It'd probably be best not to make presumptions about things people haven't said.

If I were to make something for monetary profit it'd fall into a different discussion.

What the fuck is this thread?

OSMAP 2.0: The Return of Maplantis?

Here's what you said:
You didn't specify "maps" or anything, you are broadly saying that you don't think anything that has been created can "be stolen".

However upon further questioning, it appears that that is not what you meant, despite it being what you said. Good that we've cleared that up.

Yes, it would protect the maps in the DLDB, but what good does that do when some of those maps are played online without that protection/password?
You've also stated that its easy to bypass the protection so what good would that do anyway?

All in all, this isn't a bright idea Lanth.

If you want to unprotect maps fine, do it out of site out of mind. Don't ask SEN to contribute to it though.

Erm, I think you've misunderstood, somehow.

The existing maps are protected with inferior protectors. We could use this new protector, along with passwords, to offer the maximum level of protection available. This would only be improving the protection on these maps, not degrading it in any way.

The password is required to unprotect the map using the same tool, it has nothing to do with playing it on battle.net.

Az, I find it funny how you tried to refute the arguments of mine you picked, but most of the time just by denying it and without presenting anything solid to support your stance. Normally this is the point where I just leave the conversation, but I'll respond for the sake of it. Also what's the deal with increasing text size and bolding whole sentences you already stated elsewhere? Please stick to tasteful discussion. And don't tell me you have to because "they are ignored", in fact I specifically addressed some of these but you ignored it and (basically) just replied with "no.".
The first part basically answers my question but the 2nd sentence doesn't make sense in that context. What do you mean with "There are plenty of freely available triggers"?


You didn't get the subtlety I was addressing (this should've become clear when you read the rest of the paragraph you so conveniently failed to quote): To say "unprotectors go against the intentions of the mapmaker" you have to know what the mapmaker's intention is. But since you only know your own intent and maybe that of a few friends you can't derive a blanket statement that unprotectors go against every mapmaker's intent.


Why didn't you quote the part where I refuted this with my personal anecdote?


Nobody is trying to sanction anything. If Moose wants to implent a new policy he wouldn't need anyone's sanction. We're having an open discussion here.
Anyways, yes, too bad we're talking about unprotectors (and about protectors too) when clearly those tools are easily abuseable to go against the will of mappers.
I just wish we only had tools that prevent both illegitimate unprotection and protection.


Anyways, back on topic:
I know you think lowly of me, but what else are you basing this bogus idea on?


Well you're right in that people can (and definitely have) spread maps of other's as their own. But I'm arguing that it would be rarely successful if you're publishing your map on a well known mapping community. I realize I can't prove that but in my experience maps that have been stolen from SENners never gained enough popularity to trump the original. I don't know why but that's what I've observed. Think of that what you will. That's for B.net.
The guarantee I was speaking of was about all SC1 mapping communities. We're interconnected enough that word would spread to other sites as well if someone would attempt such a blatant map theft.
All the time? Attempted maybe. Successful cases are quite rare, greatly deflating the importance of that argument. Personally I know of no map that survived more than a month on bnet that was stolen from a SENner having put their map here.
What the fuck do we care when there's a fake map on bnet for a week? We control what's happening on our site which is all that matters. B.net regulates itself just fine.


As I've said, it might irritate some, but it also might encourage some. Which one of those adverse effects is greater is hard to tell and can definitely not be determined by you having a strong stance about it.
Judging from the responses in this thread I'd tend to assume that the pro-unprotection fraction is even larger.


If I wanted to be mean I could say "Because not everyone is you.", but I'll stick to "Because it's a topic that divides people's opinions." SEN was always a place where everyone could voice their opinions and where delicate matters could be discussed in a civilized manner. I don't see why this topic should be any different.


By that same train of thought we should also ban protectors from this site to protect the rights of mappers that want their maps to remain open source. But I hear nobody demanding a ban for those. Why?
At this point I want to quote an important statement that didn't get enough attention imo...
... especially seeing this statement:
So where do you take the right from to protect your map? It doesn't seem this was ever intended.
I know you're going to answer something about intellectual property, but what I'm saying is that it doesn't apply here. When you use Blizzard's platform you have to play by their rules or decide you don't like the rules and refuse to be part of it. It's not intuitive to me that you can just go ahead and promote a new rule and bind everyone to it. This is why unprotectors were invented. To remove the shackles of this new rule (aka protectors).

I'm done with the quoting fest. You guys should learn about fallacies before actually calling them on others.

Dem0n: My analogy wasn't far-fetched. You are saying "people have decided "x" in the past, so I don't care what the people constituting the new community care about, we should keep the "x" policy". I applied this way of thinking to a past issue: women's right. If people were using the same way of thinking as you, no one would ever have even thought it was a possibility to change the policy "x" (being women's rights).

Azrael: You are having a really hard time understanding the fact that there exists a lot of literature supporting the fact that private property might be immoral.
While you are right that Lanthanide's logic is flawed, you haven't shown to me that you understood in what way exactly.
Porn is not related to the same moral issue. You've switched your argumentation's focus from private property to something different.
The reason why it is flawed is because he is justifying the fact of doing something because others have done it, without taking in consideration whether it is moral or not. When you do something, you must be able to probe that it's moral.

Lanthanide: The Prada example you gave is wrong on many levels.
1) SC map-making is a non-profitable hobby. Not an enterprise or a job. The idea of legal property is thus different.
2) If someone would steal Prada's design and claim it his, he would naturally get caught because of the popularity of the brand.
3) You are assuming Prada actually has rights over their creation. I say they do not.
And if we go back to a mapping example, yes, I do believe if you'd leave an obvious comment inside the map saying you left the map unlocked because you believe in other people's responsibility and that you would like to have your name removed from any foreign version, people would follow your instructions (as long as it's easy to execute and well explained). Of course there would be exceptions, but I claim they would be rare. You probably think that if someone does work, that person wants recognition from it. Thus, if you let them know they can add their name as a modifier, why wouldn't they do so?
Or better, simply design the credits so that people know you are not responsible for the crappy versions that emerge. "I have published Version "x", and only that version. Do not associate my name with the other ones." or whatever.
There's also the fact that some people see credits as a way of saying "this is mine" instead of "I have participated to the creation of this".

Cecil: When you say "I'm actually against the way of thinking in that something you make can "be stolen" in the first place.", do you mean that you reject the idea of "stealing" because you reject the idea of property as well?

----

Anyways, as mentioned earlier, this whole debate boils down to "Should SEN consider a map to be the property of its creator?"
If your answer is Yes, then SEN shouldn't allow unprotectors.
If your answer is No, then SEN should allow unprotectors.

... But!


EDIT: Ninja'd by Nude on the fact that "Blizzard made the editor so that all maps could be opened, with no hint of protection."

Okay thanks (not ironic) for elaborating on the different types of open source. I was of course referring to the regulations of the GPL license.
The point was to release a map which
a) everyone can learn/take ideas from
b) will be improved not only by me alone, but everyone can contribute their ideas creating a better final product.
Especially b) only works if every contributor makes their changes public. It doesn't help when they put their email address somewhere so people can ask for an unprotected version of the map, because, lets face it, in practice only very few would actually go through that hassle.

Of course I'm not going to (or even want to) pursue legal affairs. When I created the map I never expected the impact it'd have. If I knew, maybe I'd have put in specifics about my open source notion, but that point is long gone so it's not a big deal; still when the topic comes up I explain the spirit in that the map was created to the people involved, with a shimmer of hope that someone listens to it.


Oh and btw. I've confused you 2, Lant and Az, when I was talking about creating triggers from scratch for DSN. Sorry guys.
But that probably explains the weird answer I received from Az.

It is? I'm no logician, but how does the fact that the logic doesn't apply to a different case invalidate it for the original case? If someone says chocolate syrup tastes good in milk, do we say that claim is invalid because the logic applied to chocolate syrup in chicken soup results in terrible taste? Logic works for particular cases and logic that applies somewhere may or may not apply elsewhere.

Here are hypothetical situations stemming from the variable in question:
SEN Does Not Allow Unprotectors
Case A: Someone unprotects a map, looks at it but does not release or even play it with another person: Nobody knows unless he tells someone and he faces no consequences.
Case B: Someone unprotects a map, takes credit, and attempts to spread it on battle.net. He may or may not face reprecussions.
Case C: Someone unprotects a map, takes credit, and attemps to spread it on SEN. The map gets deleted, the person faces repercussions, possibly including suspension or a ban.

SEN Does Allow Unprotectors
Case A: Someone unprotects a map, looks at it but does not release or even play it with another person: Nobody knows unless he tells someone and he faces no consequences.
Case B: Someone unprotects a map, takes credit, and attempts to spread it on battle.net. He may or may not face reprecussions.
Case C: Someone unprotects a map, takes credit, and attemps to spread it on SEN. The map gets deleted, the person faces repercussions, possibly including suspension or a ban.

Benefits for whom? You? Yes, for you, I suppose there are none.

The same thing we would do about it before SEN gave them the means to do it.

We could one-up it and make a unique password for each map the script protects and keep them in a database and give them out one at a time to the appropriate people.

This. Merely using an unprotector on any of my protected maps certainly does not circumvent my intentions. I don't want my protected maps to not be unprotected, I don't want them edited, stolen, or re-released. You are claiming a monopoly on knowledge of the intentions of anyone who has used a map protector. When you say:
Is that not telling people to use protectors specifically the way you think they should be used?

No, Payne, you extended Dem0n's logic to an example far beyond what he wanted to say. He was asking specifically what has changed in the past three or four years that would warrant a change in policy, not making a blanket statement that things should be kept a certain way because they were that way in the past. If someone tells him something that he deems acceptable as warranting a policy change, then he would support such a policy change. Furthermore, I would suspect that Dem0n realizes cultural and social changes in the past few hundred years have warranted changes in the area of women's rights.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2012, 12:10 am by Mini Moose 2707.

It's not "because others have done it", it's because there's no harm in it, precisely because others have done it. This is the same process by which trademarks become general terms, such as Zipper and Yo-yo, because the original owners failed to protect them, they eventually lost their legal trademark status. What was immoral/illegal became legal precisely because so many people were doing it.

No, because one of the major things covering each case is copyright. Prada will also likely have other protections, possibly design patents, but primarily comes to copyright. Which again, automatically attaches to all creations, unless specifically opted out.
I'm not sure how someone gets "naturally" caught, or the fact that actually the authorities have to spend significant effort to go after counterfeiters. Pirating has gotten very advanced these days, to the point that it may take an expert to determine whether something is fake or not. That's not even counting the cases where dodgy factories in China that have been contracted to create something turn around and make counterfeit runs of the same product to sell on the black market.

I also don't see how this point is relevant or somehow makes Prada different from mapping.
I'm assuming that because that is the law under which most western countries are run. You can say whatever you want, but it doesn't actually alter the legal fact that there is such a thing as intellectual property and copyright. Again, I'm not sure why this point somehow makes my Prada analogy wrong.

Well quite clearly you're much more idealistic than the average person on b.net, given how many slight variations of popular maps there are out there, many of which have exploit/cheat triggers added to them but are otherwise identical to the 'official' versions.

Clearly if someone had the common decency to obey a polite request in a trigger, that same person would likely have the decency to clearly mark their version as being an edit anyway. And yet they didn't. I don't know why you think a polite request in a comment trigger is going to change anyone's behaviour.

I eventually did that. But that in itself isn't much in the way of protection, particularly if you keep releasing new versions with bumped up version numbers. So your credit says "version 2.40 is genuine" - when 2.41 comes out, you have to edit it. There is also of course nothing stopping someone from ripping off your map and editing this themselves.

In my map, I gave a link to the thread on SEN to point to official releases and just a general warning to be aware of fake versions, and listed the known-fake versions at the time (which I updated with each release). This is simply shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, though.

Blizzard also could have banned the use of 3rd party map editors or protection utilities at any time, but they did not. So I don't think this argument is particularly strong.

This is not what I conclude from this:
To me, he did not seem like someone waiting to be convinced.
Maybe I am misunderstanding something.

Ok, didn't realise that was directed at me. I am pretty confident that 100% of triggers in the latest version of DSN are my creation. Clearly there was an evolution from the source map I use (which was unprotected) to my current version along the way as triggers were whittled away, replaced or edited. So we arrive at the classic Theseus' Ship paradox. The thing that has changed the least is the terrain, but even that I have made some significant functional, as well as purely aesthetic, changes to.

Actually yes, that is what I suggested. Initially I was thinking of just 1 password for all maps, but obviously that wouldn't help once that password was given to one person. I thought of this while typing and tried to clarify by adding the word 'unique', but didn't make it clear enough.

No, you're quoting the other post, not the one where he actually did ask:

The terrain had already been completely remade in Queen's versions, except the NudeRaider banner.

Yes. The fact it exists elsewhere on the internet is not a "good reason" to host it here. It's a malicious program used to violate mapmakers' rights, to decide for someone else if their map can be protected or not, something that this site has allowed mapmakers to decide since its creation.


Yeah, except your Case A isn't going to increase because no one needs to view maps to find out how anything is done. Anyone can tell anyone who wants to know. We have programs hosted here already that let you view a map without editing it.

All you're going to do is increase the frequency of Case B and Case C.


Exactly, nothing. You're going to aid people in committing a malicious act you have no way to prevent.


There's nothing stopping you from saying "Anyone who wants to see my map unprotected can PM me," or "Here's my unprotected maps, but don't edit them." If you trust people so much, you're free to do that, and suffer any consequences for it yourself.

If someone wants to view one of my maps for educational purposes, they can use one of the programs designed to view maps without editing them, or ask me how I did something. They would not need an unprotector.

However, can we stop speaking about hypothetical people that hypothetically want to unprotect your maps for educational purposes? They don't exist.


Instead of taking this personally and responding in a flippant nonconstructive way, how about naming the benefits for anyone?

So far all you keep saying is "educational value", which has already addressed numerous times by quite a few people:


Or to put it more bluntly.


If it's really for educational purposes, why do you insist on the program being able to edit and save the modified map? You know, since we already allow "unprotectors" that don't allow you to edit the map.

I agree with you. My statement was precisely trying to trace a line between legality and morality. What is illegal might be moral, just like it might be immoral. Same for what is legal.
However, to me, it seemed like you were saying "others are doing this thing too, so why not us?", which doesn't provide any argumentation as to whether that "thing" is moral or not.

1) "unless specifically opted out", precisely. Blizzard lets you use their editor under the restriction that you will not use any Third-Party programs. If you use one, you probably wave your right to your creation, though I am not 100% sure.
If someone gives you access to a mean of production under certain rules, I do not know to what point you can claim property over your creation if you haven't followed those rules.

2) What I meant is: what if someone would sell a Prada shirt saying he specifically made it himself, and without stealing anything from anyone? The brand's popularity would naturally identify this guy as a counterfeiter.
This actually applies in the same way to maps, and I thus realize I was wrong in saying your analogy was wrong on that level.

3) It doesn't actually make the analogy wrong, my bad.

I'll admit my analysis of your Prada analogy was poor. I apologize.

As I have said, credits must be easy to access and modify. And yes, I do believe most of the people would actually edit the credits.
But in all honesty, we shouldn't really care much about credits.
I remember that time I saw a "Town Wars [v4.12]" game hosted (I made v4.05). I joined, and saw the host had changed the credits in the lobby to his name. I laughed when he started the game and I saw my name still shown in the credits text-message in early-game.
But whatever, my point is that, if he had successfully changed the credits, who cares? It's still the same content.
If someone actually puts effort into changing content, they will probably want to be recognized for the additions and will thus try to add their name somewhere.
Of course, stupid minor edits like implementing ridiculous cheats are made by irresponsible persons that actually do not understand that good balance is part of an enjoyable game for everyone, including themselves. If they have fun owning everyone by using rigged cheats, I couldn't careless. I personally don't find that fun, and there are probably a lot of people thinking the same way. And I do not believe that the author of that cheat-version would actually enjoy playing his stupid version more than a few times. There is no real fun coming out of simply winning from unfair balance.

They already mentioned they did not want any Third-Party program to be used. They do not need to ban anything to let us know their rules. It's not because there is no specific ban that we should feel justified to break their rules. I guess we could say a rule is a form of ban.

The rest of the quote shows to me that once again he did not seem like someone who actually wanted to be convinced. And the thread provided argumentation over what could be the reasons to change the rule, yet he posted this kind of preaching.
While we're here, I'd also like to point out that new-comers are also part of this community, not just the oldies that know everything.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2012, 1:15 am by payne.

Those were all "benefits" of map theft

No one but you has even suggested that.

We're talking about using unprotectors for methods that don't involve editing them.

We already allow "unprotectors" that don't allow editing the map.

In fact, Farty was saying it's more than possible to expand Trigger Viewer to view everything without allowing it to be edited:

O)FaRTy1billion -- Trigger Viewer before had features like showing locations, units, etc.
O)FaRTy1billion -- But people were like NO THAT IS UNPROTECTION and it was forced to be downsized

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2012, 1:14 am by Azrael.

I edited my post just over while you replied. I'll cut-paste the thing here:

Benefits:
- If the mapper quits mapping and something has to be fixed, access to the map exists;
- Faster fixes/adds because the community doesn't need to wait for the mapper;
- If someone wants to reuse a system that has already been triggered, he can just copy-paste it in his map and save some time.

There is also a benefit to not have protectors:
- No need to waste time finding an unprotector to do constructive work.

All the staff here already have unprotectors. That doesn't change by hosting them on this site.

Not to mention, why do you need access to the map? And what map? There are almost no new maps being made.

But, as per the first line, it's not a benefit regardless.


This is map theft. No one is suggesting this.


Very few systems can be directly copy/pasted from one map to another, and even if they could, you shouldn't be doing this without the mapmaker's consent. Copy/pasting every layer of someone else's map into a new map is still map theft.

Not to mention, who is this that's reusing systems? What mapmakers? There are almost none left.

But, as per the first line, it's still map theft if you don't have their consent.

Man Az you really need to stop ignoring arguments.
We've mentioned a few more:
- The community can help improve maps
- Modifying a map may spark interest in mapping in the first place
- Fixing bugged maps
- Solutions to puzzles can be found to continue map progress
- Modifying a map for personal reasons/use (e.g. infinite lives in bound)

This is all I remember without going through the whole thread again. I've yet to see you replying to any of those. None of those necessarily have something to do with theft.