Member Discussions

After writng an area, having it placed on the mud for use.. then being banned form the mud.. what is within my limits for getting the area removed from the mud?

Also, I have a friend that also wrote some areas for the same mud, my friend asked me to have them removed along with my area.

We both have the hardcopies of the areas on our computers, along with handwritting notes, writeups, and maps for the areas down on paper. (So there is no question about if it's our or not.)

Now, the mud in question has decided to NOT remove the areas, even after being asked to several times. Considering another person had a lot of problems getting their areas removed after being banned as well..

All is all, a huge messy ordeal is starting to erupt over the mud I was banned from and the new mud that I play on. I've been trashed all over both muds (Thankfully the admins at the new mud are taking this all in stride, for the time being.)

SO.. what can be done to get my area and my friends areas removed? Should I possibly go higher up and contact the host? Is it possible to contact the host in reguards to this type of issue?

Read up on the DMCA. You potentially could file a DMCA takedown notice with the mud's host.

Unfortunately you've hit on a problem that has no clear or easy solution. One the one hand, many mud admins decide that when you sign on to build for them, areas become their property and you have no claim to it. Other mud admins, if you leave (under whatever reason) will ask permission to retain your areas, some won't. Some admins will remove areas created by builders who request it (but those admins are few and far between).

One problem you face is legality to have your areas removed upon request. Its a grey area at best. Regardless of what many people on here claim, the courts around the world have not sat in judgement on any cases dealing with MUD areas and whether they fall under copyright, intellectual property, etc, at least to my knowledge.

Many admins seem to feel that becoming a builder on their mud is much like someone who is hired by a company. Most companies have rules (normally written somewhere) that anything you produce on company time for the benefit of the company (use, money generation, whatever) is owned by the company and not by you.

Some builders feel this way as well, others; however, feel that areas they create are owned by them and that the builders have final say on the area. Like you and your friend, my wife and I created quite a few areas on a mud, pretty much re-vamping most of the mud. We parted from the mud on less then perfect terms, and we requested our areas be removed. They have not done so. So, we're SOL. Unless we decided to try to bring this to court, we have no recourse to force the mud to remove the areas, just as you and your friend do not. You can attempt to speak to their host, but don't be suprised if you're ignored or are told that the host will not shut down the mud.

Unfortunately, these types of issues, as well as many others have led to a decline (or so it seems) of people willing to build, putting forth the time and effort to complete areas. You can see how many muds are seeking builders, but the simple fact is, muds have have good builders do their best to keep them, jealously guarding their "gems".

On the flipside of this, many muds are plagued by people who contact the admins seeking builders, the admins take time out of their schedules to talk with them, explain the mud, set up the accounts, often teaching them the mud's specific building methods/tools (if not stock muds or standard OLCs), etc... And 99.9% of the time, the builder either never completes even a single area, or never bothers showing back up, with the admin wasting even more of their valuable time trying to find out what's going on, and cleaning up the leavings of that "builder". Or the builder strings the admin along for months giving excuse after excuse as to why they can't build right now (family issues, work, pregnant, bf "overtook" their PC, illness after supposed illness, etc). This goes on for months and months until finally the admin gets sick of it, and either a potentially great mud fades away, or the admin keeps trying to find builders only to get disappointed time and again (and often ends up closing up, or "firing" all the dead weight and starts doing it all themselves which could take a long time).

Anyway, I digress. Basically, you got 3 choices:

give up cuz they obviously don't care and won't remove the areas

smear them all over the place so no one ever builds for them again

attempt litigation and probably get laughed out of court, not to mention wasting hundreds or thousands of dollars in costs to litigate, plus time off from work/school/family.

Basically its a sucky ass proposition.

Well this is simply my take.

Why have the areas removed?

When you created the areas did you intend them to only be used for a limited time? If not, what is the purpose for asking them to be removed now? Is there a reason other than spite?

Now you may be able to force the person/group to remove the areas, but what if anything does that say about you?

All is all, a huge messy ordeal is starting to erupt over the mud I was banned from and the new mud that I play on. I've been trashed all over both muds (Thankfully the admins at the new mud are taking this all in stride, for the time being.)

Is this directly because of your trying to remove your areas?

I don’t know the details so I can only speak on general terms. I personally would be leery of hiring anyone who was known to do this. That said, I certainly and understand the motivation to get even especially when I feel I have been wronged.

Still, if you did not enter a contract for work for hire or otherwise grant them non-revocable use of your work, then assuming you coded for an area or wrote the description for an area, it remains your copyright.

SO.. what can be done to get my area and my friends areas removed? Should I possibly go higher up and contact the host? Is it possible to contact the host in reguards to this type of issue?

DMCA takedown notice. Simple. Free if you do it yourself, not so cheap if you bother hiring a lawyer. I've had success with it in chasing down people who violate the license on my codebase, I see no reason why you can't do the same for an area.

Why have the areas removed?

I don't think spite has anything to do with it. If a MUD has banned you why should contribute to help them continue taking players from other MUDs? Also if they are forced to remove them you can use them on another MUD that wants all zones to be original.

As for Kindarthy's mention of administrator's being few and far between that will remove areas upon request. I've actually never found this to be case, most administrators I have known would indeed without a second thought remove the areas. They may regret having to do so, but would still indeed do so unless their was an agreement that their builders specifically agreed to that said that all zones were the muds property.

(Comment added by Drizzt1216 on Sat Aug 11 19:24:49 2007)

Wow can't type, that was Kingarthyr not Kindarthy

One problem you face is legality to have your areas removed upon request. Its a grey area at best. Regardless of what many people on here claim, the courts around the world have not sat in judgement on any cases dealing with MUD areas and whether they fall under copyright, intellectual property, etc, at least to my knowledge.

No court to my knowledge has sat on a case about someone photocopying a book while wearing a clown costume at a children’s party. This doesn’t mean that copyright law doesn’t suddenly apply if you do it at a similar type of party.

There are questions which may be unique to computers which still have yet to be resolved Matt/Sarapis’ thread raises some. For instance, can software itself be a copier for purposes of violating copyright? However, while software is relatively legally new, copyright effecting prose is not. Books written on a computer aren’t in a grey area simply because they weren’t written by hand or typed on a typewriter.

Those same laws apply to prose aspects of area design. The non-prose aspects are software and are also protected in law.

Yes there are gray areas, there are gray areas in all law, again Matt’s thread is a great example of this, but to say that this is a grey area at best is like investor fraud is a grey area at best.

This is not gray. Copyright in the US attaches to the creator at creation (unless the copyright is a work for hire). Sure it may be gray or even grey if the principals/server is in some country which doesn’t adhere to the Berne Convention (few) or exempt certain provisions. I think you’ve greatly overinflated this gray area. Especially when you get into what people feel. What they feel doesn’t matter any more than what people feel about stealing office supplies. Most, if not all of the rest of your advice I agree with.

I don't think spite has anything to do with it. If a MUD has banned you why should contribute to help them continue taking players from other MUDs? Also if they are forced to remove them you can use them on another MUD that wants all zones to be original.

That’s why I posted the question about spite as a question. As to why, wasn’t that the general understanding at the time the work was done? There might be some MUDs which have a separate set up, but in my experience the MUD is asking for permanent contributions and that is what the builders are implying they’re giving. That you may be able to get out of the understood agreement doesn’t make it moral or ethical.

I like your second point there, that the person may want to use it in another MUD for whatever reason. I think the moral ethical concern still attaches.

If you built it, then I believe it's yours. You may not be able to move the file, due to the rules of the mud, but the credits to you should remain intact. In that case, technically, the mud owner owns it, but a decent mud owner won't have an iron grip on his builders if he wishes to accomplish anything, area-wise.

Whether or not an admin will remove the area or give you the .are file depends on the admin, in almost all cases, however. In short: don't build for a jackass.



(Comment added by Epilogy on Sat Aug 11 21:54:52 2007)

Commas ahoy, mateys!
I'm going to sleeep!

Couple things.. I wasn't hired to build the area. Neither was my friend.
We built them just to build. Had some time, and did it.

I gave permission to use the areas for as long as I was a part of the mud.

In no way do I want to sound like a prude, but where I go, my areas go.

kingarthyr wrote:
"Its a grey area at best. Regardless of what many people on here claim [blha blah yadda]"

That it has not been adjudicated does not mean
that the law is unclear. Perhaps kingarthyr
has graduated from alternative history
to alternative law.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net/grey_area.jpg

This is where use of an offline builder such as VisualMud can come in handy. You can keep a copy of your area, and of its source file, and run an exporter to create a copy in the format of the MUD you're building for.

Get banned, or the mud shuts down? Take your zone to a new one. All sorts of potential with a personal graphical builder.


Disclaimer: VisualMud was built for use with my MUD, but we're making the exporter work for a variety of formats.

(Comment added by OnceHour on Sun Aug 12 0:50:16 2007)

PS, you just need to DMCA the guy or his host to get the area removed pretty quickly. Ignore KingArthyr's defeatist post as new laws have made this easier and easier to deal with.

Even in the past, most hosts would listen to a reasonably written and legal sounding letter pointing out copyright infringement. Even without a lawyer, few hosts would willingly support copyright infringement.

Barring any work for hire agreement or copyright assignment agreement to the contrary, you own your work and the copyright in it. As was mentioned if they refuse to remove your work, you may send a DMCA request to the host. Failing that your only recourse is hiring an attorney.

All that said, I would have advised you and your friend(s) to have NOT demanded removal at all regardless and to just move on to another mud. If every Tom, Dick, and Jane builder/coder/designer in the mud community who had a falling out with another demanded that their prior contributions made in good faith be removed from each others mud or site, then there wouldn't be any collaborative mud projects of any significance around.

I would not work with anyone who has a history of taking back what they've previously contributed, or who made their contributions contingent on their future association with me. On the flip side, neither would I work with those who refuse to remove an author's property upon request.

It's really too bad you had to escalate the banning (or end of your collaboration) into a full fledged divorce proceeding with the attendant pissing contest over custody of your minor "children".

I have been asked to remove areas a few times, and did remove them. However I am not sure I would really have had to do that. It feels like a more complicated situation. In one way it is like you have downloaded zMUD and then Zugg emails you, asking you to remove the application from your harddrive - maybe because he didn't like something you did.

Another example would be if someone works on an open source project and then requests all his contributions to it be removed. Can he really do that? If it was a very active developer the entire project could be destroyed.

There are other issues as well such as how much should be removed? Should all equipment that was created for that specific area be removed as well? What about players that use/have that equipment? What about potential references to story/entities of that area from other parts of the MUD?

With time a good area can become an integrated part of a MUD and removing it could require a lot of work and planning to do it well. It might not be something you do in 20 seconds.

What could be done to prevent builders from taking "revenge" on a MUD by requesting all their contributions be removed? Is the risk of hiring builders too large?

If "where you go, your areas go" -- that is, you didn't design them to integrate with the theme and context of the MUD they were built for and you don't care if they integrate with the theme and context elsewhere, you'll just slap them in -- I'd definitely say it's a good idea that they be taken down, with or without your request.

As an admin, the last thing I want to deal with is someone holding game content hostage in a personality conflict pissing match.

This has been brought up here numerous times, and the answer has always been the same. BUT i disagree with what everyone is saying personally, i believe that once the area has been added to the MUD then it comes under the muds copyright, this is a personal belief, same as when someone codes something for the mud that code becomes a part of the MUD. I know legally this isn't the case but that is how i have always dealt with things.

As long as you leave the currect credits in the area, or in the code, and dont try to say you made the area, or wrote the code yerself.

You volunteered to provide something for someone, and they decided they didn't want you there anymore, and now you want that something back?

It just doesn't work that way. You gave it to them, of your own free will, without anyone coercing you to do so. It's theirs now; they can keep it, trash it, or change it however they like. The only issue would be if they claimed they created it themselves. But you haven't mentioned that was the case, merely that they won't take the content down.

It's just like in -any- kind of work. If you work for a company and type a paper for your boss, and he fires you a week later, you do -not- have the right to ask your ex-boss to destroy the paper you wrote him.

If you volunteer for a charity and bake cookies for them to sell, you do -not- have the right to ask for those cookies back when they decide they no longer need you.

Buck up, learn from your mistakes, and find a game where you and the admin can get along with each other better.


(Comment added by desharei on Sun Aug 12 8:54:50 2007)

Adding another example of why it makes no sense that you should have any "right" to have your content removed from the game - and this example is more applicable than the others:

You are a grafitti artist and - with the shop owner's permission and consent, paint the outside of the shop wall. Something happens and the shop owner tells you that you are no longer allowed to shop in his store. So you demand that he whitewash the wall to cover your painting. He says no, he likes the painting, it will remain as is.

You painted it on HIS wall. He owns it now. He -can- whitewash it if he wants. But he isn't obligated to do so.

From MudDev:

<snip>
This is not gray. Copyright in the US attaches to the creator at creation (unless the copyright is a work for hire). Sure it may be gray or even grey if the principals/server is in some country which doesn’t adhere to the Berne Convention (few) or exempt certain provisions. I think you’ve greatly overinflated this gray area. Especially when you get into what people feel. What they feel doesn’t matter any more than what people feel about stealing office supplies. Most, if not all of the rest of your advice I agree with.
</snip>

The reason I said it was grey was due to proving that they created the areas. Anyone could map the area on paper, and if they had access to the monster and area information as an immortal they could theoretically write down all those little notes the OP says he has. Did he do any of the creation online using the tools provided by the mud? If so, that may give the mud admin the possibility of being shown as a "co-creator" because without the mud being up, the area couldn't be created. Which is an argument that could be used by any mud admin for any area, monster, object, etc created on a mud.


From Epilogy:

<snip>
Whether or not an admin will remove the area or give you the .are file depends on the admin, in almost all cases, however. In short: don't build for a jackass.
</snip>

Not all muds use .are files, so the removal of an area could become a pain in the ass, and some muds do not allow for the saving of specific sections of rooms, so the area might be lost completely, except for whatever the builder has in notes, maps, etc.


From Cratylus:

<snip>
That it has not been adjudicated does not mean
that the law is unclear. Perhaps kingarthyr
has graduated from alternative history
to alternative law.
</snip>

And since there has not been a case that has been litigated, everything is still open to interpretation, Cratylus. And AFAIK, the law doesn't say much about areas created on a mud. When it comes to an author, writer, etc of a book, its fairly clear an concise, because nothing is needed to create a book aside from pencil, paper and the author's imagination. When it comes to building an area, unless a 3rd party program is used to create a .are file or something similar, the MUD is involved, and therefore it is possible that they SHARE copyright of any works produced on the mud.

As to your constant sniping, it's not worth the dignity of a reply, nor is your inability to hold an intellectual discourse and debate without resorting to juvenile tactics.


From OnceHour:

<snip>
This is where use of an offline builder such as VisualMud can come in handy. You can keep a copy of your area, and of its source file, and run an exporter to create a copy in the format of the MUD you're building for.

Get banned, or the mud shuts down? Take your zone to a new one. All sorts of potential with a personal graphical builder.
</snip>

Again, this presupposes that a file format is used. What if one isn't? What if offline building is unavailable? Until we find out how the areas were created, discussions relating to file formats, etc are moot. If the area was created online using online commands that required the OP to be logged into the mud, then we have to deal with the possible legal ramifications, like, does the mud get co-creator type copyrights like a book written as a collaboration of two authors.


From Varmel:

<snip>
What could be done to prevent builders from taking "revenge" on a MUD by requesting all their contributions be removed? Is the risk of hiring builders too large?
</snip>

Have any builders you hire "sign" a contract that states that any areas, objects, monsters, etc created for use of the mud becomes the sole and exclusive property of the mud.

We can play lawyers on TV all we want, but the simple fact is that you own your IP unless you are contracting a work for hire, either as an employee or an independent contractor. It doesn't matter if you write your area with Herbie Locke's OLC version 9.6 or a magic marker on the bathroom stall of your elementary school.

On the other hand, the realities of doing this as a hobby lead to the predicament of the OP.

If the area was created online using online commands that required the OP to be logged into the mud, then we have to deal with the possible legal ramifications, like, does the mud get co-creator type copyrights like a book written as a collaboration of two authors.

I think a more apt comparison would be to look at the mud as the publisher. Let's assume for a minute that a builder maps out his area and writes the descriptions on pen and paper, in notepad, whatever in advance. Then he logs on to the mud and uses OLC to transfer that information online. I don't see how this is different from an author writing a manuscript and then handing it over to the publisher, who'll then set it, print it, etc.

In fact, in the case of the builder, he has more of a hand in its "publishing" than does the author, since I doubt the author goes down to the publishing house and prepares the manuscript himself.

The bottom line is, anyway, that while the publisher has some distribution/merchandise/etc. rights (which of course depend on the exact nature of the contract with the author), the author retains the rights to the written work; the publisher isn't considered a co-creator or anything silly like that. If I decide to copy Harry Potter and try to sell it, then J.K. Rowling can sue me - it's her work. I can't say what would happen if the publisher went behind JKR's back and decided to things with the books not previously agreed upon, but, well, that's why contracts exist.

Similarly, I would argue, even though an area in a mud might be "published", unless it actually IS a collaborative work, the mud is essentially just acting as a 'publishing house'. Of course, the drawback here is that most mud builders don't sign contracts with their administrators, which is too bad because all of this stuff would be a lot simpler. :)

"If you volunteer for a charity and bake cookies for them to sell, you do -not- have the right to ask for those cookies back when they decide they no longer need you."

This is typical of the most common layman's
misunderstanding of Intellectual Property. IP is not
like cookies at a sale, or horses in a barn, or shoes
in a store. It has the special property of transmissibility
without diminishment, which the founding fathers
understood well enough to establish special protection
for in the very body of the United States Constitution.

Because of that, whether you think it is fair
or not, or whether you think it makes "common sense",
the author of a work has rights that are not
analogous to the relationship of "owner and
physical property".

Whether you understand, like, or accept it, the law
is clear. With some *specific* exceptions, the author
of a work has sole right to its copying and distribution.
If your builder says take it down, you break the
law if you don't comply.

A lot of mud admins cannot stand this idea because
it means that the mud they "own" is subject to the
whim of people they think they are the boss of.

If you're one of those people, declaring that it
isn't true doesn't change anything. Yes, it means
your builders could force your mud to shut down.

Sorry. Either live in fear, or find some contractual
means to transfer the rights to those areas to
yourself.

Personally, I suggest you just accept living with
a little fear. Keeps you healthy.

-Crat
http://lpmuds.net

Cratylus wrote:

If your builder says take it down, you break the
law if you don't comply.

Perhaps. I'm fairly sure a good intellectual property attorney could make an argument about implied license. As with most things, it's likely to come down to the specifics of the case involved. That's why lawyers get paid so much. If the law was so simple that laymen could sit back and dissect it accurately there'd be no need to pay top-flight lawyers for anything.


If you're one of those people, declaring that it
isn't true doesn't change anything. Yes, it means
your builders could force your mud to shut down.


In a sort of textbook world, maybe. In the real world, it's awfully unlikely. I don't believe there exists a single example of this happening in the history of Western law.

--matt

Just to muddy the waters further: all the arguments here seem to be carrying the presumption that a builder's area is a solitary and unitary work, like the books often used as examples, that is developed in isolation and can be considered in isolation. Possibly this is actually the case sometimes, but in my world, areas are fundamentally collaborative exercises, with other developers providing advice, feedback, ideas, quality control, guidance, code, debugging, descriptions, what-have-you.

If I say, "hey, it seems to me like a dragon-eating elder god named Snorckurgle would fit perfectly in your area", and you proceed to implement in your area a large tentacular mass named Snorckurgle who lives on a steady diet of dragons, can we pretend that the issue of whose IP this is is cut-and-dried? How about after I've rewritten your entire area to comply with current best development practices, description policies, and so forth?

If your contributions are going to be worth anything at all, you'll be writing them to integrate with the theme, world context, backstory, and so forth of the MUD. That means your content will feature and reference content directly drawn from someone else's IP. Whose IP is it now?

(If you can truly use "where I go, my areas go too" as a policy -- which is to say, they weren't written to integrate with the MUD you created them for and you don't care if they integrate with any MUD you take them to -- then, well, I'd never have any problems with you because you'd never be found building for me, so I suppose I shouldn't worry.)

I guess I have an established position here, though. On the one hand, once upon a time someone who woke up one day and decided to be my political archenemy wound up taking off with an old copy of the whole MUD and putting it up under a slightly altered name, and I've permitted this to run for years with huge amounts of my code in it, because I knew that having my code would mean nothing if he didn't have me. And I was right. On the other hand, as an admin I feel like the last thing I want to deal with is someone holding game content hostage in a personality contest pissing match. So evidently my attitude is pretty consistently against revocation in any context.

From Cratylus:

<snip>
This is typical of the most common layman's
misunderstanding of Intellectual Property. IP is not
like cookies at a sale, or horses in a barn, or shoes
in a store. It has the special property of transmissibility
without diminishment, which the founding fathers
understood well enough to establish special protection
for in the very body of the United States Constitution.
</snip>

Where? The US Constitution doesn't say that, it says, in Article 1, Section 8:

"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

That doesn't say a word about transmissibility without diminishment, nor details it except to say Congress has the power to protect the exclusivity rights for authors and inventors for a limited time. Where exactly is transmissibility covered in the US Constitution, Crat? I've read and re-read the Constitution, as written by the Founding Fathers, which includes the Bill of Rights and subsequent Ammendments and nowhere does it say anything regarding what you claim. All the Constitution does is grant Congress the power to make laws regarding the works of authors and inventors to protect them for a limited time.

I've heard of people getting a mud taken down through the host due to areas taken when an entire mud is stolen, or a copy of the mud is put up without the builder's permission for areas included in that copy.

An area is like a snippet of code. It might be a snippet that resides within the code, unreleased and private. A snippet posted to mudbytes, now public and accredited. If the writer chooses not to share that snippet, then there's not much anyone else can do but attempt to emulate it. Requesting the removal of an area is pretty selfish. You really shouldn't care one way or the other if you have an area there, if you've got your own copy of the area.

Oh, and if your mud doesn't have .are files, then requesting the area is rather pointless. You can, however, just remove the entire area manually.