A Question of Rights and Plagiarism

[Bogie]

There are a lot of map sites that just collect & repost whatever maps they find, more as a service rather than making money off it. But there are some who sell and take credit for our work, and that's not right.
I did contact a guy on Deviant art who had posted one of my maps in his gallery. He was young, had just joined DA and didn't realize that was implying that he had made it. He took it down and then linked it in his Favorites file which does give proper credit.

So it is something that has to be handled on a case by case basis.

EDIT: I missed the recent post with specifics, Carl's site is definitely just a map sharing site. He is not selling the maps. He usually is good about giving credit to the artists, but he can be a bit lax in doing so. I think he is just overly enthusiastic about sharing the maps.

[Mouse]

Thanks Robbie. I think its Lorelei who's suffered most at his hands.

I've just effectively removed my un-watermarked work from his website, where it was being advertised without acknowledgement as an observatory, in his words: "FREE".

Lorelei, if he still has some of your work up there (I didn't see any while I was there), the way I did this was almost accidental, because I edited the posts to replace the images with watermarked ones without even realising that this would break the link from his end.

ie if the original file was called "001.png", I replaced it here with "001 watermarked.png" = link gone

EDIT: Agh ninja-d by the best

[Mouse]

I'm going to try and implement a no direct-link capability in the software...

Sorry Robbie, for causing you extra work!

Maybe it would be easier if we all just systematically watermarked our work, like J.Edward does - and you put up a simple notice on one of your sticky messages that we are advised to do so? (a lot less work than having to adjust the guild's storage in any way, I would assume).

If you have already done this somewhere please accept my apology for being as blind as a bat!

I blame myself for what's happened to the observatory. I just thought is was too... 'nice', (as opposed to a dungeon) to be anywhere near suitable as an RPG map!

[Midgardsormr]

It's probably a good idea to disable hotlinking simply from a technical standpoint. I don't have any idea what kind of headroom you have for bandwidth, but a high-volume website hotlinking images could get out of hand very quickly.

[Robbie]

Oh we have plenty of bandwidth, it's more a principle issue than anything. I'd much rather drive that traffic through the site than anything. That way at least WE get the ad revenue not Facebook or whomever.

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[ladiestorm]

Okay... I get the idea map sharing as opposed to outright poaching.... but is he posting the maps as free to download? Is there any downloading involved?

At least I try to make a habit of adding the copyright in every map I make! And if been lax on it....I won't be any more! Lorelei mentioned some of my maps are posted there too. While I'm flattered that he felt my map/s good enough to share.... I'm still upset that he thought he could without asking me first. I probably would have granted the permission, as long as he.gave me credit for them.... but he didn't give me the choice.

[Robbie]

That's the issue I brought up with him. None of this would matter if he would link to the threads instead of just the images. Because the threads have the artists information.

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[aegean]

I've scrolled through the facebook thread, and to quote Bogie "overly enthusiastic" is about right. He does seem to have quiet a large selection credited to the original artist and the web site - but it could be done better, he just seems like a map fiend and just needs to be pointed in the correct direction and aided on how best to represent this site. May as well direct him into doing it your way rather than having a interweb fallout.

Just my idea

[aegean]

Good Gawd, the amount of my stairs used in maps on there is frightening! - need to do more staircases - and roofs, because you can't have enough . . . . .

[Redrobes]

I think there are a couple more points I could make too. If you actually want people to repost your maps onto sites but not allow them to be used commercially then there is the CC, Creative Commons license which is very easy to use. Since I am ham fisted I just make all my stuff CC and give it away. Cant think the last time I did anything that I never CC'ed. Anyway, in case you dont know how that works, when you create anything artistic and original you automatically have copyright over that piece of art. If you state that this artwork is CC (and there are a variety of options available) then you can state that even though you keep the copyright, you have given out a public license to do some things with it without them needing to ask you for that permission. A usual one is the CC-BY-NC which is where you have BY = Attribution and NC = Non Commercial. So somebody can take a CC-BY-NC map and post it to a site, say its from you and thats all legit. But they cant sell it.

On the technical front, we should get a referrer URL for an access to any asset on the site. Normally this would be the guild itself but if you hotlink to the attachment then the referrer is going to be facebook so it ought to be possible to act differently according to that referrer URL. The referrer URL can be spoofed and you can withhold it but normally people don't. I would imagine tho that we could block images without a referrer URL from the guild. Sounds like another one of my regex specials...

What would be cool tho is an option in the uploads panel to have the image watermarked when it gets uploaded here. What would be x10 cool would be if you could water mark it with your avatar at that point in time, or set in your preferences a watermark image like the avatar. And an option in the prefs to say default to watermark is either on or off so you dont forget to tick it.