I posted the following over on Blizz's UI and Macros forum, in
Recompense's thread on pretty much the same topic.
Thought I'd also post it here too, since I'd love to see some more discussion on possible solutions to the whole issue.
I'll stay away from the author's copyright thing - not qualified to discuss it :) I'll also not comment on the legalities of download manager's, hosting site legal "rights", etc.
Lets consider our hosting sites for a minute though. The sites that host our addons (WoWI, Curse, etc.) pay for the bandwidth required to provide this feature through advertising, donations, premium accounts, etc., where I'd expect advertising revenue to be the primary source of income.
Now lets assume that a download manager comes along that scrapes data from these hosting sites (to get the version, etc. that it needs) and provides directly a download link to the content on those sites, and that everyone and their dog starts using this amazingly useful feature. Well, the big danger is that the hosting sites can say goodbye to their advertising revenue ("no one visits your site and sees our adverts, so we won't pay you to show them anymore").
So now, who is going to pay for the hosting and bandwith? The authors and premium subscribers? The site providers? Somehow I don't think that'll happen, and in the worst case the sites may even close down, which would be a Bad Thing(tm). I'd guess that legally it would probably be an Even Worse Bad Thing(tm) if the download manager generates revenue for its own site (advertising or otherwise) while contributing to the demise of the very sites it pulls its data from, but I digress.
So, what would I like to see from a download manager that performs the functionality that WoWMatrix provides?
- Collaboration with the websites it links to, provide advertising sharing, etc. (i.e, move from being parasitic to symbiotic). As a quick measure, at least have a statement of "hosted by <nameandlinktohostingsite>" on every link.
- Author and feedback/forum links (perhaps for the author's own website, or their preferred forums, etc.).
If something like this doesn't happen and non-hosting download managers become the defacto standard, we are going to see sites either start closing down (eek), or stop providing persistent links to the addons (e.g., they'd start using login and session based temporary links) simply to "break" the non-revenue generating download managers.
So, how about it you WoWMatrix supporters? How about suggesting to WoWMatrix (and other non-host site download managers) that its important to the whole community to not be parasitic in nature, and to instead become a friend, symbiot, contributor, supporter, etc. (pick your own word ;).
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