Is this the sound of a can opening? Alexis did say in his post above he’d work on a way of making it work, so why not wait and see?
[quote=streetfelineblue][quote=Fhoenix]Can’t you grant the right for that particular wiki to quote text fully without losing the ability to enforce copyright elsewhere? I mean there are books you can read online, and the authors of those books do not lose their rights. Probably. Do they?
And yeah, please don’t remove that text. Without the wiki I would forget most of the storylines. I would forget all the beautiful words. T_T
I mean surely there must be some way active and paying customers can be granted the right to reread the text of your work, without that hurting your company. The journal system simply does not work. And improving it would be a waste of precious time, when a legion of volunteers does the job better than any log system ever could.[/quote]
I agree on anything. Also, I think wikis improve the spirit of collaboration between players, working together to make a whole of the puzzle of information Fallen London provides.[/quote]
Yeah, it really helps community discussion, when people can quote the game freely, like lady ciel just did for ‘tree of ages’. That too would be impossible, if wiki contained only mechanical results of the actions.
On an unrelated note. Alexis, would it be possible, if it’s not too much work, to make the quick reply window on this forum bigger? I have to open a new window every time to make a reply in a thread, because the quick reply edit box is so tiny, I can’t see what I write there (or is it just me, who has this problem?).
oh lord we’ve gone from goats to copyright and wikis
i am clueless about both of these topics!
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]This is the last post I’ll make on the topic until I’ve talked to the editors at the Fallen London wikia community (and I won’t have time to pursue that until the KS is well and truly launched).[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]–[/color]
>Can’t you grant the right for that particular wiki
[color=#009900]We probably can’t, even if we wanted to, which we definitely don’t. ‘The wiki’ isn’t a legal entity: we’d be granting rights to individuals who we don’t know personally or professionally and who as volunteers aren’t accountable. [/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]And in any case companies that make their living writing content don’t hand the rights to their content to their customers, for obvious reasons.[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]I want to make one thing clear: we’re bending over backwards to be good to our community by even having this conversation. I am a Breaking Bad and Mass Effect fan, and both of those are big complex franchises with elaborate back-stories. It would be very convenient for me and for other fans if the BB and ME wikis included line-by-line copy and paste of the scripts. They don’t, they never will, and I would be laughed off their parent company forums, if not banned, for proposing it.[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]I understand that there are benefits to reference wikis, and that your play experience would suffer without them. We have always worked hard to be good to our players, and this is why the wikis exist at all (since all wiki hosting companies have takedown policies). [/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]But it’s important for you to understand that this is our[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] [/color]livelihood[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] and[/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)] [/color]the future of our company - [color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]not to mention four years of my own personal creative effort - that we’re talking about here, and that trumps everything.[/color]
[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]
[/color]
[li]
Back on topic, did anyone get an invitation from Übergoat Herder?
Who/what would that be?
I got an invitation to a private supper from a fellow Fallen Londoner calling himself Übergoat Herder. He mentioned that while Hesperidian Cider is the goat’s beverage of choice, it isn’t it’s exclusive beverage.
Or something like that. I shouldn’t have accepted.
[quote=Nigel Overstreet]
I got an invitation to a private supper from a fellow Fallen Londoner calling himself Übergoat Herder. He mentioned that while Hesperidian Cider is the goat’s beverage of choice, it isn’t it’s exclusive beverage.
Or something like that. I shouldn’t have accepted.[/quote]
What - did it mention it in the Private Supper description itself?
Said Übergoat Herder doesn’t seem to own a genuine Übergoat, but he is in Alexisthetest’s clique. Which is probably a very exclusive one.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Übergoat~Herder
[color=#009900]Not now (s)he’s not. (S)he joined via my Journal to get default clique membership. To be clear, this account is nothing to do with me or Failbetter.[/color][li]
edited by Alexis on 9/2/2013
Hmm. No supper invite for me at the moment. But damn I’d be curious to try.
Well, Alexis, you have put down very clear and reasonable things about the quoting of chunks of text. I have NO problem with them and will abide by anything you and the wiki editors decide.
That said, having fought many copyright battles successfully without having to go to court, you can grant limited use of the text of Failbetter to the Wiki sites, and only those, and ask for credit back to you. That means that the text is still yours and yours alone, but you are granting a license to the wikis to use it, but not to let others copy it.
But do still check with lawyers. And I know one in Kentucky, a copyright lawyer too. He’ll know American Copyright law, and I’m sure your solicitors in England can advise you about the laws dealing with the UK.
Just let us know what the rules are and I’m sure that we will all be willing to obey them. I’m sure that we don’t want to see Failbetter go down as we all enjoy the play here.
As for the Ubergoat, personally if I were to start trying to create a UG from scratch, I’d get an OG, and go to the Iron Republic. I’ve gone to all the locations in London, and there is nothing. I haven’t seen a OG card yet. Running out of Nex to get more cards. lol
[quote=Joy Phillip]That said, having fought many copyright battles successfully without having to go to court, you can grant limited use of the text of Failbetter to the Wiki sites, and only those, and ask for credit back to you. That means that the text is still yours and yours alone, but you are granting a license to the wikis to use it, but not to let others copy it.
But do still check with lawyers. And I know one in Kentucky, a copyright lawyer too. He’ll know American Copyright law, and I’m sure your solicitors in England can advise you about the laws dealing with the UK.[/quote]
Not wanting to guess what Alexis is thinking, but from the perspective of someone who works with authors/seen copyright issues have direct impact: why would he want to? The more of his content that is available for free, the more he risks people just reading the wiki and not getting involved with Fallen London. And the more likely it is FailBetter will not be able to afford to keep going. Consulting with lawyers is stupidly expensive (stupidly) - and he’d be doing so to enable something that might mean his company earns less. Counter-intuitive is a polite way of putting it.
I get that it’s useful for us fans, and keeps us hooked and involved, so it’s not entirely a negative - but my view would be - I’m grateful for what we get, I’m sure he’ll try to keep something available, but the more people push it, the more work he’s going to have to put in to monitor it. That would mean less time working on Fallen London and Sunless Sea.
And I care more about new content than being able to read old.
I reckon that if people push it - it’ll be easier for him just to ban use of his work entirely. If we leave it with him (as he said we should), we’ll probably get something. Which is better than nothing. And he definitely doesn’t need legal advice from us, as he almost certainly knows better.
Sorry if that sounds patronising, I just know that authors I’ve worked with, in a similar position with livelihoods on the line - have given up and taken their ball home with them, so to speak. FailBetter seem very trusting - allowing the wiki as it has been so far, DRM free on the new game. Perhaps we should support that, rather than push for more?
I think an elegant solution to the wiki problem would be a better journal. Divided into sections like the wiki is, searchable, perhaps with a note for things you’ve already echoed. I believe something like this was already suggested/discussed a while back, what happened to it?
Yeah, I definitely agree with babelfishwars. Alexis has already said he’d be willing to talk to the wiki editors to see if something can be worked out, so it seems better to just leave it at that than keep pushing for more.
[quote=babelfishwars][quote=Joy Phillip]That said, having fought many copyright battles successfully without having to go to court, you can grant limited use of the text of Failbetter to the Wiki sites, and only those, and ask for credit back to you. That means that the text is still yours and yours alone, but you are granting a license to the wikis to use it, but not to let others copy it.
But do still check with lawyers. And I know one in Kentucky, a copyright lawyer too. He’ll know American Copyright law, and I’m sure your solicitors in England can advise you about the laws dealing with the UK.[/quote]
Not wanting to guess what Alexis is thinking, but from the perspective of someone who works with authors/seen copyright issues have direct impact: why would he want to? The more of his content that is available for free, the more he risks people just reading the wiki and not getting involved with Fallen London. And the more likely it is FailBetter will not be able to afford to keep going. Consulting with lawyers is stupidly expensive (stupidly) - and he’d be doing so to enable something that might mean his company earns less. Counter-intuitive is a polite way of putting it.
I get that it’s useful for us fans, and keeps us hooked and involved, so it’s not entirely a negative - but my view would be - I’m grateful for what we get, I’m sure he’ll try to keep something available, but the more people push it, the more work he’s going to have to put in to monitor it. That would mean less time working on Fallen London and Sunless Sea.
And I care more about new content than being able to read old.
I reckon that if people push it - it’ll be easier for him just to ban use of his work entirely. If we leave it with him (as he said we should), we’ll probably get something. Which is better than nothing. And he definitely doesn’t need legal advice from us, as he almost certainly knows better.
Sorry if that sounds patronising, I just know that authors I’ve worked with, in a similar position with livelihoods on the line - have given up and taken their ball home with them, so to speak. FailBetter seem very trusting - allowing the wiki as it has been so far, DRM free on the new game. Perhaps we should support that, rather than push for more?[/quote]
[li]
Not patronizing, but definitely a mean-ish tone. I’m not suggesting FB actually do this, but I took from the "I’d like to keep the wiki as a reference for the players" to mean that Alexis is not wanting to shut the wiki down completely. I mean, call me stupid or something.
However, many lawyers have a free initial consultation, you go in, talk to them about the problem, get their first glance opinion and that’s it.
Finally, I was sharing what I have learned from my experience. FB could ALSO just buy the wiki outright which bypasses the entire problem as they will own the content on it outright.
So, back to the Ubergoat (and I’m not sure how to the the two dots over the U…)
[quote=Little The]I think an elegant solution to the wiki problem would be a better journal. Divided into sections like the wiki is, searchable, perhaps with a note for things you’ve already echoed. I believe something like this was already suggested/discussed a while back, what happened to it?[/quote]The trouble with this suggestion is that, as has been said elsewhere, Failbetter don’t have spare resources just now.
Another vote for leaving things to Alexis and the Wiki editors; they’re all reasonable, smart people, and I’m sure they’ll find the best practicable solution, without input from us. I suggest we go tell our friends about Sunless Sea instead.
I also got invited to an Ubergoat dinner, but the host cancelled it while I was on a train. I would’ve accepted, too.
[quote=Joy Phillip]
So, back to the Ubergoat (and I’m not sure how to the the two dots over the U…)[/quote]
I usually just copypaste it ^^
edited by streetfelineblue on 9/2/2013
I don’t normally bother but there is a character map on my browser, so I can just copy any special characters. So I can get "Übergoat"[li]
Copy and pasting sounds like a much quicker way though.
It’s an umlaut. Alt+154 for upper case. Alt+129 for lower case.
[li]