Petition to Disqualify Epoch Mod from the MANW Contest

[michaeldcullen 11]

Taken from our post on the Arma 3 Subreddit:

While the shady goings on at Arma 3 Life have been capturing the Arma 3 community's attention recently, something less well-known - and possibly worse - has been going on behind the scenes at EpochMod.com.

What started as an interesting evolution of a DayZ mod, updated and re-envisioned for Arma 3 - most likely in order to move away from the DZML-SA which prohibits porting to A3 - has developed into one of the most controversial projects I've ever seen.

The behaviour of the developers with regards to behind-the-scenes deals to provide exclusive "early access" to Game Server Providers for a percentage of the profits; adding CRC verification preventing modification of server files for personal use, contrary to the terms of their own CC license; theft of licensed code from third parties such as infiSTAR; and the attitude of the developers when asked numerous times by myself and other members of their community.

Add to all of that the fact that the entire project is essentially a way to profit from the Make Arma Not War contest, with zero regard for the very community which made their Arma 2 mod so popular, and it becomes clear that they have no regard for the community-orientated ideals behind the Make Arma Not War campaign.

With that in mind, I - on behalf of the wider Epoch community - hereby propose that they be disqualified from the contest under the following points:

Reasons for exclusion from the Contest:

c.do not comply with these official rules

The Organizer reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion to disqualify any Entry that according to its beliefs contains obscene, offensive or inappropriate content, or that is not consistent with the spirit or theme of the contest.

By completing and confirming the registration the Participant:

agrees to comply with all applicable laws and regulations

The specific law which they have broken is the terms of the CC license which they have chosen, by including CRC checks in their redis connector, they prevent adaptations of the distributed material for personal use. The relevant section can be found here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Versions#Adaptations_of_NoDerivatives_material_permitted_when_not_shared

We believe that this is not in the spirit of the contest, and against the relevant licensing laws, and therefore request that their submission be re-evaluated by Bohemia Interactive.

It is with deep regret that I choose to bring this to the wider Arma community's attention, but I have attempted to resolve these criticisms with the Epoch developers on numerous occasions but have been met with insults and generally negative attitude towards myself and anyone else with a concern by the development team, both privately and in public (on Twitch etc).

----------------------------------------------

In addition to this (updated for clarification purposes) post, there's a wealth of further evidence of violations, offensive behaviour, and just generally going against the spirit of the Arma community on the Reddit thread.

I hope this will be taken seriously and addressed by Bohemia Interactive.

Thanks,

Michael

[Axle 10]

I'll just have to point you to this section in our License.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

Since our mod isn't a 1.0 version we reserve the right to claim privacy, and publicity. However when v1.0 does drop so will the CRC and obfuscation will be removed, maybe even sooner if all goes well.

[bumgie 49]

As much as I hate closed software and egomaniacal modders in the ARMA community I am going to have to point out that your post is a little light on the argument side.

You are going to need really well formed and informative arguments to sway anyone who is not intimately familiar with this matter.

If you are asking people to browse the reddit for proof, then thats a problem.

[Redphoenix 1539]

Yeah yeah, and the sh*tstorm goes on.

Wonder when it will hit RHS?

[michaeldcullen 11]

Does a Creative Commons license give me all the rights I need to use the work?

It depends. CC licenses do not license rights other than copyright and similar rights (which include sui generis database rights in version 4.0). For example, they do not license trademark or patent rights, or the publicity, personality, and privacy rights of third parties. However, licensors agree to waive or not assert any moral rights, publicity rights, personality rights, or privacy rights they themselves hold, to the limited extent necessary to allow exercise of the licensed rights. Any rights outside of the scope of the license may require clearance (i.e., permission) in order to use the work as you would like.

What are publicity, personality, and privacy rights?

These terms are used differently in different jurisdictions. Generally speaking, these rights allow individuals to control the use of their voice, image, likeness, or other identifiable aspect of their identity, especially for purposes of commercial exploitation. Similarly, in some jurisdictions these rights allow people to restrict others' ability to publish information about them without their permission. Whether and to what extent these rights exist, and if so, how they are labeled, varies depending on the jurisdiction.

Creative Commons licenses have a limited effect on these rights where the licensor holds them. Where the licensor has publicity, personality, or privacy rights that may affect your ability to use the material as the license intends, the licensor agrees to waive or not assert those rights. However, any such rights not held by the licensor are not affected and may still affect your desired use of a licensed work. If you have created a work or wish to use a work that might in some way implicate these rights, you may need to obtain permission from the individuals whose rights may be affected.

Unfortunately, the Epoch developers have failed to understand the scope and limitations of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It clearly states that adaptations are expressly permitted under the terms of the license for personal use, without redistribution, and any measures employed to prevent this cause a breach of the license. I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that by licensing material under the CC 4.0, the licensors (Epoch Mod) waive the ability to exert the "moral rights, publicity rights, personality rights, or privacy rights" except where to enforce the terms of the license; terms which SPECIFICALLY allow adaptations for personal use to be created.

I suggest that the fact that the development team seems determined to refuse to abide by their own licence shows a contempt for legal practice, which is incompatible with Bohemia Interactive's policies, and the rule in the MANW contest which states all entrants must abide by any relevant laws.

[kiory 404]

Yeah yeah, and the sh*tstorm goes on.

Wonder when it will hit RHS?

Oh, no doubt that they have probably received their fair share of bullshit already, some person angry about something will always kick up a fuss when things don't go their way.

Michaeldcullen is also in cahoots with MGT (Money Grabbing Trolls), http://mgtrolls.eu/shop, these guys, who are offering donator perks for Epoch, but it's ok, because this: "Note, this is an Epoch specific perk and does not infringe on BIS T&C"

Michaeldcullen, you claim to be doing this for the "wider epoch community", but the majority who have replied in that subreddit do not agree with you, and where are the thousands of players that do play Epoch? Oh, that's right, they are playing Epoch, it's not the community you are doing this for, it's yourself, you don't give a damn about them.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Kiory

[michaeldcullen 11]

Oh, no doubt that they have probably received their fair share of bullshit already, some person angry about something will always kick up a fuss when things don't go their way.

Michaeldcullen is also in cahoots with MGT (Money Grabbing Trolls), http://mgtrolls.eu/shop, these guys, who are offering donator perks for Epoch, but it's ok, because this: "Note, this is an Epoch specific perk and does not infringe on BIS T&C"

Michaeldcullen, you claim to be doing this for the "wider epoch community", but the majority who have replied in that subreddit do not agree with you, and where are the thousands of players that do play Epoch? Oh, that's right, they are playing Epoch, it's not the community you are doing this for, it's yourself, you don't give a damn about them.

I'm not in "cahoots" with MGT, they're just yet another community which you have betrayed. I'll think you'll find that on Reddit, the vast majority of people were against your practices, although they weren't particularly happy with infiSTAR either. The core of the argument got diluted a bit by that; frankly what you do or don't do with regards to infiSTAR means nothing to me, your treatment of server owners' and their communities does, however.

And from what I can gather from the person who replied to you on Reddit, MGT apparently added a donator shop because you banned them from the EpochMod forum and proceeded to nuke their Arma 2 server. Not particularly mature behaviour, is it?

Do we REALLY want people like this to be profiting from the MANW contest?

[Redphoenix 1539]

Yes, because they actually create something interesting and new?

[kiory 404]

Whatever man, I don't give a shit about speculation.

What is pissing me off, is that you come to a community that I respect immensely, a community separate from Epoch (has nothing to do with Epoch) and one that I'm a part of, one that has help shape what kind of modder I am, there are many awesome people here and I have grown as a modder because of them. You come here, spouting some drivel because one of us (Epoch Team) pissed you off, so now you're trying to pull Epoch from the MANW competition.

You are the one making this about money, not us.

If my credibility carries ANY weight here, I would appreciate it if you guys ignored this moron, there have been no underhanded deals or money making, I've always been a huge supporter of open source content, my addons are proof of such.

Edited December 7, 2014 by Kiory

[evromalarkey 150]

So where is your so called petition and wider community may I ask? So far only thing you have done is to bring this sh*tstorm from reddit to BI Forums, nicely done mate.

[michaeldcullen 11]

Whatever man, I don't give a shit about speculation.

What is pissing me off, is that you come to a community that I respect immensely, one that has help shape what kind of modder I am, there are many awesome people here and I have grown as a modder because of them. You come here, spouting some drivel because one of us pissed you off, so now you're trying to pull Epoch from the MANW competition.

You are the one making this about money, not us.

If my credibility carries ANY weight here, I would appreciate it if you guys ignored this moron, there have been no underhanded deals or money making, I've always been a huge supporter of open source content, my addons are proof of such.

I'm not here because "one of you pissed me off", the entire way that the A3 Epoch development has been done has pissed me off. You have shown nothing but contempt for the entire community, stating on numerous occasions that you're doing this "for yourselves", that it's "your mod" and you'll do things "your way", and anyone who wants to change the way it works on THEIR servers can forget about it.

Everything else is just icing. The fact is, you've breached the terms of your own licence, and that's against the law. The MANW says that any submissions must not break any laws, therefore you're eligible for disqualification unless you rectify the breach in license. You can do that by removing the CRC check. We're not asking for a lot there.

You can even provide the a non-CRC checking DLL as a separate download for use only by server owners who are willing to waive any form of support regarding bugs and other issues from yourselves, and include the vanilla-enforcing DLL in the default server files package.

By preventing adaptations, you're in breach of the license, it's as simple as that. And worse than that, you've illegally enforced these restrictions with complete disregard for the community. If this wasn't such a big problem, why are so many people complaining on your forums? Why are you continually locking and/or deleting threads with concerns from members of the community, and why are you banning people who are bringing these concerns to light?

You and the rest of the developers keep trying to make this personal, but it's not. This is about the project and the way it is viewed by the community. I have attempted all throughout this process (via PMs, waiting in your TeamSpeak, and posting everything in a public forum) to engage the development team in frank, open and honest discussion about these issues and resolve them amicably by reaching a compromise, but have been met by nothing but refusals, personal attacks and sarcasm.

If you respect the Arma community so much, why would you go out of your way like this to alienate them? Or don't server owners and their playerbase count as part of the Arma community? I suppose after all, it was AWOL who said "GSPs first, official hosts second, public last." Is that the approach your team has decided to take with EVERYTHING, as opposed to just the release of server files?

[kiory 404]

I've sent you a PM, I would appreciate it if we could talk about this outside of these forums.

[PuFu 4591]

Taken from our post on the Arma 3 Subreddit:

While the shady goings on at Arma 3 Life have been capturing the Arma 3 community's attention recently, something less well-known - and possibly worse - has been going on behind the scenes at EpochMod.com.

What started as an interesting evolution of a DayZ mod, updated and re-envisioned for Arma 3 - most likely in order to move away from the DZML-SA which prohibits porting to A3 - has developed into one of the most controversial projects I've ever seen.

The behaviour of the developers with regards to behind-the-scenes deals to provide exclusive "early access" to Game Server Providers for a percentage of the profits; adding CRC verification preventing modification of server files for personal use, contrary to the terms of their own CC license; theft of licensed code from third parties such as infiSTAR; and the attitude of the developers when asked numerous times by myself and other members of their community.

Add to all of that the fact that the entire project is essentially a way to profit from the Make Arma Not War contest, with zero regard for the very community which made their Arma 2 mod so popular, and it becomes clear that they have no regard for the community-orientated ideals behind the Make Arma Not War campaign.

With that in mind, I - on behalf of the wider Epoch community - hereby propose that they be disqualified from the contest under the following points:

Reasons for exclusion from the Contest:

c.do not comply with these official rules

The Organizer reserves the right in its sole and unfettered discretion to disqualify any Entry that according to its beliefs contains obscene, offensive or inappropriate content, or that is not consistent with the spirit or theme of the contest.

By completing and confirming the registration the Participant:

agrees to comply with all applicable laws and regulations

The specific law which they have broken is the terms of the CC license which they have chosen, by including CRC checks in their redis connector, they prevent adaptations of the distributed material for personal use. The relevant section can be found here: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_Versions#Adaptations_of_NoDerivatives_material_permitted_when_not_shared

We believe that this is not in the spirit of the contest, and against the relevant licensing laws, and therefore request that their submission be re-evaluated by Bohemia Interactive.

It is with deep regret that I choose to bring this to the wider Arma community's attention, but I have attempted to resolve these criticisms with the Epoch developers on numerous occasions but have been met with insults and generally negative attitude towards myself and anyone else with a concern by the development team, both privately and in public (on Twitch etc).

----------------------------------------------

In addition to this (updated for clarification purposes) post, there's a wealth of further evidence of violations, offensive behaviour, and just generally going against the spirit of the Arma community on the Reddit thread.

I hope this will be taken seriously and addressed by Bohemia Interactive.

Thanks,

Michael

Oh god, really?

I don't even know where to start about it:

1. CC license is not a law. There can be even derivatives from an existing CC license, such as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, which is the one used.

Plus, you confuse some stuff here. You are not ENTITLED to personal derivatives. The license simply TOLERATES it. There is a big difference.

Moreso, .pbo binarization is also some sort of obfuscation. Would you want everyone to release the MLOD format as well, just because you own personal (as in just for your own self, with no possibility to send those files to anyone else) derivatives are to be tolerated? Really?

2. So they have been rude with you, but then again, based on this very thread, i am feeling an urge (which i am constraining though) to be rude towards you just as well. Stupidity is not excuse...

3. Who are you to represent a larger community. Have you been elected or anything? For instance, you are not representing me in any sort of measure. Please try to speak only for yourself here. The above is simply your personal opinion, that can be or not shared by others. Shared opinions doesn't make you a representative either

4. Can you put the finger of what you repeatedly call " the spirit of the ArmA community". Especially considering that this community is composed of 90% users and 10% creators, you obviously being part of the first group?

5. Regarding the MANW rules:

a. they comply with rules, laws and regulations afaik.

b. i read the spirit of the contest as "fair and square", with all materials being owned (ip rights) by the creators and not by 3rd parties.

c. it seem to be complying to the rules and regulations of the contest, as described on the MANW page.

6. You can always send this sort of petition open letter towards BI. Just a sub-note: the above reasoning doesn't really hold much water, there is no proof to any of the claims you make.

[Tacti-Cool 10]

Who are you to represent a larger community. Have you been elected or anything? For instance, you are not representing me in any sort of measure. Please try to speak only for yourself here. The above is simply your personal opinion, that can be or not shared by others. Shared opinions doesn't make you a representative either

This. You aren't representing my opinion either. Don't appoint yourself spokesman of all BIS Players

[mistyronin 1181]

This is gonna be an interesting thread :popcornsmilie:

[[evo] dan 79]

This is gonna be an interesting thread :popcornsmilie:

Indeed, pass us the popcorn will ya?

[ProfTournesol 956]

Dan;2834300']Indeed' date=' pass us the popcorn will ya?[/quote']

I'm in, give me some.

[chiefboatsret 14]

Winter is coming and there is not enough to keep some bored people occupied. Take this crap back to where it came from.

[the_demongod 31]

I'm in, give me some.

I would take some too, but I don't want to get my beautiful new Thrustmaster Warthog greasy. I'm off to the DCS forums until this blows over.

In all seriousness, as unhappy as I am that epoch is going to win the total modification project over RHS (and I personally do agree that survival-type games are not in the spirit of arma), I don't really think there are any reasons to pull them from the contest.

I guess the arma community is just leaning toward all these roleplay and survival type games, I'll probably just stick to Arma 2 OA and flight sims until the Expansion pack comes out. Hopefully we'll see some new military content that fuels new scenarios and multiplayer missions, maybe even CTI.

Edited December 7, 2014 by the_Demongod

[St. Jimmy 272]

...In all seriousness, as unhappy as I am that epoch is going to win the total modification project over RHS...

The amount of supporter votes didn't decide anything.

About the topic. This just looks like a personal attack.

[cofi0276 1]

This is too funny. Shady guys that make profit from Epoch mods are going against the people that created the mod. If Bohemia started to enforce their own EULA none of this would have happened. It looks to me like everyone is making profit except the content creators. Thank god for the make arma not war contest, at least Epoch guys have some inspiration to make the mod better.

[chortles 263]

The amount of supporter votes didn't decide anything.

This -- and even in the Single-player category (as opposed to Addons, Multiplayer, and Total Conversion categories) the "outside" voting only determined the twenty (20) finalists, the winners and placing are still determined by internal panel like the other categories.

[tonic-_- 53]

Not saying that I agree with how Epoch was released, I get that people want to ensure a straight forward release and keep revisions the same to limit bug reports and other things but the CRC check does seem a bit over the top but they have the right to do that and it is not an impossible thing to get around, you can still easily modify the code it is just a matter of how much are you willing to put forth into learning. This does not qualify anywhere for them to be disqualified from MANW and honestly this seems way more of a personal attack then actual violations of the MANW rules. If anything the CRC check does not break any laws but voids the actual license making it not usable but licenses them selves are complicated and can only cover so much.

As for the accusations of them using other peoples work (InfiSTAR was referenced). InfiSTAR uses code from SpyGlass which is made by me and is licensed under a CC license. InfiSTAR is not a good source of reference given the fact that he is using other peoples work and is selling it, so if you are serious about getting them disqualified then please provide factual information that qualifies them for being disqualified. What is provided so far seems nothing more then a personal attack and your own feelings towards the project as a whole. It is nice to have a healthy opinion on things like this and point out possible wrong doings but the biggest problems with these discussions is the misinformation that is being spread around which prevents proper judgement.

[Defunkt 431]

A license that permits derivative works for 'personal use' doesn't guarantee unfettered access to sources.

Besides, we all know that most (probably all) of the objections will be coming from server hosts who want to be able to offer perks in exchange for 'donations'. I see no reason why BIS or anybody else should lift a finger to make that possible.

[St. Jimmy 272]

Now that I've read more in the Reddit I understand that this is just a case where some server hosters aren't happy that Epoch isn't yet open. If you're that pissed off then just don't try to run the mod and let it be. People just seem to want to get their hands on the source code and do what they want with it.

There's nothing really bad in this case and this is just a personal issue. It seems like the real cancer are the "pissed off part of the Epoch community" that are some blacklisted hosters that tried to run with some stuff that wasn't good for helping alpha/beta mod.