The one and only [OFFICIAL] Technic discussion thread.

Quote from ANATOMICA_3rd

mod developers can sue people for not getting permission to use.
this is what was on the minecraft forums on how to protect your mods.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

0. USED TERMS

MOD - modification, plugin, a piece of software that interfaces with
the Minecraft client to extend, add, change or remove original
capabilities.

MOJANG - Mojang AB

OWNER - , Original author(s) of the MOD. Under the copyright terms accepted when purchasing Minecraft the OWNER has full rights over their MOD despite use of MOJANG code.

USER - End user of the mod, person installing the mod.

1. LIABILITY

THIS MOD IS PROVIDED 'AS IS' WITH NO WARRANTIES, IMPLIED OR
OTHERWISE. THE OWNER OF THIS MOD TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGES
INCURRED FROM THE USE OF THIS MOD. THIS MOD ALTERS FUNDAMENTAL PARTS OF
THE MINECRAFT GAME, PARTS OF MINECRAFT MAY NOT WORK WITH THIS MOD
INSTALLED. ALL DAMAGES CAUSED FROM THE USE OR MISUSE OF THIS MOD FALL ON
THE USER.

2. USE

Use of this MOD to be installed, manually or automatically, is given to the USER without restriction.

3. REDISTRIBUTION

This MOD may only be distributed where uploaded, mirrored, or
otherwise linked to by the OWNER solely. All mirrors of this mod must
have advance written permission from the OWNER. ANY attempts to make
money off of this MOD (selling, selling modified versions, adfly,
sharecash, etc.) are STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, and the OWNER may claim damages
or take other action to rectify the situation.

4. DERIVATIVE WORKS/MODIFICATION

This mod is provided freely and may be decompiled and modified for
private use, either with a decompiler or a bytecode editor. Public
distribution of modified versions of this MOD require advance written
permission of the OWNER and may be subject to certain terms.

ALSO off of minecraft.net

What You Can Do

If you've bought the game, you may play around with it and
modify it. We'd appreciate it if you didn't use this for griefing,
though, and remember not to distribute the changes.

Any tools you write for the game from scratch belongs to you.
You're free to do whatever you want with screenshots and videos of the
game, but don't just rip art resources and pass them around, that's no
fun. Plugins for the game also belong to you and you can do whatever you
want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money. We reserve
the final say regarding what constitutes a tool/plugin and what doesn't.

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You can copyright you mods but the overall copyright is unenforceable because (at least in the U.S.) you need to sue for damages, and you need to be able to show those damages. Mods are free anyone can download them so showing monetary damage is almost impossible. You could have a lawyer draw up a cease and desist but that would cost a lot of money and for very little gain.

You could create a lawsuit that stated, this guy had his modpack that I didn't give permission to use and he got x downloads that denied me x amount of site ad revenue. However you still would need to prove that A. that without the mod pack the people would have come directly to you and downloaded it, and B. the about of revenue you got from ad's is guaranteed and it isn't because of ad block, no script and other programs.

I don't know the accuracy but according to Kakermix the only mods that have refused to give permission to distribute to technic are buildcraft and forestry and forestry is going to be removed due to incompatibility

Quote from Metathiax

You can copyright you mods but the overall copyright is unenforceable because (at least in the U.S.) you need to sue for damages, and you need to be able to show those damages. Mods are free anyone can download them so showing monetary damage is almost impossible. You could have a lawyer draw up a cease and desist but that would cost a lot of money and for very little gain.

You could create a lawsuit that stated, this guy had his modpack that I didn't give permission to use and he got x downloads that denied me x amount of site ad revenue. However you still would need to prove that A. that without the mod pack the people would have come directly to you and downloaded it, and B. the about of revenue you got from ad's is guaranteed and it isn't because of ad block, no script and other programs.

I don't know the accuracy but according to Kakermix the only mods that have refused to give permission to distribute to technic are buildcraft and forestry and forestry is going to be removed due to incompatibility

Wrong, you don't "need to sue for damages". You can very much so file a suit to get them shut down.

Quote from Naturam

Mod developers cannot sue anyone. They have first of all, not copyrighted their works because mojang already owns minecraft itself and as such the mod developers cannot copyright a modification to someone else's copyright.

Nice try.

quote@- Wikipedia;Fair Use;Common Misunderstandings:

• It's copyrighted, so it can't be fair use. On the contrary, fair use applies only to copyrighted works, describing conditions under which copyrighted material may be used without permission. If a work is not copyrighted, fair use does not come into play, since public-domain works can be used for any purpose without violating copyright law.
  
  
  • Note: In some countries (including the United States of America), the mere creation of a work establishes copyright over it, and there is no legal requirement to register or declare copyright ownership

Most of the mods have enough original content, code and functionality that they would qualify for their own copyright, even if they don't expressly declare it.

Quote from Metathiax

I don't know the accuracy but according to Kakermix the only mods that have refused to give permission to distribute to technic are buildcraft and forestry and forestry is going to be removed due to incompatibility

And doesn't it seem like a decent person would bow to the wishes of the creator? It shouldn't take for a developer to force incompatibility and write a landmine into their code.

The days of Tekkit are most likely coming to an end regardless. Assuming Mojang does their API right then all the mods will move to it and there's your 'easy way'.

Quote from Ook

Wrong, you don't "need to sue for damages". You can very much so file a suit to get them shut down.

+1

Quote from Metathiax

Even if that is true, and I highly doubt it, all you would need to do is go to the mod's site directly and donate to bypass that.

Its not true. technic links directly to the mod developers own donation links.

Quote from GregoriusT

But there are many stupid people who use that links.

I don't know why you people feel the need to lie, but let me school you a little here.

A: using "View Source" on a website is not "hacking". Your friend, if he exists, is a tool and a douchebag trying to impress you. Likewise Mr. "informatics student". The reason I come to this conclusion is that one does not need to view the server-side portion of the source code (in this case, the PHP code) of a website to see the paypal integration part for simple donation buttons. Those are all done in javascript+HTML snippets, which is interpreted on the client side (i.e. in your web browser) and can be seen with view source and further examined using the developer tools that come standard in many browsers (or in the case of firefox, exist as plugins). Again, I repeat, this is not "hacking" - either in the MIT sense or the underground sense or in the mass media sense. Claiming that it is "hacking" is asinine and an insult to all three kinds of hackers.

B: I repeat, the donate buttons are client-side javascript snippets provided directly from paypal. They can only be superficially customized and all that they do basically is create a link with some appropriate GET query variables (google it) and wrap that link around an image. Those variable just help Paypal establish to whom the donation is supposed to go. One cannot create a paypal donation button that splits its receipts between multiple paypal accounts. In fact, no variety of the paypal API will let you do this.

C: Any non-technical user can verify what account the donations are going to simply by looking at the account name displayed during the paypal checkout process and cross-checking it against the account name found there when direct linking from the mod author. Paypal, not the website where you clicked the donate button, controls 100% of the content on that page. You can verify this by observing, in your browser, the SSL security certificate from Paypal Inc. which is demonstrated in Firefox, for instance, by the blue or green highlighted company logo that shows up on SSL secured websites in the address bar. You can further verify that all elements of the page you're viewing are coming from where they claim to be coming from by using aforementioned developer tools, which your average "hacker" or "informatics student" may or may not know how to use properly (in firebug, open firebug, go to the "net" tab, and view the entries under the "domain" column).

D: Paypal's API is extremely, almost insanely, paranoid and provably secure. No two-bit (no offense to KakerMix et al) programmers or mod compilation authors or website administrators have anywhere *near* the skill required to even attempt to break Paypal without a SWAT team showing up on their doorstep pretty soon afterward (and that unfortunately is not hyperbole). It meets and exceeds the extremely complicated and obnoxious industry standards required by the credit card industry to accept and process credit card payments. I am intimately familiar with those standards, having just had to implement them recently at work, and let me tell you, your little skiddie "hacker" friend would have less a chance of detecting a successful paypal exploit than of detecting neutrinos passing through his balls.

It doesn't really matter how I know this stuff, since I could claim to be anybody I wanted to be here on the internetz, but if either of you guys wants to tangle with me over this go ahead and try.

Also, while we're playing armchair lawyers here, these accusations could easily be construed as libel and people have had their lives destroyed by the justice system for saying less about the wrong people. Be careful who you go around accusing of being hackers and thieves, kiddos, especially when you don't know what you're talking about. Not even a little itty bitty tiny miniscule bit about what you're talking about. In fact so little that I'm saddened that the authors of this mod even allow this crap to persist in their forums. Further, I'm saddened by your inability to use Google to find out how incredibly little you know before you open your mouths about your dumb conspiracy theories, given that there are millions of pages search results of tutorials on web programming, paypal, real hacking (by any definition), identity theft, credit card fraud, and copyright law, that you could have perused in pursuit of these theories of yours.

TL;DR: STFU, pissant trolls.

To admins: hope ^ that doesn't upset you, but these guys have it coming and you must know it. Why do you let this garbage pollute your reputation, even by association? I only know about (and love) your mod because of tekkit, and whether or not you like it a large number of your fans use tekkit. Hating on it or letting douchetards hate on it is one thing, but these are blatant, vicious, retarded lies. I will hazard a guess your own experience as developers should tell you how stupid these accusations of donations theft are. I hate to have my first post here be a flame/rant, but this kind of garbage really gets under my skin.

All the donation links on the technic donation page are the links each modder had on their respective websites for donations. None of the donation links direct to any account owned or related to us, that's just silly and you should be ashamed for trying to troll like that. It even says who you're donating to when you do so. It's very destructive to the community. Please donate to all the modders and show them your support.

As for bug reports related to using technic or tekkit, feel free to send them all to http://technicpack.net/forums/. We made and pay for a whole website so that modders don't have to deal with being annoyed by bug reports as much.

Correction: those aren't even javascript snippet versions, they're just the plain old HTML buttons. There's no voodoo going on there.

Quote from Ook

Wrong, you don't "need to sue for damages". You can very much so file a suit to get them shut down.

Yes you can file a cease and disist as I stated but you would need to pay to do so. I doubt most mod devs consider it worth the money. You will not I didn't say that the copyrights were illegal I said unenforceable which means that because there is no real substance to the claim the best that a mod dev could hope for is to get technic to stop and it would require a large outlay of money to get that done.

Quote from Saul_Goode

Nice try.

quote@- Wikipedia;Fair Use;Common Misunderstandings:

• It's copyrighted, so it can't be fair use. On the contrary, fair use applies only to copyrighted works, describing conditions under which copyrighted material may be used without permission. If a work is not copyrighted, fair use does not come into play, since public-domain works can be used for any purpose without violating copyright law.
  
  
  • Note: In some countries (including the United States of America), the mere creation of a work establishes copyright over it, and there is no legal requirement to register or declare copyright ownership

Most of the mods have enough original content, code and functionality that they would qualify for their own copyright, even if they don't expressly declare it.

And doesn't it seem like a decent person would bow to the wishes of the creator? It shouldn't take for a developer to force incompatibility and write a landmine into their code.

The days of Tekkit are most likely coming to an end regardless. Assuming Mojang does their API right then all the mods will move to it and there's your 'easy way'.

+1

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I am personally against posting Tekkit servers on the server section, they belong in the Technic forum.

Quote from RichardG

I am personally against posting Tekkit servers on the server section, they belong in the Technic forum.

+1 for making this official.

(are there tekkit servers in the list? apparently so... one at least. But would that mentality extend to Bukkit as well?)

I have a tekkit server on the server list and I have also donated money to IC for its great contribution to the tekkit pack and I think the IC crew would make a serious error in judgement by encouraging threads like this and not debunk people who make claims like the ones made in this thread (like that technic posts fake paypal links and pockets the money that is donated to IC through it)

And on top of that start deleting all references to tekkit like servers listed that run it would be bad.

I mean how hard is it to officially address the aforementioned accusations? "The paypal links are genuine and the money goes to IC"

or confirm them if that's the case (its not)

The links DO point to the modders' donate buttons, I've checked.

Quote from Naturam

And on top of that start deleting all references to tekkit like servers listed that run it would be bad.

I can see the point of that though, Tekkit server would require the person install tekkit or build and configure their own "tekkit" client. Plus the technic forum offers space to share your server, they only asked that you put a decent effort into your post. Also splits them into open servers and whitelist servers with the chance of getting deluxe server if your post and sever prove exceptional. Be a lot easier to find tekkit players on there anyhow.

Quote from linkthegamer

I can see the point of that though, Tekkit server would require the person install tekkit or build and configure their own "tekkit" client. Plus the technic forum offers space to share your server, they only asked that you put a decent effort into your post. Also splits them into open servers and whitelist servers with the chance of getting deluxe server if your post and sever prove exceptional. Be a lot easier to find tekkit players on there anyhow.

I advertise on both and its helping the server a lot.

Quote

"The first laws, and only laws that have been
tested, dealing with "Intellectual Property" were created to protect
the consumer. The most common example is the Rolex watch. These laws made sure
that if someone bought a watch and it was labeled a Rolex, then that person
could be reasonably sure that was was indeed a Rolex. It didn't matter if
someone else made a watch that looked similar, and had similar functionality.
As long as it didn't call itself a Rolex everything was fine.

Copyright is automatic, there is no need to make
a declaration to claim copyright. It is granted at the time and place of
creation. All of these mashed up copyright/licensing things you see throughout
the MC modding forums are worthless. Copyright exists for one purpose and that
purpose is to protect the producer from anyone claiming his works for
themselves and profiting from them. There exists in the realm of copyright
consumers rights including things such as Fair Use. As long as the consumer did
not break the two major rules there was no infraction.

Now, this wasn't enough for certain industries
and they started licensing their products. As in, you don't actually own this
product but we let you use it under restricted conditions. But, licensing is
tricky. This is because it enters in to the realm of contract law. It must be
an agreement between both parties, and it must be non binding. What that means
is that consumer must be exposed to the agreement, given the choice of agreeing
or disagreeing, the contract can not overly restrict the consumer, and both
parties must have a way to end the contract. (This explanation is horribly
oversimplified. Contract Law takes years of brain wracking study to to even
become moderately proficient.) If you notice, nothing in the modding community
comes even close to approaching these requirements.

Now, lets get to actually trying to sue. In all
but very rare commercial cases in specific domains, copyright cases are
strictly left to civil court, and not criminal court. The whole idea of
copyright violations being theft have been time and time again rejected by the
courts. Anything you see claiming otherwise is propaganda, and is likely
supported by some large industry that wants to infringe on the rights of
consumers even more. Now, since we are dealing with civil courts which deal
with damages...well, I think you can see the issue here since no one charges to
use their mods."

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Quote

"Copyright protection extends to all the
copyrightable expression embodied in the computer program. Copyright protection
is not available for ideas, program logic, algorithms, systems, methods,
concepts, or layouts."

Quote

I quote the Minecraft ToS ( http://www.minecraft.net/terms

"Do not distribute anything we've made. This
includes, but not limited to, the client or the server software for the game.
This also includes modified versions of anything we've made."

I further quote it:

"If you've bought the game, you may play
around with it and modify it. We'd appreciate it if you didn't use this for
griefing, though, and remember not to distribute the changes. "

This is probably what you were referring to:

"Any tools you write for the game from
scratch belongs to you. You're free to do whatever you want with screenshots
and videos of the game, but don't just rip art resources and pass them around,
that's no fun. Plugins for the game also belong to you and you can do whatever
you want with them, as long as you don't sell them for money. We reserve the
final say regarding what constitutes a tool/plugin and what doesn't. "

THAT DOES NOT MEAN MODS. That means completely
independent plugins that don't use any of Minecraft's code at all. Things like
MCEdit, which independently edit Minecraft's world saves. NOT MODS.

Let us be perfectly and finally clear about this
with no more dodging around the point:

According to the Terms of Service CURRENTLY ON
MINECRAFT.NET, all mods are a violation of Minecraft's license. That means
Buildcraft, that means Forestry, that means Optifine, that means any fucking
thing that even uses a single reobfuscated function call into the Minecraft
source. Every altered base class. Every RECIPE. EVERYTHING.

Nobody owns anything.

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Saying that Technic has stolen anything is silly. If a case was brought up in civil court as by definition of the case, it would not be held in criminal court. The case would most likely be thrown out just for the legal grey area that is ownership of minecraft mods, however it would probably be thrown out faster since the mod developer would have to prove damages were done and since Technic does not accept donations nor makes money off of the mod pack and instead directs people to donate to the mod authors as well as make no claims of ownership of the mod. There are no damages to the Mod Developer, there is no case.

What all arguments come down to is based in opinion, whether you think what Technic does is wrong or right, and you cannot sue someone for opinions. The technic crew has their opinions on what they do, some people agree, even some mod developers agree, others do not and most of the time is because the MC Forums community has laid out so much disinformation about the above rights that they have created echo chamber of thinking errors, people begin to think that this disinformation is correct and when you combine misinformed users with strong patriotism towards mod developers with a few trouble starters blaring horns about false accusations of mod developers being wronged... Things just get out of control. Hell even in the most recent example of this Cheap Shot was supporting the Mod Author and his decision in his thread and still his posts were deleted because of how bad of an echo chamber it has become.

Everyone really just needs to calm down about everything. You don't like Technic? That is fine, no one is forcing you to use it, no one is forcing you to read threads about it, just don't click on anything Technic related and its like its not even there. The Mod Developers are big boys, they don't need an army of fanatic fans speaking for them, if they don't want their mod in the pack, they only have to ask and everything can be kept in private so that no flame wars leak out into the forums disrupting normal chat.

Quote from Saul_Goode

And doesn't it seem like a decent person would bow to the wishes of the creator? It shouldn't take for a developer to force incompatibility and write a landmine into their code.

Guess what? He never told them to take it out. Then, after Forestry had been in the pack for a long time, he wrote a malicious piece of code that broke some of the functionality of his mod with no indication as to why. Not only that, he didn't just break it for users of the Technic pack, but also users of the _launcher_, who download the mods themselves and use the launcher as a tool similar to MultiMC or Magic Launcher.

Sengir is not the "decent person" here.