Regarding the vBHosting Hack

[FASherman]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

If Jelsoft decided to sue for redistributing this hack, then could go after you for redistributing copyrighted code which the defendee wouldn't be able to defend. The amguity in the liscence regarding the context of this hack would never even be heard.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Jelsoft permits hacking their code and have even dedicated a website for the exchange of those hacks. They CANNOT selectively enforce a ban on hacking. If they tried to sue someone for distributing a hack because the "CHANGE THIS" part of the instructions contained code snipets protected by copyright, they would be tossed out of court in a New York minute. The only defense needed would be to give the judge the URL to this site.

[FASherman]

Originally Posted by SpeedStreet

I believe my post shortly after Kier made his statement completely refutes his claim.

Look, we can go on about this round and round.

#1 Having vB Staff approval for all hacks would doom this product.

Their attitude may do that just as easily.

Originally Posted by SpeedStreet

#2 Jelsoft has agreed to work out a comprimise on this hack. If the author is unwilling, then he is as guilty as Jelsoft for thinking it was a good idea to just ban this hack outright in the first place. Drawing any type of hard line in the sand (as put forth by another contributor) is bad for all parties involved.

The hacker has no driving reason to engage in a compromise. He believes the code does not violate the LA. Jelsoft believes it does. The burden of proof is on Jelsoft. They may be able to curtail distribution through this site, but that is all they can do outside of a courtroom.

Originally Posted by SpeedStreet

#3 The license agreement will have to be revisited at a later date. Its obvious that there are many flaws in it, including a VERY large loophole they have left wide open.

They can revise it all they want, but it won't affect anyone with an owned license prior to the change. Their ownship remains under the LA in place at the time of pruchase. Nor will it affect a leased license until the renewal date following the revision.

Originally Posted by SpeedStreet

#4 Oh, and those of you talking about starting a new hack site (you know who you are), I will avidly support a boycott of that site, and do everything in my power to ensure it doesn't fly. I will not condone a site that is being designed as a vbulletin.org alternative simply so that you can begin to charge for hacks. One of the great things about vBulletin is that most hacks are free. Try getting a macromedia extension for dreamweaver nowadays...they all used to be free, now they all cost money...I cannot willingly support something like that.

Who said we advocate charging for such a site? Is this your first and blatantly obvious attempt at discrediting such a site? I think we need a VB hacks site completely independent of Jelsoft's draconian overlord policy.

[Reeve of shinra]

Fasherman,

If this legal endevor took place here in the states, the DMCA (as much as I hate it) would make it even easier for Jelsoft to get it shut down. Yes, Jelsoft can enforce this because only liscenced users are able to view the code alterations here at vb.org. Joe off the street does not have access to that copyrighted information as they would on a third party hack site. This is trivial. My arguement was simply to proove that in a court of law, Jelsoft would have a leg to stand on.

Now, if this made it to a court of law, would that really benifit anyone? No. Thats untold amounts of time and aggrivation for everyone involved. Ultimately that hurts us because thats time that could be better spent making vbulletin better.

My final thoughts on this is that there needs to be compromise.

I think we all recognize vbulletin as a quality product since we've all purchased it and are using it. What makes our forums better are the hacks we're now using for it, some of which we've probably obtained here at vb.org.

If we wanted to draw a hard line in the sand and not give an inch, then Jelsoft may decide a site like vb.org is more hassle than its worth and close it down. Would that hurt thier business? Yes. Would it hurt us? Yes.

Obviously there is mutual benifit to having an active and growing hacking community since it promotes thier product, making it more desireable, and makes our own lives easier or better with the add-ons we find here. Its a symbiotic relationship were all benifit.

If they decide that out of the hundreds of hacks that have been created and posted here, that 1 should be revised a bit so it complies with the spirit of the liscence, that is not a huge compromise to make. In return, we have had Jelsoft listen to our feedback just days before this started about the changes we felt were needed here on vb.org. Thats compromise.

[dieKetzer]

i remeber a time when john was just some guy on the infopop ubb boards talking about a php based forum package he was working on. infopop continually refused to implement features that had been requested (and promised) time and time again. thats what vbulletin was borne of. how long have we been waiting for jelsoft to release a vb version that actually works the way most of us use our forums? clan forum hosting is big part of vb, and many of us have been waiting AGES AND AGES AND AGES for jelsoft to make this sort of thing less of a pain. if vb3 allowed an option to allow forum mods to select colors, buttons, and a header.gif i would have no use for this hack. but, just like infopop, you let the releases go and go while never implementing this functionality. where's infopop today?

i will be installing this hack, and i am confident that i am well within my legal rights to do so.

[FASherman]

There is no "spirit" of the license. Licenses are strictly interpreted agreements. In areas of ambiguity, the law always makes the presumption in favor of the person that did not author the license, in short, us.

Thats the way the legal system works. If Jelsoft cannot find a violation of the literal words contained in the license agreement, they have no legal standing.

Their whole argument consists of loose interpetation, on their part, of sublicensing. It would be clear to anyone who viewed the hack CP that there is no sublicensing issue.

[Briboy923]

EDIT: I know my post is long, but if your viewing this message, please read it. Pretty much poured my heart out into what I said, and I really mean it, but for both this issue and a lot of other issues, I make a good point at the end if you want to skip the whole "Music Industry" analogy.

Originally Posted by hypedave

I can see how this may be an issue with people that use this hack the wrong way i.e. John Doe sets up a domain called virtualvb.com, installs his vb board then installs this hack and uses the vb subscription feature to charge people to have their own miniature forum within his forum. But what about us members who actually see a good benefit from this within our own community, rather than try to make a profit?

This quote is from like... page 2, but anyways. I know this has been said HUNDREDS of times, but restatting the point. On my forum, I have just under 75 sub-forums, in over 15 categories. To save space, I used this hack to assign each category an actual forum. This is because our company has 5 different subsidiaries, and each of those has its own group of subsidiaries. Charging people for virtual VB THAT IS ILLEGAL. It clearly says you cant resell or rent out space. So, yes, thats where the liability is. But its just like the thousands of pirated VB's out there. we dont know they are pirated until we catch them, and we dont know if someone is using this hack to do what you said unless we catch them. Even though we know there are so many pirated copies, that doesnt stop Jelsoft from distributing copies of VB instead of making customers "host" their forum on a shared server (and thus, not being able to edit, retrieve, or view the code of the files).

I take this thread as an omen right now, because as we speak, I am finishing up a persuasive speach about warez (in particular, whether downloading music should be outlawed and can/should be stopped). The answer is flat out NO. It cant. What goes on behind private FTP's is nobody's business. Hell, I know people who have burned copies of VB for friends and mailed it USPS. I mean, you cant just take away peoples rights. When somebody goes in to a movie to videotape it, thats against the law. BUT, its against the law because that directly violates copyright issues. Same with music, games, etc. Nonetheless, people still do it. People dont get caught. Why? Because it would take the entire world's police force to crack down on people who steal copyrighted material. As I said earlier, you dont know who is doing it until your caught. Just like the poor 12 year old kids that are getting sued for downloading Britney spears. And you know what my speech says? "Let em do it". Sure, they may not be going out and spending 18 bucks on a CD. But ya know what they ARE doing? Going out and begging mommy and daddy to buy them a $100 concert ticket. So, wheres the oppurtunity cost in that? Reports show that 10% of an artist's income is from CD's. The rest? Promotions, Ads, Concerts, etc. How do people KNOW who Outkast is? Because 100,000,000 copies of Hey Ya are on computers ILLEGALY. So why is Outkast one of the wealthiest artists? Because everyone goes to their concerts, everyone listens to them in their ads, everyone KNOWS them.

IRCSpy.com has been up for a long time. You go there knowing you're getting illegal material. But, whats also on IRCSpy is freeware, trialware, demo's, etc. Thus, you're mixing the legal with the illegal. And again, you can't stop it. People pay for their servers. People pay for their homes. I have friends that keep cocaine, pot, all sorts of drugs in their homes. They arent caught. Why? Because the Feds dont know. Cyber-property is the same way. The gov isnt ALLOWED to snoop peoples servers with un-justified search and seizure. Its in the damn Patriot act.

My point here is, and I do have a point, and this isnt because I like the hack, but its because I am a huge civil rights person (and Im only in 10th grade). In the majority of software business', close to 75% of all of a company's sales are from resellers (our definition of resellers doenst include other companies, it could be ads on sites, word of mouth, etc). I am going to let you know right now that 8 of my forum members asked me whether to buy the Owned License or the Leased license of VB in the last week. Why? Because they loved what you can do with it. What I did for a few days, before this hack was taken down, was offer trial admins on a little sub-forum made by VBHost. So, I resold 8 copies of VB. Imagine that times 100 other forums. Whats going on here is an unjustified assumption. You are ASSUMING that if this hack gets into peoples hands, they will use it wrongly. And you know what, that could be true. Many warez sites that offer VB also offer fake VB.org accounts, ftp's with hundreds of hacks, etc. Why are they still up? you havent caught em. But, I bet you my entire lifes savings, that at least ONE person, of all of those illegal forums, have bought VB because they enjoyed it and didnt know where or how or even that they could get it illegally. One person DOES make a difference.

On an expoential equation, if you take one person, double it, and each month double it again, in a few years, your Bill gates =) Simple story. I rest my case. I dont care whether or not this hack is re-instated, but I hold my ground. Thats all I got to say =)

[Morrus]

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

Now, if this made it to a court of law, would that really benifit anyone? No. Thats untold amounts of time and aggrivation for everyone involved. Ultimately that hurts us because thats time that could be better spent making vbulletin better.

I agree.

It's not a vB owner who would take this to court, you know! The only people who could is Jelsoft - they're the only ones who have an interest in enforcing anything (and "standing", to use the correct term). They need legal action to prevent someone from using the hack; no one needs legal action to use it in the first place - they just go ahead and use it. So it's a non-issue unless Jelsoft decide to make it one, and I doubt very much that they would.

[Morrus]

Originally Posted by Briboy923

Charging people for virtual VB THAT IS ILLEGAL. It clearly says you cant resell or rent out space. So, yes, thats where the liability is.

No offence, and I can see that you care very much about what you're saying, but have you read the license or - more importantly - this thread?

The whole discussion going on in this thread centers around the fact that the license DOESN'T say that. It only says you can't resell the software itself.

If the license actually said that, this thread wouldn't exist.

[ap0c]

Originally Posted by FASherman

There is no "spirit" of the license. Licenses are strictly interpreted agreements. In areas of ambiguity, the law always makes the presumption in favor of the person that did not author the license, in short, us.

Thats the way the legal system works. If Jelsoft cannot find a violation of the literal words contained in the license agreement, they have no legal standing.

Their whole argument consists of loose interpetation, on their part, of sublicensing. It would be clear to anyone who viewed the hack CP that there is no sublicensing issue.

This is where your arguement fails and you would lose in court. By allowing other sites to use your forums, ie," link back to your site: " to create subforums and control them as they see fit, that is a violation of the LA.

License Agreement
The Software is licensed only to you. You may not rent, lease, sublicence, sell, assign, pledge, transfer or otherwise dispose of the Software in any form, on a temporary or permanent basis, without the prior written consent of Jelsoft.

No one, according to this section, has the right to sublicence or assign their copy of vbulletin to other sites without Jelsoft's approval.
Since the hack contains the ability of another site to use your vb, again the "link back to your site:," it is in direct violation of the LA.

[Briboy923]

Originally Posted by Morrus

No offence, and I can see that you care very much about what you're saying, but have you read the license or - more importantly - this thread?

The whole discussion going on in this thread centers around the fact that the license DOESN'T say that. It only says you can't resell the software itself.

If the license actually said that, this thread wouldn't exist.

Exactly. The reason why I brougt that up was to counteract what Hyper said. The rest was directed towards Jelsoft / Wayne in attempt to persuade them that maybe allowing this, especially since it doesnt mention anything about this in the license, would benefit them as it is doing to other industries. Its interesting, because the music business, which is the one that is persuing warez the most, is the ONLY industry out of Games, Movies, and Music, that is currently benefitting from Warez.