Ashundar Download Accreditations

Started by Harvey Birdman, August 23, 2007, 02:42:50 PM

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Harvey Birdman

Twice now today people here have published images or tgo's based on material I had uploaded to Ashundar. This material is no longer accredited to me - it says 'Ashundar Artists'.

I brought this up in mr-miley's thread and was initially placated, but now it has happened again in a very short period.

OB, I don't think you have any ethical alternative except to remove ALL material you can no longer properly accredit. Simply slapping 'Ashundar Artist' on material and re-posting it is NOT an acceptable alternative. If you lost all the accreditation information, that's unfortunate, but the pain to be suffered should be yours, not all the people who contributed material.

Oshyan

Hi Harvey,

You are absolutely right and I apologize if you feel like you've been taken advantage of. That was never our intention. I'd like to say though that this is an Ashundar issue and if you have an account over there you should really be posting this complaint there. If you don't have an account then it's a bit difficult for us to link your materials to a user account in the first place (which is a requirement of the system) and I'd suggest you register.

Due to limitations in the upload system previously the "Ashundar Artists" user was often used as the "author" for uploads. It was simply impossible for normal users to properly upload files and all download systems require that files be linked to a particular user, thus the relatively generic "Ashundar Artists" was used. It was never an issue in the past and people seemed to be fine with that approach, presumably because the descriptions have always provided proper credit. In fact I would guess your original uploads on Ashundar were likewise "authored" by "Ashundar Artists". So we presumed the same should be fine for the new site. If there is a problem it seems to me it would only lie in not transferring the full previous descriptions. I will check to see if that is the case and if so I will work on getting the more complete descriptions transferred. If that is not acceptable to you we will gladly remove your downloads. Alternatively you could register an account and we can link your downloads to it.

Although it is certainly not your fault nor necessarily your responsibility, I would also recommend that in packaging your downloads you include a small text file for credits, contact info, etc. This is especially useful when people may want to use your work for commercial purposes and must contact you for permission. It also ensures that, no matter where your file is reproduced, unless someone maliciously removes the credit file then credit will be intact, even if the downlaod system does not effectively provide for that.

- Oshyan

Harvey Birdman

Hey, Oshyan -

You're right that perhaps I should have posted at Ashundar, but the material appeared here so I thought I would address it here.

I do have a membership at Ashundar, and the material was initially creditted to me. (Buzzz didn't have any trouble identifying the author in his 'Aspen's picture.) The download pages contained a description of the .zip contents, although the zips themselves did not.

The work was not uploaded for any commercial purpose, but I would have liked to receive credit, nonetheless. As long as it's re-labeled, it can stay. But I will re-assert my statement that you don't have any ethical right to re-post material when you've lost or failed to transfer authorship information. The fact that people haven't complained doesn't mean that they approve, it may be that they are unaware of the situation, as was I.

Oshyan

I agree, I am not claiming that we have the right to repost without credit. What I'm saying is that the previous postings on the old site were approved by the authors so as long as we can reproduce that representation, whatever it was, it seems like it should be fine. It is not correct to assume that all authors had or required an indication of their authorship, although credit should have been given in all cases (and I believe it was).

- Oshyan

Harvey Birdman

There is nothing in that statement that I disagree with.

However... (and didn't you just know there wuld be a however?  :) )

I can tell you for a fact that there are at least 3 items that USED to have accreditation and don't any more. Now it seems unlikely that the three I've submitted would be the only three. And that being the case, I'd think it would be prudent to at least temporarily remove anything you can't attribute to an author, at least until you have a chance to determine what happened with those three.

Oshyan

#5
We'll just simply make sure we transfer over the complete descriptions and credits from previous downloads. Where that is not possible we will remove the downloads.

By the way I am very familiar with dealing with issues of credit and authorship. More often than not unfortunately people do not credit, even where proper authorship is indicated. I published a surface map file for TG 0.9 that was extremely popular for a while and I'd say 75% of people didn't give credit, even though it was only available for download as part of a large article I'd written on my own website. :D

- Oshyan

Harvey Birdman

#6
Cool.

And re credit - I'm not that concerned with the credit or I wouldn't do stuff like post clips and models in public forums. I'm not going to lose any sleep over people using them and not producing a list of credits with me in it every time, know what I mean?

<edit>
And I probably wouldn't post them as 'Harvey Birdman'....   ;D
</edit>
It's just that I was surprised when the information had been there before and wasn't now. Sort of took me by surprise. No hard feelings.

FrankB

Those things about giving credit to other artists in one's own images is a new experience for me. In past Terragen times (and i never used any other app), there simply never was a need to give credit to anyone, since no objects could have been imported. Or like with Poser, giving credits for the pants your little computer puppet wears ;-)

However, a few months ago, I was looking for an object to render with TG2. I searched the web for something free of charge, and I remember the author asked for credit, in case his object would become part of someone's render project.
I didn't use the object right away. In fact, it was sleeping on my HD for a few weeks before I stumbled over it again.
The difficulty was now, that no credit information was provided with the object itself, and that I could not remember from which site I got it from.

Dear unknown creator of a amazon-like figure,

if you ever see a render with your statue, which's credit line reads: "apologies - i didn't mean to steal this on purpose", contact me please :-)

Of course, the above is just a joke. It would not be right to use the object unless I am able to give proper credit in the first place.
anyway, I bet many "creditss-infringement" that happen are caused by users downloading stuff and forgetting about the source - I believe. It migh be a good advice for people giving away objects - and maybe also .tgc's, think about that - to pack a credits note with the downloadble object.

Cheers,
frank

Buzzzzz

What I do is create a new folder to download or unzip to and name that folder after the creator of whatever. For instance: "Harveys Aspens" Kinda hard to forget then.

Oshyan

I have a pretty good filing system on my side for maintaining credit info but unfortunately one can't count on everyone doing so. For my own downloads I always include a text file that gives crediting info and requirements (e.g. please credit me when using this), usage restrictions (e.g. no commercial use), and contact info. Of course people are free to delete these files after extracting my archives, but that's just downright callous, bordering on intent to misrepresent; as if someone *wants* to "mistake" the author of a file.

- Oshyan

old_blaggard

I just wanted to hop in here to say that I was largely the one resposible for transferring the downloads over from the old site, and that I'm really sorry that I caused this ruckus.  I totally agree with the principle of giving credit, and I'm sorry that the credits didn't make it over.
http://www.terragen.org - A great Terragen resource with models, contests, galleries, and forums.

Harvey Birdman

Oh, fine. And after I had the tar all heated up and had collected feathers from all the birds...

;D

Oshyan

The true sacrifice would be if you plucked your own - so deep and seething was your anger - Mr. Birdman. ;)

- Oshyan

Harvey Birdman

So you're saying I should go pluck myself?

;D

Oshyan

Well, I wasn't going to say it, but...  :D

- Oshyan