Originally Posted by twhiting9275
Why should someone have to debug someone else's pathetic mod? They shouldn't!
Incorrect. Claiming the mod is their own is illegal. Redistributing them is a grey area.
If the author says "do not redistribute", yet the site does so, then that is between the author, and the site, however it is NOT illegal to do, unless the author has SPECIFICALLY obtained copyrights and patents for each mod they have designed. The "If you design it, it is copyrighted" excuse is lame, and has been ruled against so many times it's not funny. If you WANT your work to be known only as your work, then COPYRIGHT it, legally.
If you send a DMCA notice to the datacenter (or host), they are legally required to comply with this notice and remove the material immediately. Most will suspend the account and not allow it to be reactivated.
When it comes down to it, they are doing something wrong in the sense that they are taking other's bandwidth, but that's not their problem. If the download isn't properly protected, hey, it's out there for the world to take. If the download IS properly protected, then everything is good.
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A work becomes automatically and legally copyrighted as soon as it is put in readable or tangible format. Period. That is not lame, that is the law. No legal registration is required. That work is covered under the exact same laws as any other piece of work that is registered to the U.S. Copyright Office Library of Congress. There is only one difference between a registered work and a non registered work. The author of a non registered piece of work cannot take anyone into court and sue for infringement. That is the only difference. If you want to sue for infringement, then your work better be registered.
Redistributing copyrighted material without the authors consent is illegal. There is
no gray area. Now bandwidth theft, you're going to have issues there because there is no Internet law that covers bandwidth theft. The only hope a web site owner has is to contact the offending sites web host and pray that host respects their reputation enough to do something about it. Unfortunately, there are a handful of hosts out there that could care less about bandwidth theft.
No, most hosts will not deactivate an account. There are different circumstances with every situation (and I've seen and heard just about all of them). I have and always will take those things into consideration when I deal with my own hosting clients, as do most hosting companies.