Good argument, but without the owners to pay the hosting and think of the site, the members wouldn't be in the equation


:( You'll have to let us know where you do release them then ;) or at least me :D

If I don't release them here, I won't release them anywhere as the same thing could happen wherever you release them. But, no biggie, there are plenty of others here that do a lot better than I do. ;)

totally agreed with this :)

however what Bobby said is simply what i wanna say ... thx Bob for translating my thoughts :D

correct, just sometimes with huge difficulty ....

PS. pls Nexia post the url where you put you hacks :D

Which part? The one about others here that do a lot better than I do? ;)

yes Bobby, exactly this ... :D

Well, you are now off the Christmas card list.

:( no Bobby you give me a great paint when you say this ... :(

You are not "supposed to be protected" at all. Never has vb.org said that it will protect you from copyright theft elsewhere on the internet, that would be impossible to do. We cannot control what people do with mods they legally download from here. As a previous staff member you are quite well aware of this, so why moan about it now.

First of all, the "moan" remark was uncalled for. You as staff should know the difference between a discussion and someone moaning. If not, let me know and I will explain it to you. The point I was trying to make is that any copyrights laws that the org supposedly has are useless since the hacks can be downloaded and put up elsewhere.

You've got to be kidding me.

i heard Boofo moan one day... was not fun to hear... look at his avatar and think of it...

But I was moaning about you nex, remember?

And Chris has been added to my Christmas card list not once, but twice! ;)

damn Chris got mine card ... :S

We don't have any copyright laws.

vBulletin.org - that means locally on our site, adhere to copyright laws. That means we respect the copyright of modifications on vBulletin.org (eg. the content we do have control over). Anything beyond this site is out of our control - if that was your point, then yes you are right, but this is not vBulletin.org's problem - it's a consequence of distributing any work, anywhere.

No where does it state vBulletin.org has any "copyright laws" that will shield authors from the consequences of the internet and copyright breaching.

We're not copyright lawyers, we're forum administrators just like you. :)

There is no protection, there never has been.

Nexialys, the copyright in the footer is for vbulletin.org's own created design, graphics, layout, materials, products, etc. NOT members of the community as the author is the original owner, not vbulletin.org. That's why if vbulletin or jelsoft itself ever wanted a mod/add on from here, they would have to buy it from the original coder, or code there own to be different as well or they could be sued. Think of it like Patents, and the similarities. I knew of an Awning company that was in a lawsuit with another company from Europe because the engineering of something was so similar, it's like...give me a break, but the American one was made before the Europe one, and the Europe company took the American one to court. Weird...

Anyways, there should be an added profile field to all mods, asking what license type the author is applying to the released material. That way there is no confusion later on if someone takes this to the logical extreme of suing another individual here for pirating code/designs.

There's nothing left to talk about.

Boofo, hope your not a Bears fan, VIKINGS FOREVER!

Nope, Dallas Cowboys fan. ;)

???
well... what about 'ENFORCING THE LAW' :mad:

vBulletin.org doesn't have the time or money to track these sites down and shut them down. It is mainly up to the owner to do this (and if it is a vBulletin site, report them to Piracy).

the only people who can officially freely enforce the law is the government of your country...

I prefer to relax and not worry about it...it's like death and taxes, being ripped off is inevitable and a fact of life. However, if you prefer to spend all your time chasing after these thieves only to find they are on a Malaysian server with a Dutch registrar or some crap like that, have at it :\

there are small things that most of you genius coders can do, and first of all is ask for some co-operation from the vbulletin coders

it would be easy enough to implement that all hacks downloaded here, get "married " to the downloaders' account , his own unique bought , paid for, and tracked license

any hack that is done in this way can then be traced , unless modded by some other hacker to remove licensing, but that then becomes illegal, and enforceable, and not something most would allow

furthermore, there can be coding written directly into mods that become dated, and must be updated regularly (even automatically) through licensed portals, a little more work, but this will make it less tempting to distribute and re-distribute other peoples work

just one added note, most of the remarks here sound so innocent as though nobody has ever plagiarized or used copywritten material before, without permission.

I wonder how many here have "tested" software that wasn't received through the proper channels....hehe..ahem

let's be realistic, there is no way to ensure 100% un hackable softwares, it just doesn't exist, so to the coders, I wish that you realize that the more popular you become, and the more sought your product becomes, the more it will be illegally distributed....take it as a compliment that you're doing something right :p

Whew! I'm safe then. I was worried for nothing it seems.

Cool, that means i'm completely useless here... none of my hacks was illegally distributed... the only guys who duplicated my work are from Jelsoft.. lol

do I get a christmas card ?? (without moan)

--------------- Added [DATE]1212808848[/DATE] at [TIME]1212808848[/TIME] ---------------

I question the truth of that statement, I believe you may be wrong

and may have been proven much more useful, without your knowledge:D

You bragging or complaining?

Since you didn't mention any names, you are on the list. Waaayyyy down on the list, but at least there.

As a slight offshoot to this discussion, I wonder if Jelsoft's pirate detection group (whatever they're called) checks the license of vB running on those sites distributing our mods (taken from here)? I wonder if they tie those member #s to accounts here and remove their privileges?

If they dont have a licence then they dont have any privileges here.

What I mean is: Site A w/ license uses license to download all of the mods from this site. They then use their licensed forum to distribute said mods on their forum to anyone who wants them, licensed or not.

Is this an abuse of the ToS (either of the paid license and/or the rules here) and if so, would their license be revoked?

Wired, like i saw in this thread is that they don't make anything against hack's piracy ... :S

Jelsoft does not own the copyrights to modifications relreased on vB.org, and has no legal rights to take any action.

So we are on our own if we post hacks here. Good to know.

Thats correct, just like every other modifications site in the world - except that we have a licence check, unlike every other site (well, except the German site).

come on guys, stop whinning, if your scripts are duplicated there, that mean you do good job... they like your hacks so they spread them everywhere... aren't you happy??

these pirates are not doing any profit from it... compared to any coder here that do commercial work for their clients... they use your hacks freely and are paid for it... this is where the focus have to be put if you want to panic for something...

i don't think so Nexia ... instead i think that some sites can give to the newbies some support onto their sites because they can show to these newbies that they are 'masters of coding' ... hope you can get my point ... :)

edit. with 'support' i mean money ...

sure i get your point.. lol.. i was more relating to credits and real commercial profits... beside the fact that some pirates are hired by corps to help on security and coding, the others are merely captain Ahab in the market of files sharing.. lol

I think its more an issue of someones' pride and joy being duplicated and used without their consent. It doesn't really have nothing to do with money/support or anything else (well at least not for me), people put these modifications together for free and I guess it is annoying that someone else comes along and redistributes them without asking.

Like if you are giving sweets out to people then someone comes along takes a handful and starts giving them out to other people. Sure you don't really mind but you'd rather have given out the sweets to the person yourself, would you not? ;)

The part I don't like is some of these sites charge for the hacks or the option to download them.

Using that analogy, one addendum would be that you were the one who created the sweets and they took the credit for creating them.

It's more than that. These mods can only be downloaded by people with valid license keys. When distributed through other means, this bypasses the level of security, and makes the security invalid. It also means software pirates can benefit even further via our mods.

If someone knows how to get an illicit version of vBulletin, they can just as easily get hacks online from the same illicit community.