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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Oh, fine. And after I had the tar all heated up and had collected feathers from all the birds...
;D
The true sacrifice would be if you plucked your own - so deep and seething was your anger - Mr. Birdman. ;)
- Oshyan
So you're saying I should go pluck myself?
;D
Well, I wasn't going to say it, but... :D
- Oshyan
Right... I've got to get my 2p worth in here, as I started the whole thing (sorry Harvey :) ) I must agree with FrankB. I am a real magpie when it comes to free downloadable stuff. I have hundreds of downloaded models sitting on my HD and the vast majority of them I can trace back to the owner, but there are still quite a few that I downloaded and have forgotten to note down whose they are >:( My fault entirely. Whilst I would still use these unknown files in my work, I would ALWAYS state that the model/terrain etc came from someone else who is unknown AND state that if they would be so kind as to let me know that it was from them, I will ALWAYS add a credit to them ASAP, its the polite thing to do (never mind the legal side of things) As soon as Harvey let me know they were his trees I canged my post here and on my website to give him full credit for the original OBJ files... as I said, its the polite thing to do!
Harvey, are you realy going to sit there and take that kind of abuse from oshyan? ;D By the way, if you still have the feathers left, i need a couple of pillows re stuffed.......
Ta
Miles
Yeah, FrankB was right. It would have been better if I'd put a note in the zips.
re feathers - yeah, yeah. Everyone's a plucking comedian.
;D
I promise to stop now.
Harvey, you must realy stop being such a birden on this user forum....... BIRDen..... get it?...... BIRD en..... can you see what I did there?.... *tumbleweed blows across the stage, sound of wind blowing*
Is that the time? I realy must be going......
I kinda dealt with this same demon a few years ago with some resources I downloaded. I wasn't sure how I was going to sort them, (it was mainly with 2D textures I found online). Luckily, I never really used them, and if I did, it was just for inspiration.
I do have plenty of downloaded "foliage" from free sites, but by the time I re-tweak them, they are barely the same item (not to mention I don't recall where I got them). In fact, I don't think I've even used any of them in my images, so they are just wasting space on a drive. This does not include the X-Frog free TG2 foliage, which is a dead giveaway in images.
So I guess what I am getting at is, its worth researching and creating your own stuff, while using other's creations as inspiration (or to show what is possible). Additionally, since procedurally created foliage, terrains, textures, etc are all 100% your own creation, I've gone that route. However, I am still considering buying some X-Frog models.
How's that for a ramble!? ;D
What I'm hearing is that there is some concern about clip files, too, but I'm not sure I'm worried about it. Or should we be? It seems a good way to kill creativity by worrying about what we share in terms of clip files and / or node diagrams. It would suck (should I even mention this?) that someone might claim some sort of copyright on a TG2 node diagram or on a certain configuration in a TG2 clip file.
Planetside, I hope you have some sort of legal jargon to prevent this sort of foolishness. If not, let's find a way.
It's one thing to be honorable and give credit. It's another to enable cryptic idiocy.
Calico, this discussion was specifically related to items on the downloads sction of the Ashundar web site. Even more specifically, it was related items whose authorship information had apparently only been listed in the description, rather than the author field, and so information wasn't transferred when the site was updated.
I'm not quite sure what was cryptic about it; perhaps you could stoop to the level of my idiocy and explain.
Harvey maybe you should name and shame that way these people can then give you credit for your work
No, the people using them hadn't done anything wrong. The correct author attributions no longer showed on the site and, as noted above, I hadn't put anything in the zips.
Harvey,
I think I mixed this thread with another along the same topic, where someone mentioned something about clip files. Not objects. Not yours in specific. But, it was a generalized thing, which I could have started another thread about. I didn't think it would be necessary to start a new thread, since this subject is along the same problematic mess.
What I'm talking about is that if Planetside isn't covered for this situation I described, someone could come along and demand royalties for a clip file that I might have used or even altered, if I used this file to make money. Or maybe someone might go as far as copyrighting a node network solution and demanding royalties based upon this. If Planetside has something in their licensing that prohibits this, then I don't know about it and suggest it would be nice to cover all of us from that sort of exploitation.
So, it's another topic along the same lines - credit. I believe in giving credit, but not copyrights for clip files or node network solutions.
If I wasn't an author and didn't work in the computer field, I wouldn't have seen so many knuckleheads claiming rights they didn't have. And
that, Harvey, has nothing to do with you, since you deserve acknowledgement for the objects you made. (I want to learn xFrog, someday).
<Whew> Are we all confused? :P
Quote from: Harvey Birdman on August 24, 2007, 05:18:06 PM
Calico, this discussion was specifically related to items on the downloads sction of the Ashundar web site. Even more specifically, it was related items whose authorship information had apparently only been listed in the description, rather than the author field, and so information wasn't transferred when the site was updated.
I'm not quite sure what was cryptic about it; perhaps you could stoop to the level of my idiocy and explain.