Sprites & Morality

[Linxsis]

This thread which was closed.
How to take sprites from server where sprites are hided in client

Maybe a discussion thread is more suitable.

To quote:
@Thexamx

Stop stealing.

@psychonaut

Wanna help to steal sprites lol, go home.

No ethics from you both, good luck, i'm not gonna argue on this, trying to use x or y to justify doing a bad thing, pathetic

How is stealing from cipsoft any different than stealing from someone who creates their own sprites? To argue that it's not the same thing is complete nonsense, stealing is stealing.

 

[Nekiro]

Actually there is difference, if someone hide their sprites, then it's not the same as cipsoft. Cipsoft just doesn't care if you get their sprites or not. If someone is encrypting/hiding/whatever their sprites, it's just retarded and not right to still steal them.
That's my opinion. You don't have to agree with me nor I even care.
Btw. ofc you can do whatever you like, but come on. Asking for help on forums to steal? If you want to steal any shit from some store, you will ask the owner how to steal it?

 

[Linxsis]

Actually there is difference, if someone hide their sprites, then it's not the same as cipsoft. Cipsoft just doesn't care if you get their sprites or not. If someone is encrypting/hiding/whatever their sprites, it's just retarded and not right to still steal them.
That's my opinion. You don't have to agree with me nor I even care.

Not true, cipsoft did provide a form of encryption they didn't store their sprites in a zip file and say hey, anyone can use them, no they stored them in a file with an extension called spr which is not a standard file type. Also cipsoft's sprites, client and so-forth are copy written where as the sprites people make to work with the client or it's protocols are not. Stating on your site copyright 20XX does not make a product virtual or otherwise copy written.

 

[Peonso]

@Thexamx it's not like CIP sprites are png files. People hacked it as they do with those hidden ot sprites, those are just different laywers of security. How you draw the line? Stealing evul CIP is fine, fellow ot developers a crime?

What people should do to show they care? They should show they care?

 

[psychonaut]

Plus there's something named common sense in the world, when you talk about open servers, generally they're not a big team and it takes a lot of time and work from the artist to create a good quality sprite and if it's encrypted/hide or anything like xamx said above, it's really wrong to try to steal it as they're protecting their work.
But as i said, good luck do it

 

[Peonso]

Not true, cipsoft did provide a form of encryption they didn't store their sprites in a zip file and say hey, anyone can use them, no they stored them in a file with an extension called spr which is not a standard file type. Also cipsoft's sprites, client and so-forth are copy written where as the sprites people make to work with the client or it's protocols are not. Stating on your site copyright 20XX does not make a product virtual or otherwise copy written.

Regarding copyright, that's wrong. If I make an image that's my intelectual property and protected in most countries under international aggrements, I don't even have to state it, people do to make it clear.

 

[Linxsis]

Regarding copyright, that's wrong. If I make an image that's my intelectual property and protected in most countries under international aggrements, I don't even have to state it, people do to make it clear.

No, if you make an image and do not officially declare it through the proper channels e.g. patents then it can be used by anyone.

 

[Peonso]

No, if you make an image and do not officially declare it through the proper channels e.g. patents then it can be used by anyone.

In which planet? I'm talking about Earth.

 

[Linxsis]

In which planet? I'm talking about Earth.

Google copywrite of images then get back to me if you still feel the same way.

 

[Peonso]

Google copywrite of images then get back to me if you still feel the same way.

I did that some times this year already. But did again with that typo for the fun, from the first entry:

Copyright attaches as soon as the original work is created, and applies to both published and unpublished works. As soon as you type words, click the shutter on your camera (or, for many of you, hit the home button on your iPhone), apply paint to canvas or paper or lay down tracks for your next hit, you’ve got a copyright (with some exceptions).

Tell me if you need more quotes. That's from US laws, but most countries follow the same baselines (because of international agreements and bla bla bla).

 

[Worr]

Whether Cipsoft wants to protect their copyrighted material is up to them. OTland rules and guide lines should be there to benefit the community. Stealing sprites from Cipsoft doesn't harm the community but stealing from other OT server's does.

 

[BahamutxD]

There used to be a game on STEAM that literally took Tibia sprites and used them. What did CIPSOFT do? Nothing.

Can't remember the name.. something about survivor, it was like banished game but in 2d.

 

[Peonso]

Whether Cipsoft wants to protect their copyrighted material is up to them. OTland rules and guide lines should be there to benefit the community. Stealing sprites from Cipsoft doesn't harm the community but stealing from other OT server's does.

Altaron was made by polish guys I never saw in Otland, PxG is from brazilian guys I never saw in Otland, despite Medivia being breed here, they totally dissociated their image from OpenTibia, should they be protected by our Otland community, or the there is no bounderies? And when people steal old Medivia client, or Ryan leaked Thora map, or when they steal Ryan sprites, but he is using Altaron sprites?

It's hard to draw the line, specially when you advocate double standards.

 

[Worr]

@Peonso Going down the "double standard" road is just one long slippery slope because being a part of the OT community already means you accept stealing from Cipsoft. Abolishing all morals, ethics and rules because of that won't lead us anywhere nice. What is next step? Should we allow discussions about getting unauthorized access to other people's servers because many people use the stolen Cipsoft files?

I don't think you need to draw a hard line though. Otland can't police the entire OT community but some discussions don't belong here. Ryan for example was banned for destructive behavior but you don't need paragraph after paragraph of rules of make that decision.

 

[psychonaut]

I think that @Worr is right here, besides what everyone think, if cipsoft cares or not, for being part of this community we accept stealing from it but we still need to follow our rules, ethics and moral.

 

[Peonso]

@Peonso Going down the "double standard" road is just one long slippery slope because being a part of the OT community already means you accept stealing from Cipsoft.

Not really, there are fair uses of copyrighted stuff, and of course that is forced, but some people do only work with original content, OTServ is an engine. As TFS and OTClient also are, despite being made to work with Tibia stuff as default, they have being following the path of removing mentionings and Tibia stuff from their files (check TFS default items.xml, removed any mention to Tibia, as OTClient removed their user interface images based on flash client). This community was meant to be Open Source. People standing in the shoulders of thousand of hours of community work, add those 2 cents of work and come back crying people are stealing their shit. As if a kid making a couple bucks per month with those files matter for someone. Specially when the guy crying is working with 45% shit stealed from CipSoft and 50% Open Source stuff made by other people.

Unless someone is going really big (Blizzard Squeezes $88 Million From Private Server Owner), it really matters? Let it be. I don't think it should be encouraged, and I despise the practice, but some garage project making a couple bucks under some work I did isn't the end of the world.

The content that really matters for the community don't need the protection, it's Open Source. Also, those that do the dick move of stealing shit aren't getting anywhere anyway.

I don't think you need to draw a hard line though. Otland can't police the entire OT community but some discussions don't belong here. Ryan for example was banned for destructive behavior but you don't need paragraph after paragraph of rules of make that decision.

Also I agree with this, I'm divided in this subject and playing the devil's advocate to foment discussion. I'm trying to follow the path of leaving Tibia behind, and if people steal me I would be pissed as fuck, but if they really accomplish it and do better, well...

 

[e.e]

Actually there is difference, if someone hide their sprites, then it's not the same as cipsoft. Cipsoft just doesn't care if you get their sprites or not. If someone is encrypting/hiding/whatever their sprites, it's just retarded and not right to still steal them.
That's my opinion. You don't have to agree with me nor I even care.
Btw. ofc you can do whatever you like, but come on. Asking for help on forums to steal? If you want to steal any shit from some store, you will ask the owner how to steal it?

@Thexamx it's not like CIP sprites are png files. People hacked it as they do with those hidden ot sprites, those are just different laywers of security. How you draw the line? Stealing evul CIP is fine, fellow ot developers a crime?

This issue is relatively simple imo.
The OT community has not only stolen sprites from Cipsoft, but pretty much everything they can get their hands on, including the whole client, their actual map/world file (some tracked, some obtained and converted by other means), etc, so lets take a look at the bigger picture first:
Why are we trying to replicate Tibia, and how does or should the community justify stealing anything from them?
Here's a couple points which answers why stealing from them is very different than stealing from individual OT spriters:

1. Cipsoft already did or still does make huge profits and is a massively large company relative to/in comparison with most OT owners/OT projects/OT spriters. Indeed who knows if Cipsoft has even lost a penny of profit from what the OT community has done? Has it stolen any players from Real Tibia, maybe a few?, but you could easily argue the other way around too - it's equally possible imo. that people started playing Real Tibia by first playing OT, and that the OT community has kept a certain amount of interest in Tibia over the years, i.e. if there was no OT community, then perhaps all of us who play OT, some of us who may also play Real Tibia, may just have quit Tibia altogether and have played neither.
   On the other hand when you steal sprites from OT spriters, you're stealing metaphorically from a homeless person who may have been trying to sell his art for $1 a piece for some food (or drugs
   
   ), and now that you've pirated it, he won't be able to sell it to anyone, because he's not a big company with millions of advertisers.
2. Apparently people have tried to contact Cipsoft for licensing and have been denied/ignored. So indeed the OT community has tried to be legal and moral when it comes to Cipsoft, but Cipsoft hasn't been interested.

So to conclude:

• When you steal/copy and reuse the sprites of Cipsoft you're stealing copyrighted material from a company that already makes huge profits and that has ignored this community's plead for legal co-operation i.e. licensing. Cipsoft also seem to be completely uninterested in their old 7.x or below servers, as I believe they haven't hosted such a server since the time when all of their servers was that version back in 2007/2008 or something and earlier, so in this regard they're sort of being an obstacle to creativity as well as ignoring a sized portion of their playerbase that loves their older game versions.
• When you steal/copy and reuse the sprites made by individual OT spriters (who are not explicitly saying that they're giving away their sprites, and even worse by you if they're trying to sell them) in this community without paying them anything/a reasonable amount, you're most likely stealing from some poor Open Tibia freelancer that used to have a passion for Open Tibia until you ripped him off (GJ killing the community one person at a time). When you do this you're not even trying to be moral, like the word moral is from a different planet at that point, and you're just being as obnoxious and selfish as the bully kid in kindergarten/primary school that takes every other kid's shit while yelling "MINE!". It's immature and cancerous, serving no one but yourself.

TL;DR:

• Cipsoft is a large company with large profits,
  OT freelancers are not large companies with large profits...
• The OT community to my knowledge tried to be moral by trying to square the legal issues up with Cipsoft and Cipsoft refused,
  When you steal sprites or anything else from OT freelancers without first trying to make a reasonable bargain with them, you're just a petty thief, not trying to negotiate or being reasonable by any stretch of the imagination and might as well rob people IRL, especially old grandmas and babies with lollipops, I've heard they're the easiest to rob - the best targets for people like you

 

[Peonso]

...

Your entire post is anecdotal. You don't know CipSoft profits, don't know freelancers situations, and they mostly work on demand, so when the sprite is ripped they were already paid. The one at loss is the project owner, that by applying your logic actually had no loss at all. "People tried to square legal issues up with CipSoft", wtf you even talking about? And how CipSoft refusing to giving people right to use it's copyrighted content by whatever terms gives people the right to do something with it (assuming that crazy thing even happened)?

I consider myself left-winged, but you trying to paint a small company as evil villain is funny.

 

[e.e]

Your entire post is anecdotal. You don't know CipSoft profits, don't know freelancers situations, and they mostly work on demand, so when the sprite is ripped they were already paid. The one at loss is the project owner, that by applying your logic actually had no loss at all. "People tried to square legal issues up with CipSoft", wtf you even talking about? And how CipSoft refusing to giving people right to use it's copyrighted content by whatever terms gives people the right to do something with it (assuming that crazy thing even happened)?

I consider myself left-winged, but you trying to paint a small company as evil villain is funny.

I think the word you're looking for is hypothetical.
But no, it's not hypothetical, you can easily make estimates based on simple math and public figures, not to mention that Cipsoft publish their yearly revenue figures publicly.
You can make simple estimates and logical inferences about freelancers' income also based on statistics, not to mention common sense, something you must be sorely lacking to be trying to waste my time like this trying to claim that my simple moral argument is "anecdotal" when it couldn't possibly be less anecdotal (my argument was abstract which is the opposite of anecdotal), you really seem like the type that wants to argue just to argue, not to actually reach any consensus or achieve anything mutual, as I see you doing this over and over again in plenty of threads, including one of mine.
I wouldn't mind if you weren't so immature and confrontational about it, "your entire post is anecdotal", gtfo here.

And I'm not trying to paint Cipsoft as an evil villain, how stupid do you have to be to reach that conclusion based on what I've said, all I'm arguing/saying is that someone even smaller than that small company, namely a freelancer (in a small Open Source-based community.... a, b, c, d, e, f, g... are you following?), deserves even more protection than that small company, not to mention my second argument which you're ignoring here that Cipsoft has afaik ignored all our attempts at resolving this legal conflict and to communicate in general, at which point it starts to make sense to consider piracy, yes - if you're not aware that's how the Piracy Movement started.

and they [freelancers] mostly work on demand, so when the sprite is ripped they were already paid. The one at loss is the project owner, that by applying your logic actually had no loss at all.

Good for the spriters in that case, but all you've done in that case is moved the problem over to the owners.
Explain how they're at no loss "according to my logic" please...

"People tried to square legal issues up with CipSoft", wtf you even talking about?

Maybe you should've opened your post up with that question instead (ignoring the fact that you're asking it pretty much in the most disrespectful way possible lmao, but I don't mind since it doesn't compare to the rest of your shitty post) of opening up with all of this randomass inflammatory accusatory bullshit if you're not aware that there's been an alleged previous effort of some people in this community to get licensing from Cipsoft, since a large part of my argument was based (explicitly) on that.

And how CipSoft refusing to giving people right to use it's copyrighted content by whatever terms gives people the right to do something with it (assuming that crazy thing even happened)?

I have almost no idea what you're trying to say here.
I think you need to read something like this so you'll at least have some basic idea of what the Piracy/Anti-Copyright movement is about: Opposition to copyright - Wikipedia

 

[Worr]

@Peonso @e.e Aren't we going back to the the copyright laws thing a bit too much? I thought this discussion was about the morality rather than the legality (e.g whether it's moral to ban "sprite theft" but allow people that do the same to Cipsoft). You can base your laws on morality but vice versa isn't very smart – you will be stuck forever in the first system you implemented (e.g slavery is legal, so I will consider it moral and never see a need to change the law).