’t exactly encourage our builders to do it. The Starwars zone that the_logos and Jazuela keep bringing up is one of the oldest in our game; it was written before I joined the staff even. But I really don’t have any problem keeping it, as long as the Lucas Company don’t approach us with a formal request. Then I would of course remove it immediately.

Comment: We did actually try to contact them about it several years ago, but never got any reply. I think many muds in a similar situation have done the same, and like us settled with the thought that the company in question probably doesn't mind very much, but won't formally give their consent, out of fear of setting an unwanted precedence.

2. If someone got 'inspired' by one of my zones, and even used small parts of it as the foundation for a 'spin off', I might be slightly annoyed if they did it without asking my permission. But I would also be a bit flattered, since it meant my work was good enough to get inspired by.
With my consent I'd be totally ok with it of course.

Comment: This happens pretty often in my mud. Builders get inspired by the work of each other, and make frequent allusions to alreday existing zones, sometimes reusing the mobs.
Since this helps us to create a coherent world, we encourage it.

3. If someone stole one of my zones - (or anybody's zone for that matter) - and ripped out the credits to pass it off as their own work, I would be furious of course, what builder wouldn't?

Comment: This has happened twice in our mud. In the first case a builder downloaded a zone from the net, replaced the credit with his own name and claimed it to be his own. In the other case a builder copied large parts of a zone in another mud he played from the screen and used them in a zone he was building. Luckily another of our builders played the same mud and caught on to the scam.

Both zones were imediately deleted, and both builders were kicked out.

4. If someone stole the entire mud, code and all, ripped off the credits, changed the name, and then claimed thait it was their work, I would most likely go ballistic, especially if they were also making money from the theft.

Comment: This is what Medievia did. And there is no 'maybe' about it, it is a very well documented case of code theft, even if they have been trying to cover their tracks ever since.

-------

For those who want to join in the MudFiction venture, here's the address to the webpage that has just been set up for the development:

[Spoke]

It is always amusing to read any reply from Molly to the_logos and most of the times the ones going in the other direction. Really, eventhough the self-glorification of logos in many of the posts he write may get a little tiring, he usually states his point clearly and very often gives some kind of feedback about what is being written. On the other hand, the incandecent flame wars started not with a post of the_logos, but people making a whole drama because he was adverticing and helping some kind of non-profit organization in the process. Then, when the thread was being gotten back to its original purpose by Molly, at least partially, I saw a few good-intended and full-of-feedback and support posts by the_logos () . Now, in his post of () the_logos states his opinion, from his point of view, and in not a single word of his post a personal attack is issued. On the other hand, flame-starter-Molly promptly makes everything that follows to become Tokyo-while-Godzilla-is-paying-a-visit ().

Now, after the brief summary, I think a point must be highlighted. Molly, eventhough you keep claiming that there is a difference between the two attitudes followed by the two muds in discussion, yours and Medievia, you clearlly say also that this sends the message that eventhough you see what you do as something wrong, you do not think it is very wrong, at which point you are making your personal opinion to prevalece over the intent of the copyright. Even if there are lesser and more serious ways to break a license (steal, strip credits and put own, make money out of someone else's work, ...) it does not mean that doing the lesser thing (putting the area up for the fun of the fans) is any better. Therefore, if someone calls you hypocrite for condemning the first but promoting the second, they are at least close enough in their appreciation.

Now, as for the intention of the Mud promotion. The idea of putting stories together sounds very good, I saw Angie linking it to an art board discussion for MUDs which would make a very good mix, since as Hephos pointed out, good graphic material would be needed. The whole idea seems like a nice effort, but I would still pay attention to the advice of trying to monitor wether or not it yields the desired adverticement effect. The good part about this idea, I think, is that you are trying to build it in such a way that all material used is being given by people willing to help and who have no problems with that, so, even if the results are not the ones expected (on a free internet site for example), you could probably easily take a further step and try to publish some kind of periodical issue, or a single issue with the best of what you recollect, and try an approach as the one described by Brody and the novel he wrote.

[Dulan]

[the_logos]

Dulan, I realize that you're not big on reasoning vs. flaming, but it's only insulting if you consider using IP you don't have permission to use wrong. I'm not addressing that question as I have come to recognize that there are a plethora of legitimate different opinions on the validity of the very idea of intellectual property to begin with. If you notice, I have not condemned the use of other people's IP on this thread. I don't care, as long as it doesn't involve any of Iron Realms' IP or any of Feist's IP. I, personally, would take immediate action against someone using IP I own or control without permission, but that's my choice and certainly not an imperative.

I was merely pointing out that Molly should clean her own house before acting like Medievia is doing something she's not. Brody, you'll notice, isn't slighting Medievia. (and my god, name-calling is so juvenile. "Mercthievia." Grow up.)

I understand the arguments about fan fiction, etc, but from my own POV, it doesn't matter whether someone is making money off the IP or not. I think you could also look at it from the perspective of the value of the IP being taken. The DIKU IP has very little value. Even the owners don't care enough to make an effort to protect it. If someone wants to steal a rock out of my front yard and somehow turn around and make some money out of it, I don't really care. It doesn't hurt me, except perhaps my ego. On the other hand, if someone steals my car, which has a lot of value, I'm going to be quite upset. Yes, of course these analogies (like all analogies) are not perfect. Someone using someone's IP doesn't prevent the owner from also using it, unlike stealing a car.

At the end of the day, the DIKU owners have sent a very clear message that the IP isn't worth enough to bother protecting. Lucas has sent a similar message, though probably more along the lines of, "As long as they gain no public profile they can't really damage the brand very much, so who cares." If Brody's star wars MUD became super-popular, with a couple thousand people online, you can bet Lucas would take note, regardless of whether it's non-commercial "fan fiction" or not. (And as we've already pointed out, Lucas already prohibits the use of his IP except in a private, non-commercial venue, so there's no question that MUDs using his IP are in violation of the Lucas license. Whether violating licenses is a big deal is another question.)

I don't really expect those of you who use terms like "Mercthievia" to read this with anything approaching an open mind though, as you're on a crusade and any other point of view is heresy that must be crushed. I'm willing to look at Medievia as a mud that entertains a LOT of people. I don't like seeing them ostracized, because they clearly have a fair amount of knowledge and skill at running a MUD. (and let's face it, the code, which has, no doubt, been hugely altered by now, does not make the MUD. A MUD is as much about the service you provide as the code you have. That's why the Ultima Online emulators never even approached a fraction of the playerbase of the commercial service.)
--matt

[the_logos]

Right, you assumed. On the other hand, you could just go read the Lucas license, where it very clearly states that you cannot use his IP unless it's non-commercial AND private. No need to make assumptions, because it prohibits it right there, in black and white.

You're obviously just going to pull out justification after justification for why you don't feel bound by the license whereas you feel Medievia should be bound by their DIKU license.
--matt

[Jazuela]

Dulan, what the heck does Brody have to do with this, and why are you claiming I"m taking potshots at him? This is the first time I've even mentioned his name in this thread, and I have no idea what you're talking about.

As for "pot/kettle/black" and IP issues, as far as I know, Armageddon has none. But then, since I'm not an administrator or IMM there, and I've never heard ANYONE accuse them or even question them other than you and KaVir, I have no reason to know.

Though you might believe you're really important, and though KaVir might believe he's really important, neither of your opinions mean diddly regarding any of this. I'll repeat:

I WAS POINTING OUT AN IRONIC STATEMENT MADE BY ONE PERSON WHOSE GAME HAS WITHIN IT COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL FROM ELSEWHERE, WITHOUT ACQUIRING PERMISSION TO DO SO, WHOSE STATEMENT WAS TAKING A POTSHOT AT SOMEONE ELSE WHO HAS BEEN PROVEN TO DO THE SAME THING.

I have no opinion on the matter. I don't really care if Medievia steals stuff from DIKU. I have no stake in it one way or another. I don't care if Molly got permission or not from Lucas, because I have no stake in that either. I made a comment. Shall I go back and edit the comment, and delete it like some people do, and then be accused of being a moron for deleting posts that are taken out of context for the express purpose of insulting the poster?

I'll be glad to retract the statement and let y'all return to your usual flame fests without me if it give you the hard-on you seem to be aching for.

[Angie]

Congratulations! You have gained this flame war a new level! It is now eligible to enter the sexual insults field.

You know Fagin had a pretty successful business going too.

Now you started a forum where the Mercthievians are welcome and anti-Mercthievian speech is censored. If you want flame free discussions with Soliel and Vyce concerning muds you know where you can take them. Don't bother trying to sell that new corporate brand of "open-minded" morals free censorship thing as appropriate. That's really gay. It's sooooo totally gay it's juvenile. Annoyingly gay and immature. A young whippersnapper like yourself shouldn't be so "closed-minded" to the wisdom of elders who have many years of experience with dealing with degenerates and neer'do'wells the likes of those who run Mercthievia.

Show some tolerance for Christ's sake.

[Jazuela]

Aww thanks Angie. I've always aspired to bring discussions to new heights. Tune in next week, when I add "insulting peoples' pets" to the fray. I have a bunch of one-liners just itching to appear.

[Estarra]

Copyright law regarding fan fiction is pretty muddy, but Stanford Law updates a pretty good primer on the subject. Start by reading the analysis of J.K. Rowlings' cease and desist letter regarding .

(Note to self: Shelve the Harry Potter Sex MUSH project.)

[the_logos]

Actually it was a forum where people who run MUDs that have achieved a minimum level of popularity were welcome, and flaming was not welcome. Turned out not to have critical mass.

Is there anybody else that'd love to see an open (ie anyone is welcome) MUD forum where flames are simply not allowed?

--matt