Illegal Materials on RMU

[Marked 197]

RMU has received a copyright infringement notice served on us following action from Amaranth Games about a file uploaded in July last year. The file was a crack for one of their games and has been deleted.

 

This is a reminder to report all illegal materials that you see on the site, particularly uploaded to our server.

 

It would also be my preference for those whose rights have been infringed to use internal reporting methods rather than using a copyright statute. We’re running a legitimate operation here, unfortunately some upload content gets through unnoticed by our moderators. 

[dolarmak 23]

Wow, Thats kinda a douche move on their part cause I was the one who asked them directly if their stuff was on our site cause that guy who uploaded their character set and had it removed within 6 hours, i also asked them to report any thing else and told them we would remove it right away...We can't always know what stuff is in their games, they need to tell u this shit first. They were lucky i asked in the first place, not every mod would care enough.

[Marked 197]

Yeah, well it's slightly more inconvenient if they do report the website, because it doesn't go directly to me, someone has to forward it on to me. The file was labelled "crack", so its poor on our part for missing it, however the link is only available on google now, so that's probably why all of the mods missed it. 

 

The US copyright statute is pretty poor tbh, it protects copyright holders slightly disproportionately. But oh well. Our server happens to be in the US. 

[dolarmak 23]

was this file they are refering to the one i removed last month or is this another one that was there for more than a year?

[dolarmak 23]

Since Amaranth Games messed up I went on record to their forum and complained about what they did, showing for every one our experience with their company. What happened? My topic was moved to a admin only forum and locked away where i can't access it.

Anyway since I feel it's necessary for a person opinion to be allowed to be expressed I'll post what I wrote here for you guys at least, and so you can know what happened.

 

 

Hi, My name is Dolarmak. I'm known a little around the RPG Maker scene, less now than I was nearly 10 years ago during the RM2k days but none the less I frequent several forums to chat and get/give help with the projects I have on the go. I am also a moderator on one site gdunlimited.net.

I'm sure this will be deleted right away, but if not I'm here today to inform people of what I believe was an error in judgement on the parts of this company to the rpgmaker community and the small indy game developers in general.

I'll have to give you the whole story because this directly involves my good will and understanding towards Amaranth Games, and them proverbially spitting in my eye.



Two months ago on our forums (gdu/rmu) I came on to see a guy who signed up that morning posting a copy of a Amaranth graphics pack for their game (Rhen's Quest if I remember correctly). I had played the demo of 'Gates of Night' and vaguely recalled that their games were commercial games (using RPG maker so I respect that). I quickly contacted the sites admin informing them of the graphic pack, but to also verify if that guy had the right to distribute the pack and to report any other stuff on our site. They promptly replied that the graphics were in fact ripped illegally, that they had never given any one permission to distribute and they asked if I would remove the content. I obliged them and removed the content with 6 hours of it being on our site. That's fast service if I do say so myself.

Now cut to 2 months later where our top admin gets a letter with them threatening legal action and closure of our site if we do not remove certain content from our site.

What was this content? A crack file some one uploaded to our server for one of the Aveyond games. This file doesn't even seem to have been advertised in a topic (we couldn't find a direct link to any), and was most likely uploaded as a p2p when one person asked another in a PM.

What bothers me is that within those 2 months where they called up their lawyers to get the copyright legal threat on us, not one member of their team (legal, admin or game dev) thought to e-mail, pm or report (we have a nifty report button that when pressed notifies all mods and admins immediately of the infraction page/file) to us about this file.

Now we're a small community (used to be bigger but hey what can you do) and our mods and even admin are all volunteers. We also don't have many of us working so some stuff gets through the cracks (pun intended), so if no one tells us about these things we won't find them to remove them. We also can't be responsible for everything that a user posts/uploads.
But we're also a indy heaven for inexperienced RM users and as indy game makers ourselves and we would never want to unload stolen or illegal products on our site, especially if they come from another indy game maker.

You have to understand, by going instantly for legal actions without talking to us, you as a company are attacking the indy community and damaging it as a whole. You are giving the impression to others that you are TOO BIG to sit and talk (like some unnamed AAA game companies) and that you won't waist your time with those who like you only a few years ago only had a handful of knowledge about making games. Your actions may get the file deleted, but you put off people from wanting to deal with you or your products because you become the corporate jerks who will send your lawyer henchmen if out of anything you dislike appears.

This is also a spit in the face to me, whose good will went out of the way to inform you of stuff that I did find that was stolen. I asked your people to let us know if anything on our site was stolen, to let us know and we would remove it immediately. I opened a dialog with you unlike 99% of the other forums out there who would have done nothing, I showed you that I care about your games getting its rightful dues and you can't even be bothered to tell me or our admin when you found the cracked file if we could remove it. You went straight for the legal card to have our site removed if we didn't comply, which we would have anyways if you had only asked.

At the end of the day your actions were shameful to me, who was kind to you where it's doubtful anyone else would have been and to the game making community by showing you don't think enough of us to ask and that you needed to pull legal rank in order to get your way. You also diminish yourselves by forgetting your roots and common manners we were all brought up with.


So like I said, this will likely be deleted, but if not I would like to know what you Amaranth's Gaming community think.

I'm not saying to stop playing their games, I enjoyed the demo of Gates of Night. But I also believe that there are times when companies need to be reminded that we're all human and we can still be capable of feats of kindness. As well companies need to remember that a kind deed should not be punished, and that we're not psychic and need to be notified if something goes wrong. Talking isn't a bad thing, taking legal action wasn't necessary.



- Dolarmak

[amaranthia 0]

Yikes! Hi everyone, this is Amanda from Amaranth Games. I never personally filed a copyright infringement claim against RMUnlimited. I'm trying to figure out who sent the email, so if you have any info, please let me know. I would never do something like this. 

Edited August 26, 2013 by amaranthia

[amaranthia 0]

I figured out the mystery of who sent a letter on my behalf. It was a friend who wanted to be helpful. We're talking things out right now so that something like this doesn't ever happen again. 

 

dolarmak, a mod moved your post to a private forum, so it actually still exists. The mods were just as shocked as you were and contacted me immediately to see what happened. I got chewed out by them, too. You've always been awesome to me in the past, and I would never screw you over like this. 

[dolarmak 23]

well thank you for taking the time to resolve this, I hope it doesn't happen in this manner again. Like I said in my rant, people in our community need to ask first when something stolen comes up. All the indy game sites are more than willing to remove stolen stuff if it's found. When people make threats (and yes, going to our host and telling them to have it removed is a threat because the host is liable due to copy right laws in the US, so they threaten us after) before we've been given a chance to take this stuff down makes those responsible seem less human.

 

Thankfully this was something that could be easily solved, but it's disturbing to see how fast things could has escalated and how easily we could have lost this forum over an issue like this.

 

Next time you should tell your friends to go to you with issues like this before doing something like that.

[amaranthia 0]

Next time you should tell your friends to go to you with issues like this before doing something like that.

 

Yeah, that is exactly what I told her earlier today. The same thing that happened to RM Unlimited could have happened to me, and I would have also been pissed off that I hadn't been approached first, too. This is really weird being on the other side, and I 1000% apologize for this craziness. If it ever happens again, you have permission to come to my house and throw a pie in my face, snap a picture, add horns, and post it on the internet with the label "eVil".

[Marked 197]

Well I'm glad this is all sorted :) It's not really a big deal, I don't think my boss was too happy to receive the email though, and I had to explain the situation to him who in turn has to explain it to our host provider, all within 48hrs before they "disable" the material. So it can get a messy, but that's probably because the Act forces everyone to act immediately, breach or not.

 

@Amanda: Thanks for taking the time to explain the situation  :thumbsup: 

[amaranthia 0]

I feel like I owe you guys something for all of the hassles you went through. If you need anything that you think I can help with, let me know.

[Marked 197]

Nah, it wasn't that much of a hassle. Actually it gave me something to do while I was bored at work (I hope my boss doesn't see this :P ) But yeah, thanks for the offer :)

 

By the way, I'll explain why our mods missed it (I don't think I've said this yet). It was uploaded in the downloads manager in July last year. Not long after, the links to the downloads manager were taken away because I decided not to use it anymore. But I didn't take down all the files because of google traffic. And that's probably how your friend found it too, while all of us who are active on the site would never had the chance to stumble upon it. Pretty unfortunate.