Solidice - another site hosting addons without permission
 

Would like to draw you attention to another site:

http://s o l i d i c e. c o m/downloads/world-of-warcraft?page=1

oQueue, eh.. figures.

Yep, already formating my DMCA.

You gotta be s****ing me. I would have figured Tiny would have known better than to host AddOns without permission.

I do believe the email to send to their host is
[email protected]

Updated the base DMCA notice if it's any help.

If you want to try talking to them directly, a 'conversation' has been started in this thread http://s o l i d i c e . c o m/forums/544/topic/site-upgrade. Down toward the bottom of page one and then continuing on from there.

IMOO, they are deliberately being more than just a little obtuse.

Ress'ed a new thread, humm. Old problem, new site.

/me grabs popcorn

Edit: I see the thread got split.

So apparently, going by Tiny's logic, it's alright is somebody uploads his addons elsewhere.

Somebody who isn't lazy should probably go out and do that out of spite, and watch how he reacts.


EDIT:

Seems they have enough sense to at least do something.

My personal favourite was

Ignoring the fact that once the addons on his site are out-of-date they are definately not being passed on as intended, go tiny :eek:.

• from asking for donations ingame
• just being a douchebag in general
• adding questionable "features" to oQueue
• unsolicited installation of Icebox
• to now infringing copyright

... what's next?

If I'm reading that link correctly, that was never proven with any sort of evidence.

F***ing worthless leeches. All of my addons they're illegally redistributing include clearly worded LICENSE files that clearly state they cannot be redistributed without permission, and there are no shortage of free resources on the Internet that could clear up these morons' willful ignorance about copyright if they actually cared to do the right thing instead of being d***wads and p***ing on the addon author community. I sincerely hope these a******s all get pancreatic cancer and die.

(Placing my bet on 4 words in this post being replaced by asterisks. Edit: None? Really? Guess the word filter isn't working...)

*blink* *blink* *boggle*

I was surprised to see them not blocked out too. Will have to poke dolby to see what might have turned off the word filter.

Also, don't wish cancer on them. Wish something short term, with no long term ramifications. ie something that would really hurt a lot, but not injure. ;)

Colitis might be good. :D

I thought that might happen. >_>

But if there's no long-term ramifications, then how will they learn anything? While I haven't personally met any of the people operating these leech sites, I can only imagine they're the same type of people who think the rules don't apply to them in real life either, and always have some elaborate excuse for why what they're doing is okay, and will just keep taking advantage of you/the system/whatever as long as they're alive and free to do so.

Edit:
They didn't reply to my post on their forum thread, but they did remove the two addons of mine they were hosting. At least that was far less painful than dealing with TenTonHammer and their endless weaselling and begging me to "work with them". :rolleyes:

We can assure you that we are moving forward with the utmost desire to abide by the requirements of any and all licenses applied to any addon. Any possible oversight or inability to do so previously is regrettable and was surely not performed with malicious intent. We aim to only host / distribute those addons which are licensed as allowing such. Our deepest apologies for any offence, we wish to support and grow with this community, not spite it. Moving forward will surely be difficult as the stone has been thrown.

Contrast to TenTonHammer, we wish to work with you, not you work with us, and maybe we did not start off on the right foot.

I hope this can be taken sincerely.

When you let someone like tiny weasly around the way he did you make it so very much harder on yourself.

Time will tell.

@ronburgundyy:

I'm very concerned that, of ALL the information you scraped off of Curse for the addons you are hosting, you removed the author name for every file except for the ones belonging to tiny.


Also, let me remind you of another reason (besides copyright) why authors hate finding versions of their work elsewhere:
We don't know it's there. If something is broken, we don't know it. If a user asks a question, we don't know it. If a complaint does come around our way about some bug or something not working, we spend time figuring out how that could be - they say they're using the latest version, but we already fixed that! (But we didn't upload the fix to your site, because we don't know about it.)


Lastly, yes. tiny sounding like a Comcast rep left a very bad taste in my mouth (and I'm sure I'm not the only one). Only hearing what he wants to hear, belligerently asking the same questions over and over... This is what I was reminded of while reading his comments. And this is only compounded by the fact that his is the only work that is attributed to an author on your site, AND that his work is marked All Rights Reserved (would he mind others uploading it elsewhere without his knowledge?).


/edit: As mentioned, you might just have tons of authors flocking to your site if you do it the right way. But there is no shortcut to success.

As per the removal of the Author name, that was a poor design decision, and was not meant in any way to suggest that Solidice authored or laid claim to any addon in which the author name was omitted. One of several unfortunate mistakes during this endeavor.

We 100% intend, and have intended for persons to have the ability to claim their addons in the near future.

You also raise a very good point concerning the lack of notification to addon authors, which could certainly rise to confusion from users, and an increase in technical and support issues as there could be differences in available versions from different sources. We hope that once authors are able to claim their addons this concern will have been addressed, and in the mean time are ready and willing to work with the community to reduce and prevent further confusion, complications, or annoyances.

As it is not my place to comment on the actions of any other person, I can assure you that I am dedicated to ensuring a positive progression for the relationship of Solidice and the addon community and its authors.

Yes, but authors shouldn't have to "claim" their addons. At the very least, you should contact them at Curse and tell them that you have re-hosted the addon elsewhere. Otherwise, how would they know to go claim it? :confused:

Notifications of the authors is a action item in which we have yet to address, but notification on curse is certainly something we can do, preferably once the authors are able to gain control of their addon, as I am sure that is what many will wish to do upon notification.

Prior to that time, at the very least, all addons which are hosted should be hosted in compliance with their licenses.

With tiny running around with a Staff tag on he appears to be an official representative of the site. If that's the quality of your sanctioned first point of contact with customers and authors then you have far bigger problems than a few poached addons.

One of the reasons I host here at WoWI and nowhere else is the quality, professionalism and the always courtious nature of all the staff here.

The right way to go about launching a new addon site is to post an announcement on other, established addon sites where authors are already publishing their addons. Explain what's good about your site, and why authors should bother uploading their addons there. Authors who are willing to add another point of distribution to their network will upload their addons to your site. Others won't, and that's just how it is.

What you're doing -- rehosting addons without their authors' consent or knowledge -- is the wrong way. What you're doing is unethical at best, and illegal at worst. Even for addons that are under open source licenses, you're not doing their authors any favors by rehosting those addons without contacting the authors first; Seerah already did a great job of explaining why.

There are some authors who only post their addons on Curse -- yet you don't see WoWInterface scraping those addons from Curse and rehosting them on WoWInterface, because that would be shady and scummy and (in many cases) illegal. Likewise, there are some authors who only post their addons on WoWInterface, and Curse doesn't scrape and rehost those addons.

Personally, I'm just not interested in adding another point of distribution for my addons. I'd already removed them from ui.worldofwar.net and wowguru.com long before those sites shut down, simply because it was too much work keeping everything updated in that many places. It's enough work posting updates and providing support for several dozen addons on two sites, and I suspect most other addon authors feel the same way.

You'd have to offer something really, really, really awesome to get me to even consider dealing with another site -- especially after your first move was to rip off my addons and post them on your site without crediting me or linking to any official download/support pages -- and based on the look of your site (very basic, clearly not the work of professional designers) I just don't think your team has the resources to offer monetary incentives (eg. Curse author rewards) or advanced features (eg. GitHub-quality code viewing, issue tracking). If all I wanted from a distribution site was the ability to upload a ZIP file and type a description, there are literally thousands of file-sharing sites where I could do that. Why should I bother with yours?

You also raise many good points Phanx, and maybe our inexperience is showing (obv it is).

We have alot lined up for features to come, many of which we hope addon authors will find useful and appealing. We would also love to get to the point we were could offer other incentives for authors, similar to curse's author reward points, however at this time we are not there. Our actual development team is small, consisting of solely myself. This is not an excuse for any poorly executed practices, merely a statement to give transparency. We are taking every concern and suggestion and treating them with the utmost importance and will do our best to work toward implementing and adopting those practices which are best received.

This first go around, certainly was not the most author friendly approach. In the past, we have experienced quite a bit of slander / resistance from already established sites. Stories like this lead us to believe any outreach to the authors would have been resisted by those sites on which they previously belonged, as we are obv not the only ones they are targeting. Again, not trying to make any excuses, but merely provide some transparency.

I dunno about you, but when I was young, I learned not to touch a hot stove in about a fraction of a second :eek:, and haven't touched a hot stove since. Long term ramifications aren't the solution to everything.

Problem with Ten Ton Hammer was that they got all tied up in being defensive, rather than taking the time to communicate and learn from their mistakes. Rather than learning what the law states about intellectual property, they got tied up in defending their actions. They also chose to ignore best practices as already established by the addon community, which created a lot of ill will.

Ronburgundyy, I highly recommend stopping by copyright.gov and reading the circular on copyright basics. If you have the time, they've got the entire copyright law there as well.

Do provide authors with a means to update their addons. Authors uploading their addons is considered best practice for addon websites, while scraping addons from other websites is a frowned upon practice.

And oh, Ronburgundy: I've already grabbed the CobraA1 handle for myself at SolidICE, so please ensure that no other handle can claim ownership of Reagent Restocker; if your website does resolve these issues and uploading addons by authors becomes possible, I may consider hosting Reagent Restocker there.

Ummm, I've been courteous enough in letting them use our forums to apologize, but I don't think it unreasonable of me to ask that they post their sales pitch on their own site ...

Fair enough. Consider my question un-asked ;).

Much appreciated for the words of advice Cobra, we will make sure to do our homework and review those links.

We are certainly trying to avoid the same mistakes TenTonHammer made in regards to communication, that is not the relationship we wish to have with the community.

I notice Reagent Restocker is currently Licensed MIT. We have taken measures to avoid hosting any All Rights Reserved addons. My understanding is MIT would allow for such hosting, however in best interest if that is not your wishes prior to being able to claim the addon please let me know and it will be disabled.

I do appreciate the hospitality and civility, at least starting after my first post.

Completely understandable and we will make sure to do so when the time comes. I would ike to point out, or more so pose the question, would us pitching our sales pitch here on WoWInterface have been prohibited?

I feel as if it would have been, not that it would be your problem, obviously its our problem, but its leaves me to ponder if this suggestion, is really viable at all:

Yeah, not sure Phanx thought that one out.

It'd be akin to someone from Walmart going to Costco and telling their customers to come shop at Walmart. Definitely not appreciated, and a hugs faux pas. Also grounds for ejection by security.

But then again Phanx is not purporting to be a site official. It's time Ron figured it out that it's best to let go the baiting and just get back to focusing on his .... thing ;)

o/ *waves goodbye*

<-- Notices little green square of still connectidness and wishes Ron well.

You may have a point there, though I'm not really sure what the alternative is... Walmart and Costco can put ads on TV and radio, put up billboards, etc. but those aren't really practical options for a WoW addon site. An announcement on the official forums? (Not sure how many addon authors read anything there; I certainly don't, as 5 minutes of reading posts there makes me hate WoW, my life, and even kittens.) Reaching out to individual addon authors privately? (Seems like a slow and ineffective approach.) Are there any websites where this kind of thing could be announced that addon authors actually read?

Nope but Ron and Co. have a site that addon users visit. Asking users to ask authors to upload addons might have been an idea outside the box.

Annoying or not that might have gotten author attention to their site.

Sadly their original approach has pewd the scrooch.

Please delete if this is considered counter productive to WoWi.

Edit: Hi Ron.

Edit2, idea, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED!!!

Putting posts on the O-forums was how we started. It's how we start all of our sites ...

That's what TenTonHammer did, via PMs here and on Curse. Going back to my competing stores analogy; it's basically the same thing, but in whispers from the next aisle. I actually banned the guy who was (mass) PMing authors on Curse, and Cairenn did the same here IIRC.

The real question is that who the fuck are these guys to earn money for my work, which is a free product. Even if it's a BSD or GPL licensed.

Guys who think having written one successful addon means they're the next Curse Inc., obviously! :rolleyes:

I was thinking less "spam everyone" and more personally contacting just a few authors of popular addons who are active on forums to begin with... a kind of "hey, I know your addons are popular and you are very active in the community, we are thinking of launching a new site, what do you think?" I was contacted that way (by email) once, and I gave the sender my honest opinion -- much like this latest site, they had absolutely nothing to offer me or any other addon author. I never heard back, and as far as I know the site never even launched.

Also, after looking around a bit more, I can't even imagine why this particular site was launched at all, in its current state. There are literally no addon management features. You can't even upload a file! I'd be better off uploading my addons on any old generic file-sharing site! And they've explicitly stated that they don't even have an estimate of when any of these so-basic-it's-really-a-bare-minimum-requirement-to-even-exist features will be available!

Using your analogy, they're at Costco trying to lure shoppers to Megamart, when Megamart hasn't even broken ground on construction yet. I'm just really confused now as to what could possibly have been going through the minds of the people responsible for this incredibly foolish and poorly-reasearched move...

I believe Tiny thought he and his oQueue was too good for anything else (he was originally on Curse afaik, I don't know/remember the full story), so he launched his own site, and that's basically why it exists.

Didn't that TTH site launch because of GearScore or something, too?

Also, there were definitely All Rights Reserved projects on Solidice yesterday, but by the time I read that there supposedly weren't, they were gone. (or at least mine) Creds for actually removing them, I guess, but it shouldn't have been necessary to confront you about it for that to happen. It's nice that at least you seem to be reasonable about it, Ron. However, if this is how all sites are going to do - steal first, apologise later - then that's not really acceptable.

He refused to comply with blizzard's addon policy and the addon sites removed it.

Rather than upload a non-offending version, he decided it would be simpler to have anyone who wanted to use it go to his website.

Wow, this is so bad. The question is the donate button still in the addon atm?

Might be.. There's a button that says "Send Beer!" in the bottom left corner which in previous versions went to a donations page.
Dunno if this is current version or what.. Had a friend who uses the addon screenshot for me.

Thats intresting, correct me if i'm wrong but if an addon is not qualifies for the addon policy then it should be banned from the game or not?
Or if Blizzard doesn't take action against addson like this, then whats gonna stop author to create obfuscated premium addons for money, with ads, solicit donations, with negative impact for realms and player i don't like.

Lets say if a user has oQueue loaded, i'm gonna disable the functionaliy of my addon. And have fun ripping of addons then.

Well, the addon community may have its opinions, but ultimately it's up to Blizzard to decide whether an addon has violated their addon policy.

So far, Blizzard has not banned oQueue, although they do seem to be aware of it, especially since Warlords of Draenor is getting similar functionality with the new "Premade Groups" system.

But lets be honest, Blizzard never gonna copy every function of the targetted addon, and users will continue to use that addon if it's offers more.

Which is not wrong, if Blizzard does not ban it.

From the screenshot Resa1983 showed us, it appears as if the addon only sends people to the website, not directly to a donation page. As far as I know, that's legitimate - many addons, including mine, direct people to a website.

I don't really blame people for trying to skirt close to the rule about not soliciting donations - it's probably the most difficult one to deal with. I get zero donations these days.

Note the donate button in the bottom left of that image.

Well, there's some buttons with questionable wording ("Send Beer!" and "raffle"), but it's up to Blizzard how to interpret them. If there's a button clearly labelled "donate," I am not seeing it.

Well renaming "Donate" to "Send Beer" will not make the donation not solicit.

*shrug* As far as I know, Blizzard hasn't taken any action against them. That's what ultimately matters.

for those that have never seen what the hoopla is about...

The old Vent link was to a page to donate directly to the Vent server host for the vent server.
As well there was a link to a page on SolidIce's website (which is now gone), which was another donate place, but to donate to the oqueue team.

The variable names were beg.oq & beg.vent. Might still be.

Nothing wrong with that, just the "Send Beer" label is a bit deceiving.

It's so clearly spelled out that it couldn't even be misinterpreted; you can't ask for donations in-game.
As for why blizzard hasn't actively banned it, it's likely because that would cause more problems than it would solve for such a minor infraction. It is, nevertheless, against the rules, which the addon websites are required to uphold.

Try not to make this any more off-topic than it already is.

Indeed, Reagent Restocker is MIT licensed :). I don't mind other people hosting it.

However, on the more reputable sites I do prefer to be able to control the quality and release schedule of the addon, so that people know they're getting exactly what they came for. Just wanna be sure I can do that.

I'd base the decision on if clicking "Send Beer" links directly to a donation page rather than addon info or anything else.

It no longer does. When it was put into moderation on Curse, it had two links: One to donate to a Ventrilo server, and one to donate to the AddOn itself.

All that had to be done to rectify the situation was to change it to its current behavior, but instead Curse was vilified and we're where we are now.

Hmm... The top one is a dead link, but the bottom goes directly to a donation page, so I would still consider it soliciting.

I think he was giving an example of what it used to look like.

Exactly - that is no longer what the AddOn displays.