Removal of Fleet Operations mod and prohibited upload of the 1.2 game patch

[Freyr]

Originally Posted by Major A Payne

Freyr. I've gone over the complete TOS for ZDM and it seems that its more than just a grey area:

"8. Copyright Policy
You may not post, distribute, perform, display, transmit or reproduce in any way any copyrighted material, trademarks, or other proprietary information without obtaining the prior written consent of the owner of such proprietary rights. Without limiting the foregoing, if you believe that your work has been copied and posted on the Service in a way that constitutes copyright or trademark infringement, please contact Tara Garfinkle, Director of Intellectual Property at 28 East 28th Street, 12th Floor, New York, New York 10016, fax: (212) 503-3560, tara_garfinkle@ ziffdavis.com with the following information: (a) an electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright or trademark interest; (b) a description of the copyrighted work(s) or trademark(s) that you claim has been infringed; (c) a description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the Website; (d) your address, telephone number, and email address; (e) a written statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright or trademark owner, its agent, or the law; and (f) a statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright or trademark owner or authorized to act on the copyright or trademark owner's behalf."

You do realise that if this is taken literally then EVERY file that is located on ANY of the FF sites is in breach of this ruling as they do contain copyrighted material. For example. SOD, ODF files are specifically copyrighted formats which Activision has a copyright over (the same goes for the .NIF model format for Bridge Commander).

DOCa. I would suggest directly contacting the person in this and explain the situation in its entirety. The thing is Activisions reply is sketchy at best and MadDoc really dont' give a (pardon my wording) toss about this if they are unwilling to respond. I'm still of the mind that this is beneficial to the community and will give Armada 2 a continued life.

Still. I'm going to do some searching. Perhaps I might find some avenue of cantact that hasn't been tried yet.

That would depend on your interpretation. For example, the SOD format is owned by activision, however your allowed to create files in that format, the same way as your allowed to create and distribute files in other proprietary formats such as Microsoft Word without the format being in the public domain.

[Optec]

As DOCa Cola already mentioned on page 3 he sent you a version of the patch project without the modified dll and the file in question was never included in any prior Fleet Operations release.. and of course now wont in the future. So what keeps you from hosting Fleet Operations?

[Freyr]

In short, we are discussing with the higher forms of authority on the filefront network if the changes made to the program constitute a breach of the EULA.

At the end of the day, we can run the site how we want until we run into an issue such as this that effects the network at large instead of just this site, at which point the final decision rests with more senior people. We are pursuing it on your behalf, but as we are bouncing emails between continents/timezones its taking a little while to get to the end of it.

[DOCa Cola]

we are still doing our armada projects just for fun and i hope you understand, that our motivation is now a bit dampened. we invested the last few years in armada and there never seemed to be any problem with our files. and now *all* our work has taken offline from armada2files. a2fs hosting is important to us for obvious reasons. fleetops.net is not the right plattform for the patch, we hoped for a2f to help there.
if there are any technical questions about the patch or fleet operations feel free to contact me, however i think despite the now removed dll there shouldn't be any breaches.
i hope you can understand, too, that we have got a bit impatient on this matter and start asking whats going on

[The Joelteon7]

Yeah, we understand you're getting a bit impatient, but so are we. Other than writing in big red letters saying "IT TAKES TIME" I don't know how many more ways we can say it is going to take more time. Maybe that is what is needed, I'll certainly do that next time.

Fact is, as me and Freyr have said time and again now, we're having to communicate between:
1) Each other. That's three people talking to one another sharing points
2) Us and the superiors (of which there are just over half a dozen, each with their own opinions and busy schedule stopping them from replying immediately)
3) The three of us with the new points of views and information.

That process already takes, say, three-four days. Not to mention that's probably with only a couple of our superiors, of which we want to do it the best way for you and get a majority vote.

We're working as hard as we can. I have one other issue on Armada Files to take care of in this weekend that requires my attention as the site admin and that person is going to get the time it deserves because while waiting for correspondance, I cannot do anything else. Nor can Freyr, nor can Tycoon.

The only way this is going to be solved quicker is if the three of us flew to the different parts of the world to get the opinions in face. That is the now fastest method of doing it. Sufficed to say, that is ridiculous. We will let you and the community know what is going on when we have something concrete to let you know. If you can't deal with the fact that a process as intricate and important as this is taking the time it is doing, I yet again cannot help.

[DOCa Cola]

no, sorry, my post was meant as "WEHN IS IT RAEDY?" i just wanted to explain our view.

[The Joelteon7]

Originally Posted by DOCa Cola

no, sorry, my post was meant as "WEHN IS IT RAEDY?" i just wanted to explain our view.

Alright, I'm going to say this, one, last, time. Anymore times that are posted after this asking the same thing will simply be deleted because it's becoming spam.

We KNOW what your view is and we KNOW that you want it done as soon as possible.

I honestly don't know why we need to keep saying this.

[cecilzero1]

why not lock the thread before it becomes a spam fest?

[Freyr]

Its just because we prefer to keep all comments regarding the problem with fleetops in one place rather than scattered around the forum/site.

After all, closing a topic only stops people from commenting on that topic. They would still email and IM us about the same thing.

[Atlantis]

I stand by the FleetOps team here, and disagree with FileFront's decision. The reason why people are making such a big deal out of it totally escapes me.

Modding is itself a breach of the EULA, and FleetOps' products are just an extension of the modding techniques. If there was to be legal action against modding, it would've already happened, and it would affect EVERY public-release mod.

You do realise that words such as "Romulan", "Klingon", "Starfleet", and canon ship designs, are all copyrighted? Any mod product which uses words or designs like that, is in breach of copyright. Not just of Armada 2, but Paramount's own copyright of Star Trek (those two words being copyrighted too)...

We get away with it because it's all for free. It's not like we're making money from it or anything. FleetOps are doing things which are expanding the horizons of how Armada-2 can be modded, bringing in new features which have for years been called "impossible" by even the best of our modders. We should be supporting them and learning how to push back the barriers ourselves, rather than bickering about technicalities which have already been breached, years ago, by all of us.