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    Your Elvenar Team

Future of the Scrolls of Knowledge and other resources

Dew Spinner

Well-Known Member

Mrietha

Active Member
Because of my work in two very different fields I am very aware of how NOT to violate copyright law.

Basic concept - If you write/design it it is yours - with or without a copyright mark.
Life is easier if material availble to the public contains the copyright mark but it is not mandatory.

I can make a personal copy of your work, but I cannot share that copy. And of course I cannot sell or use it in anyway for profit.
i can quote it, but I cannot use more that a certain, very small portion of it even as a quote.

I can take your pattern (say for a knitted sweater) make that sweater for myself, but I cannont make it and sell it without your permission.

Smooper you idea is a great one - if and only if those individuals who own that material are willing to give up thier ownership. That is they are willing to have their material copied and made available on a website other than thier own.

I believe that you can use Deborah's idea and make a list of informative forum posts and create a scroll of knowledge from those. But you would have to check with the Forum moderators first.
 

defiantoneks

Well-Known Member
Thank you @Mrietha
I know from conversations with folks on Gems' admin sites that this idea of copying and publishing Gems information, would not be well received.
while i don't disagree that their content is theirs, the fact is that the site is inaccessible and hasn't been updated. So if the admins or owners are so invested that they wont share the content somewhere active and maintained, what will it take to get that site functional for everyone?
 

defiantoneks

Well-Known Member
my recommendation would not be to attempt people to move the info here, but to provide support for those sites that are deemed valuable. donate, communicate with them. let them know they are valued and that if they are inclined to abandon ship, that someone would be willing to take over. (and not just in name, but in costs and updates).
 

Astram

Forum Moderator
Elvenar Team
Just to clarify this issue, from the very start the Scrolls were designed to consolidate information and present it in a single source. Every Scroll that used information that others created was done with their permission and it was linked only if no permission. From the start we made it clear to not use Copyrighted items. Where you see detailed work like Crackie did in the battle section it was his/her labor of love, or maybe a cruel punishment self-delivered, but no matter what we do not condone nor allow the use of copyrighted material.
 

Smooper

Well-Known Member
May I use game images to make my own guides? Would I be allowed to post them on my own site or just in an Inno owned site?
 

Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
So Gems used images captured from the game, and had their own artist work with them and modify them a bit; for example guest race guides. But we also spoke with Inno about our usage. We also uploaded buildings, like event buildings and Ancient Wonders.
iDavis, TomatoeHu and Platinum Leaf capture buildings and display them, but I bet they also asked permission.

Write the staff and ask for an email.
 

Dew Spinner

Well-Known Member
Because of my work in two very different fields I am very aware of how NOT to violate copyright law.

Basic concept - If you write/design it it is yours - with or without a copyright mark.
Life is easier if material availble to the public contains the copyright mark but it is not mandatory.

I can make a personal copy of your work, but I cannot share that copy. And of course I cannot sell or use it in anyway for profit.
i can quote it, but I cannot use more that a certain, very small portion of it even as a quote.

I can take your pattern (say for a knitted sweater) make that sweater for myself, but I cannont make it and sell it without your permission.

Smooper you idea is a great one - if and only if those individuals who own that material are willing to give up thier ownership. That is they are willing to have their material copied and made available on a website other than thier own.

I believe that you can use Deborah's idea and make a list of informative forum posts and create a scroll of knowledge from those. But you would have to check with the Forum moderators first.
There is no need to copy the info and post it somewhere else. The entire Gems site is available at this link...https://web.archive.org/web/20230605103849/https://elvengems.com/. The link can be posted in the scrolls without any copyright infringement by the person posting the link. If there were copyright infringement it would be on the webarchive.org site and I am sure they checked into copyright laws before starting the website. So, the owner of Gems would have to take up the copyright issue with webarchive.org. I am sure that if webarchive.org was violatiing copyright law the site would have been taken down long ago.
 
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Deborah M

Oh Wise One
I wonder if the web.archive site has any permissions from Inno to use their images and other proprietary documentations. For that matter, I wonder if the owners of the original Gems site approve of their site being hijacked even if they let their website expire. Just a thought.
 

Dew Spinner

Well-Known Member
I'm no copyright law expert, by any means, but webarchive.org is a non-profit site and maybe that is the loop hole allowing broader fair use rules. A companies TOS is not law, again I would have to logically assume if what they are doing is against the law the site would have been shut down long ago.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
I wonder if the web.archive site has any permissions from Inno to use their images and other proprietary documentations. For that matter, I wonder if the owners of the original Gems site approve of their site being hijacked even if they let their website expire. Just a thought.
Copyright laws have exemptions for archives and libraries, and Wayback Machine is part of Internet Archive. The material isn’t being sold or used in anyway but only archival purposes. They consider themselves a library, but I think there was controversy a few years ago at start of shutdown bc they opened their archive for “borrowing” (they also have books and movies) like a regular library and some content owners were not happy. Even a brick and mortar library need to pay for books and digital material like audiobooks before loaning them out to public. In the past I have talked to a librarian who said with digital material, the library pays by the downloads. It’s not like paying for the audiobook once and renting it out in perpetuity for free and incurring only server costs afterwards. They have to pay for it again after x number of borrows. I don’t think Internet Archive follows those rules.

As for Gems, I would think they fall under fair use. They are using the material in a transformative way to comment, review, and educate. They are serving ads though so one might argue they are making money off the content, which would muddle things a bit, but it does sound like they straight up asked Inno to be clear. Either way, fair use would just need to run its way through the courts and up to judge to decide on case by case basis. Most will probably cease and desist you first.

(And Shenanigan Elves fall under Fair Use parody.)
 

Smooper

Well-Known Member
There is no need to copy the info and post it somewhere else. The entire Gems site is available at this link...https://web.archive.org/web/20230605103849/https://elvengems.com/. The link can be posted in the scrolls without any copyright infringement by the person posting the link. If there were copyright infringement it would be on the webarchive.org site and I am sure they checked into copyright laws before starting the website. So, the owner of Gems would have to take up the copyright issue with webarchive.org. I am sure that if webarchive.org was violatiing copyright law the site would have been taken down long ago.
The problem I have with this solution is the same I have with using Gems or ElvenStats or anything else. WebArchive is not Inno, is not Elvenar and they can stop hosting or shut down completely at any time leaving Elvenar players without this resource. Create the guide and host it here (as Crackie did) and then there are no problems.
 

Dew Spinner

Well-Known Member
The problem I have with this solution is the same I have with using Gems or ElvenStats or anything else. WebArchive is not Inno, is not Elvenar and they can stop hosting or shut down completely at any time leaving Elvenar players without this resource. Create the guide and host it here (as Crackie did) and then there are no problems.
The problem is getting someone to spend all that time to do it, especially if it is readily available elsewhere. I don't spend time writing a dictionary because several are readily available to me. If all the online dictionaries disappear, I will have to burn that bridge when I get to it and find other sources for that info. Gems spent the time because they were making money from it, I'm sure some people connected to Gems were volunteers but the owner/s were making money from the site, that made it worth the time for them. Seeing Gems has officially closed their doors, maybe you could ask their permission to post their info on the Forum. I'm sure @Lelanya could help you with contacting them. I don't think webarchive.org is going anywhere, they have been around in one form or another since 1996.
 
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Mrietha

Active Member
We do need to remember that the players who developed Elvengems did so without a guide.
And each new event & Chapter is initially played without guides.

Some-many-most cities still play without guides. Either becuase they don't know about them or want the challenge.
I don't remember when I found Elvengems, but I initially played with only the Wiki as a guide. Then I discovered the Forum and finally the Forum led me to Elvengems and other on-line goodies. (I don't do Facebook)

I'm in Amuni now and luckily got to look at the Chapter before Elvengems shut down completely. (I didn't know about the web archive)
I didn't realize how spoiled I was until I found out that I can't go back and use it as a reference.

Elvenar can be played two ways (or a combination of those) either with or without help (or just the help we get from the Forums)
We can take the more "civilised" way and use guides or ...

We can be brave and approach each new chapter and event as the adventure it is supposed to be.
 

Dew Spinner

Well-Known Member
I didn’t mean “illegal” like lock them up. I meant possible cease & desist like mentioned above.
I didn't mean "illegal" like lock them up either, but their website would be shut down if they were violating laws everyday. Webarchive.org archives the whole web on a regular basis, how many websites would that be? Approximately 1.13 billion websites, there would be absolutely no way they could possibly ask permission from all those sites. If they weren't sued to death or cease and desisted to death by now, they never will be. So, I have to logically assume that what they are doing is not illegal, they have been in existence since since 1996, privately, and 5 or so years publicly. Plenty of time for them to be put out of business if what they were doing was illegal. I think it's a pretty safe bet that they will be around for a long while and putting the link in the scrolls saves the info on the Elvenar site. If later down the line the link has to be removed then we can burn that bridge when we get to it. Finding volunteers to do this from scratch, I think, will be a hard sell when there are readily available resources that already exist. I haven't seen anyone signing up to volunteer in the comments of this thread. So, at least for now, the link should be added to the Scrolls of Knowledge until enough volunteers sign up to do it from scratch
 
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