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Unread 05-07-2014, 01:09 PM
moebius92 moebius92 is offline
The Undying
Interface Author - Click to view interfaces
 
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 51
Quote:
Originally Posted by magill
This is the base issue -- there is no DEFINED structure here, only an assumed one, and one which is not generally agreed upon (witness the different forms of license).
Again, I don't believe this is quite accurate. ZAM (and presumably Lotrointerface) are US based, which means that the Berne Convention applies. The Berne Convention requires that copyright be automatic - when a work is first published, the copyright laws of the country (or countries) of publication automatically apply to the work.

Under this situation, assuming the plugin was first distributed via lotrointerface, US copyrights over the plugin would automatically be granted to the author. This basically gives the author the right to control the copying and distribution of the work, and over the creation of derivative works. (Also, gives them control over public performances, but I doubt that that is meaningful for plugins. Or, software, really.) Without a further statement from the author either waiving those rights or granting them to someone else, you should assume that the author has retained all copyrights.

From my experience, lotrointerface hasn't actually taken enough steps to secure copyrights to distribute the plugins that it does (would at least require some sort of notice, and typically requires actual signatures somewhere), but I suspect that any potential defense by them would include 1) uploading to the site is an implicit grant of copy and distribution rights (i.e., since the site distributes plugins uploaded to it, uploading the plugin to the site can be taken as an implicit grant of the copyrights necessary for the site to function) and 2) that if the author explicitly revokes their grant of copyrights to the site (e.g., any sort of take down request), they will stop distributing the plugin.

However, I don't think there is an argument that plugins uploaded to this site were uploaded for the purposes of being modified by other people.

Edit: Based on that, there's probably an argument to be made that Lotrointerface could continue to distribute an earlier version of CombatAnalysis, prior to the back door being inserted. Doesn't really solve the problems about CombatAnalysis being maintained going forward (and I've no idea if CombatAnalysis's earlier version will still work) - but you'd have the maintenance issue even if the back door hadn't been inserted.

Last edited by moebius92 : 05-07-2014 at 01:36 PM.
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