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10-11-08, 07:00 AM   #52
Meldas
A Murloc Raider
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 7
Originally Posted by Phanx View Post
Your Google-fu is weak. See http://fambagge.dk/jwu/
My Google-Fu is better than yours: there is also http://wuu.vagabonds.info/menu.php - another one which causes more problems than it solves. There is also a handful of other updaters which only work for a subset of Addon sites. They all have flaws (well http://code.google.com/p/macaceupdater/ did work very well, but the author has quit supporting it). I guess you don't own a Mac otherwise you would know that there is currently only one good alternative.

What kind of addons are you using that you see ten actual updates every day? If you're using addons from wowace.com, try reading the changelog files that come with the addons sometimes. You'll find that the vast majority of "updates" are triggered by changes to translations for languages you don't speak.
Especially Raid-Addons are updated nearly daily. If you ever wiped your raid (24 pissed of people in the TS) because you had an old version installed, you are going to check them before each raid, believe me.
So you want me to read through 70 changelogs before I decide to download an Addon each day? *shrug*

It's the distribution site together with the authors which provide those minimal and sometimes unnecessary updates for free. Is it allowed to download these updates? Yes. Each one of them? Yes.
A solution would be to only make major updates available to the public.

I'm sorry you feel it's too much of a burden on you to spend 90 seconds a few times a month updating an addon without the assistance of a computer program.
Yeah, I'm so weak, sloppy and without any drive. It seems to me that you wonder too much about other individuals needs instead of just accepting what they tell you.

As others have already pointed out, this is not how the law works.
I also know a guy which stated that he had the right to do something and law was on his side. Unfortunately for him the judge had another opinion.

You know, there is a lot of arguing ongoing about:
1. Does WoWMatrix distribute something?
2. Is there a copyright infringement?
3. Is it possible to 'steal' bandwidth? And if somebody looses bandwidth, who is responsible?
4. Does WoWMatrix really link to the addons?
Everybody who says that all this is clear and obvious makes the same mistake as the guy above.

It's relatively clear that the Addon authors have the copyright for their work (however there are also a lot of pitfalls here).

It's not tricky at all. Let's move out of the virtual world and into the real world. Let's say you're a painter, and you paint a lovely forest scene. You choose a local art gallery, and display your painting there, and sell prints through them. When someone in a distant location orders a print of your painting, they can choose to have the painting shipped via either FedEx or UPS. Would you, the artist, object to this and say you did not grant FedEx or UPS permission to distribute your painting? Of course not; that's absurd. In this scenario, the painting is an addon, the gallery is WoWInterface, and FedEx and UPS are the browsers users visit and download with.
Ok, there already was a lengthy answer to this analogy and its little inaccuracies. I might add: This generous gallery is paying the shipment costs for FedEx and UPS. And all of their prints cost nothing (however they seem to get some money elsewhere - but they don't tell me)! Are they nice? Or ... stupid?
Then, I always have to walk to them whenever I wish to get a picture and I want a lot of them! That's not very convenient.

Now let's say you go visit a relative in another city. While you're there, you decide to stop by an art gallery there and see what's popular in that area. To your surprise, you discover that the gallery there is also selling your painting! But instead of using FedEx and UPS, they deliver each print themselves. You did not grant this gallery permission to display and distribute your painting. Would you say that their role in this is the same as the role of FedEx or UPS in delivering prints from your local art gallery? Of course not; they are actively displaying (hosting) your painting (addon), soliciting buyers (users), and selling (distributing) your painting (addon), without involving the gallery you actually contracted with to promote your work.
As was already said: This second gallery gets the prints from the first gallery. In other words: You still have the same control over the distribution of your prints. If you don't want me to get them, you just have to remove them from the first gallery.
Btw this second gallery is much more comfortable than the first one. It also provides prints from other galleries which are also very nice! Oh, I love those pictures! Did I already tell you the story from the artist which told me: "You don't need that many pictures! And I don't care if you have a convenient way to get the pictures!".

Now let's go a step further and say that the second gallery, which is showing and selling your painting without your consent or even knowledge, is sneakily avoiding paying postage on deliveries of prints of your painting that they sell, by dropping their outgoing deliveries in the shipping bin of the first gallery. Now you have a relationship between the second gallery and the first gallery that is fairly similar to the relationship between WoWMatrix and WoWInterface.
That's wrong. The first gallery pays the postage. They pay it when I get the prints directly from them and they pay it when I get the prints from the second gallery. The argument that the second gallery is avoiding any postage is null and void. The second gallery invokes a FedEx or UPS shipment for me directly from the first gallery. Nice guys, and all for free. The only argument that you have here is that I may order more prints than usual because it's so easy to do in the second gallery.
Who is responsible for this problem? Is there a limitation of daily downloads somewhere here in WoWInterface.com? Do they keep users from using such tools?