Legal violations by A3L: Arma 3 life

[Sensory 10]

No I am just glad I understand how you think. Or that I finally see your argument. I just disagree with it. You say I am contradicting myself but I still don't see how even though you're smashing your face against a keyboard. Anyway thanks for the insight into your brain. Bye.

[nodunit 397]

Instead of mentioning that you two are contradicting yourselves in your own posts in an effort to prove superiority over the other, perhaps you should say WHY you find it to be self contradictory if you're going to bother going back and forth like that.

[10pb 12]

You don't know the half of it unfortunately.

Please enlighten me then good sir, rather than being condescending and vague for no good reason.

I've read this whole thread, watched PsiSyndicate's "interview" with the A3L guys and have browsed their forums to the fullest extent possible without signing up...what did I miss?

Can you please elaborate on your thoughts and this "solid proof", and turn this back in to a discussion as opposed to a passive-aggressive argument?

[theaussiebutcher 1]

Why would a company prep the public on proceeding legal cases anyways? Doesnt seem common practice.

If Bohemia is doing anything, they would not be doing so publicly until everything is well underway.

Eggbeast sums up their list of legal troubles nicely, props to you mate.

[devilslayersbane 28]

No I am just glad I understand how you think. Or that I finally see your argument. I just disagree with it. You say I am contradicting myself but I still don't see how even though you're smashing your face against a keyboard. Anyway thanks for the insight into your brain. Bye.

Ok, so lets look at VAS. It's a system that's meant to be put in a bunch of missions yes? Here's the license from VAS:

"Use of Virtual Ammobox System (VAS) in a mission being published on Steam workshop is acceptable. Publishing VAS it's self is not. VAS is a tool / script resouce allowed to be used in missions and is not to be published separately (as is) to Steam Workshop."

Ok, now lets look at RH M4's license which was in the Arma 3 Life modpack:

"Do not edit or redistribute without explicit permission and NO commercial gain made by either renting, leasing or selling of this package.

You are not allowed to upload this pack or parts of it to the Steam Workshop!

I take no responsibility for (im)possible damage to your game/system that may be caused

by installation of this Addon. This Addon is also prohibited to be used in any commercial product."

Neither of these are perfect, but they get their point across. VAS is meant as a tool. A resource to use for mission makers, and it's license represents that. Robert Hammer's M4's is a well-crafted product with a lot of hours from many people and is greatly cared for. It's meant for personal use, or use with permission (e.g. asking permission). Robert hammer and Tonic both have the ability to remove legal permission to use VAS and the M4's at any time. However, the difference between the two is that VAS gives you permission to make something with it in it's license, whereas RH-M4's does not.

In regards to people charging "donations" for content. That is against Bohemia's EULA agreement, and therefore it's illegal if you own arma 3. Especially if there's no way around it, but even if there is it's an extraordinarily dark grey area.

If you go pay a dealer for drugs and use half, you'll get arrested for using drugs yourself. Don't make moronic statement's like that. And as for someone "copying" something: it's illegal to take a file that's under a license (whether it's free or not does not matter), rename it and call it yours. It is not illegal to make something to compete with said file (e.g. I make my own m4 pack) and name it myself and distribute it. Even if it looks really similar to the other file (which, it probably would, but not exactly). This is where your argument is flawed, because you do not understand the basics of copyright laws and licenses which I have just stated for you, just for your convenience. Your welcome.

[StevenW129 10]

Ok, so lets look at VAS. It's a system that's meant to be put in a bunch of missions yes? Here's the license from VAS:

"Use of Virtual Ammobox System (VAS) in a mission being published on Steam workshop is acceptable. Publishing VAS it's self is not. VAS is a tool / script resouce allowed to be used in missions and is not to be published separately (as is) to Steam Workshop."

Ok, now lets look at RH M4's license which was in the Arma 3 Life modpack:

"Do not edit or redistribute without explicit permission and NO commercial gain made by either renting, leasing or selling of this package.

You are not allowed to upload this pack or parts of it to the Steam Workshop!

I take no responsibility for (im)possible damage to your game/system that may be caused

by installation of this Addon. This Addon is also prohibited to be used in any commercial product."

Neither of these are perfect, but they get their point across. VAS is meant as a tool. A resource to use for mission makers, and it's license represents that. Robert Hammer's M4's is a well-crafted product with a lot of hours from many people and is greatly cared for. It's meant for personal use, or use with permission (e.g. asking permission). Robert hammer and Tonic both have the ability to remove legal permission to use VAS and the M4's at any time. However, the difference between the two is that VAS gives you permission to make something with it in it's license, whereas RH-M4's does not.

In regards to people charging "donations" for content. That is against Bohemia's EULA agreement, and therefore it's illegal if you own arma 3. Especially if there's no way around it, but even if there is it's an extraordinarily dark grey area.

If you go pay a dealer for drugs and use half, you'll get arrested for using drugs yourself. Don't make moronic statement's like that. And as for someone "copying" something: it's illegal to take a file that's under a license (whether it's free or not does not matter), rename it and call it yours. It is not illegal to make something to compete with said file (e.g. I make my own m4 pack) and name it myself and distribute it. Even if it looks really similar to the other file (which, it probably would, but not exactly). This is where your argument is flawed, because you do not understand the basics of copyright laws and licenses which I have just stated for you, just for your convenience. Your welcome.

Thank you, it was too late for me to type a response like that and you have put it perfectly.

[eggbeast 3684]

who is 10bag and sensory? they turn up with 5 posts and argue strongly in favour of A3L, on post 1300 in a very detailed thread, having clearly not read the thread. don't even bother to answer them, they are clearly stooges of caiden. and one of them was already banned? a mod must have seen his IP was in the netherlands, maybe in friesland, quite near a friendly tax office we know...

[A.Cyprus 16]

These are public forums, everybody is entitled to their views and opinions, as long as they express them sensibly with mutual respect. Their affiliation is secondary to how they conduct themselves.

The fact that many seemingly pro A3L posters have shown themselves to be rude and immature without logic is a bonus, though it doesn't mean we should attack them in response.

Fortunately supporters of this thread have many valid and documented arguments to use in such a response and I find it humorous that people can show up and mock these efforts when they have brought forward clear results so far. Perhaps not the ultimate end goal but certainly more significant results than many thought would be seen.

Eggbeast, did you note my question earlier about the funds received?

[aeldivarvel 10]

Morality of the story : modders, stop to create mods, or someone will steal it, change 1 or 2 things, ch, say that they make it, and will sell it without your consent, and bohemia will never help you to protect your work.

So, go on, lets this game stagnate until it loose its wonderful modding possibility..

Ive make some vehicles with my dev team, i wanted some day to release it, but now i don't want to share anything, and see my work stolen.

I understand the decision of Tonic, stopping the dev of altis life.

[eggbeast 3684]

Eggbeast, did you note my question earlier about the funds received?

you mean to reveal my source? yes i noted that.

[Tacti-Cool 10]

Morality of the story : modders, stop to create mods, or someone will steal it

If everyone had this attitude Arma 3 and other games that allow this kind of free editing would be dead in their tracks. The burden is on the general community to be more responsible and ask for permission to edit someones mods, instead of having this type of situation explode, and make mod makers hesitant to continue to give the players a plethora of content to improve our games.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand, and completely agree with your viewpoint, I wouldn't want something I'd worked hard on being labelled as someone else's and distributed without my permission. A3L have cast a huge shadow of shame on the BI Community and its up to the individual mod makers to either stop releasing content, or to continue to supply the majority of folks who don't monetize other peoples work.

Edited December 15, 2014 by Tacti-Cool
typo

[mobile_medic 43]

The burden is on the general community to be more responsible and ask for permission to edit someones mods, instead of having this type of situation explode, and make mod makers hesitant to continue to give the players a plethora of content to improve our games.

All due respect, but I think some of the burden is on the holder of the original IP (Bohemia in this case) who benefit immensely from having an open platform like this (though, not without its challenges).

Point being, you can't expect people to take the EULA seriously, if Bohemia doesn't actively enforce it. It's just a piece of paper if they aren't going to enforce it. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, you can google for altis life servers (for example) and find a number of them very easily, who openly advertise donations in exchange for vanilla arma content (which is a direct violation of the terms that Bohemia has put forth). Popular servers, who openly advertise that your donation of xx$ per month gets you y piece of vanilla arma content that you have already paid Bohemia for.

If it is this easy to find popular servers who openly violate the terms with regards to donations, it doesn't give off the impression that Bohemia actively enforces their terms at all, really. And, if people don't even respect Bohemia's terms, the trickle down of that abuse into the modding community, (who doesn't have a team of lawyers, or $100 million + in sales over the last year behind them) will be exponential.

A EULA is powerless on its own. It requires enforcement to have any value.

[10pb 12]

who is 10bag and sensory? they turn up with 5 posts and argue strongly in favour of A3L, on post 1300 in a very detailed thread, having clearly not read the thread. don't even bother to answer them, they are clearly stooges of caiden. and one of them was already banned? a mod must have seen his IP was in the netherlands, maybe in friesland, quite near a friendly tax office we know...

Please try and appreciate the irony of you accusing me of not reading this thread and being a stooge of A3L while you've clearly not read the thread properly yourself...

I want to see A3L shut down as much as the next guy, but it's not looking likely unfortunately.

Show me where I "argue strongly in favour of A3L". You are confused mate.

Re: 5 posts, we all have to start somewhere. I've been playing this series since the OFP days and have donated as regularly as possible to addon creators when I can afford it, so please don't be so quick to judge.

Re: who I am, my name is Will and I'm also from the south west. If you're from Cornwall or Devon then it wouldn't surprise me if we have mutual friends or have seen each other IRL. Greetings :)

Apologies for the personal post, but yeah, it's in response to your accusations against my person.

[fluttershy 2]

Sadly 10bag is right,

without the effort of a curtain group it is highly unlikely A3L will cease function. They will surely not stop on there own as apperently installing mods and porting illegaly accured content appears to be some kind of crazy money printing machine.

If you would be an audacious bastard with no regards to moral or the work of other people and could earn a boatload of money and fame for that, i doubt you would cease your actions either.

Therefor without forcing them to cease what they are doing, having them stop on there own is a delusional fever dream.

[StevenW129 10]

Please try and appreciate the irony of you accusing me of not reading this thread and being a stooge of A3L while you've clearly not read the thread properly yourself...

Okay, the irony of what you just said there is the fact you clearly don't realize that Eggbeast is the one that has been compiling the report that has been distributed to BI, Microsoft, PayPal and other various studios evidencing all the stolen IP and the breach of EULA's/Licenses. I wouldn't argue against the people that have done the most to aid this thread and have done the most to help remove this poison community from ArmA that has turned so many mod developers away. I am not arguing with you but I would like for you to know the facts before making yourself look silly.

[Armitxes 36]

Wow... just wow. This is so discouraging. Almost $100k while the rightful owners don't even get a cent or credit awarded. I hope they loose all that money asap. Forcing people to donate... WTF!

[eggbeast 3684]

well, sorry Will, mistaken identity i guess, there have been some suspicious types turning up with 2 or 5 posts, claiming all kinds of wrong-headed stuff.

they are generally from the A3L team or close community, trying to throw this thread off its tracks.

anyway we're nearly done... A3L has no real developers, they are offering cash to people to make their framework etc - another commercial move... by an essentially commercial beast.

[10pb 12]

It's cool man, I did choose the worst possible thread to begin posting in! Things get jumbled up with this many posts and this kind of heated discussion :)

By the way: A3L seem to be using Robert Hammer's pistol pack despite saying they'd removed it.

If you can bear to watch one of the cringe-worthy frankieonpcin1080p's videos (this one specifically

) you'll see him using what I presume is RH's Glock 18 at some point.

[Mrobertnoel 1]

One up this. I see what your saying about the community, but I also see other problems. It seems to me that modders and anyone developing content for A3 isn't in it for the right reason, THE COMMUNITY! More and more mods and addons are charging 20.00$ + for mods that are similar to Opfp, CSLA and i44 from A2. I was blacklisted for asking why Ironfront is charging the price of a full game on sale when it doesnt go much futher than I44 and CSLA did. I thinks it's great they are living the dream and getting content published, but IMO, its a bad road to go down. Imagine if CBA charged 4.99 a DL? I just love the fact that this is such an open community - that ASKS to uses content, and gives props where due. I just think its a slippery road.

[nodunit 397]

One up this. I see what your saying about the community, but I also see other problems. It seems to me that modders and anyone developing content for A3 isn't in it for the right reason, THE COMMUNITY! More and more mods and addons are charging 20.00$ + for mods that are similar to Opfp, CSLA and i44 from A2. I was blacklisted for asking why Ironfront is charging the price of a full game on sale when it doesnt go much futher than I44 and CSLA did. I thinks it's great they are living the dream and getting content published, but IMO, its a bad road to go down. Imagine if CBA charged 4.99 a DL? I just love the fact that this is such an open community - that ASKS to uses content, and gives props where due. I just think its a slippery road.

Outside of Iron Fronts commercial attempt with BI I haven't seen any mods trying to sell for that high. It's also unlikely that the community would purposely charge you for content, ask for donations perhaps but even then we run into all sorts of fun issues which have been discussed to great length with no real conclusion today. What is counted as copyright in terms of code and what is open source, wether how far derivatives would be allowed (one person makes a vehicle for X price then someone makes a skin for it for the same price).

Donation would be something more likely to see but whenever money is added it invites problems on its own. For example if some part of the addon doesn't work then people may mistakenly donate in thinking that it will cause a fix down the pipeline.

Then we open the possibility of some jackass trying to abuse the donation system by making it so that you have to donate to get the addon and then claiming "Oh but I'm not forcing them to donate".

And of course donations only work best when put towards a particular goal such as development..but when you work for free that isn't the case, and if you have a large team of people then comes the question of who gets what percentage.

[Armitxes 36]

I don't see any problem if a server asks for donations (they're legal within a certain range) aslong as:

-> The donations are not forced

-> You don't get unfair advantages towards other players (pay2win) or content that isn't available through normal gameplay.

-> The balance- & withdrawal-lists are open for everybody/registred users.

-> The money gained through the donations is only used to cover costs and community expenses (no private withdrawal)

-> You don't ask for donations for other peoples work

Edited December 18, 2014 by Armitxes

[Armitxes 36]

For the german members, it's getting official: http://www.gulli.com/news/25127-streit-um-urheberrecht-an-mods-in-arma-3-community-2014-11-14 - external involved parties like Cloudflare or EA Games are also on it.

[Spartan0536 189]

I am going to officially post this here, for anyone in the A3L team. Developers like RobertHammer, EricJ, Toadie2k, and many others use my ballistics code to enhance the realism of their weapons mod, they are freely allowed to do so as long as credit is given where due, this also extends to any 3rd party "packaging" and use. Citing credit where it is due is all I care about and so long as its freeware, and is not being sold. Anything else is considered a breach of my TOS/agreement and will be dealt with accordingly. I will be watching this closely and when the opportunity presents itself I will have someone send me the ballistics code that is being used in the game to verify if its my work or someone else's. As I have a very specific set of parameters when developing my ballistics code it gives the code quite unique values which I hand write thus making that code my IP, and thus is also my "watermark" if you would, please respect the developers and their work, no one likes a thief.

[HazardousJay 83]

frankie uploaded a new Life video. and from looking at the comments. oh man..

and this is where i hate the fanbase of Frankie now. it used to be good but now.. man... it just somehow breaks your heart when people dont care about copy right anymore. there are some still defending A3L. plus in the video its still showing the use of RH weapons pack! M16's and the GLock 18

Edited December 19, 2014 by Hazardousjay

[nodunit 397]

frankie uploaded a new Life video. and from looking at the comments. oh man..

and this is where i hate the fanbase of Frankie now. it used to be good but now.. man... it just somehow breaks your heart when people dont care about copy right anymore. there are some still defending A3L. plus in the video its still showing the use of RH weapons pack! M16's and the GLock 18

The comments must have changed a fair bit a few hours ago because all I see are the usual "Lets play" comment types.

As for the weaponry, they did introduce all of Arma 2's weapons into the pack.

http://arma3-life.com/forums/index.php?/topic/10789-beta-release-change-log/?p=100700

Hilarious that they have the audacity to claim anything on it..