Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-33763020-20181112102927/@comment-33763020-20181113092901

MilkMC wrote: "you also agree to let us permit other people to use, copy, modify, adapt, distribute, and publicly display your content."

- The Minecraft EULA

Many people credit mod-makers as a courtesy, but they have no legal obligation to do so.

"De jure", it is indeed complex, so I shouldn't have brought up the copyright infringement aspect, though I have some doubts on whether it legally stands that someone is making money on other modders' work: Mojang may be allowing the use of the game and making money on modding it, but has no policy on the use of a mod by an other modder, for the purpose of making money. Since they allow mods to be created (and be called a mod on their discretion), the intellectual rights of one modder vs the other is not in their Commercial Guidelines, so regular intellectual property rights may apply there, since Minecraft is not the Law. In other words: modder between modder falls outside of their jurisdiction and hence regular Law applies there. Still, I rest that case, since I do not know to what extent the modder in question uses the LotR mod and from what I've seen in gameplay footage, it is quite different as it is a huge modpack, just holds elements "borrowed" left and right.

"De facto" however, it is impolite to say the least and not in the spirit of creators, who should not only be respecting each other's creations by not using them one-on-one, but the very least recognize them and give credit to other's work. The reason I got upset with his video is that basically for 95% of the video he is copying gameplay and server footage one-on-one from the LotR mod, pretending it to be his work. In his response to my question on YT he says that he gives all credit to creators, but the only thing he did was credit the music and the voice-over, not the actual 95% footage. On the download pages that he links to from YT he credits the structure builders in addition, but no mention anywhere of the mod environment, while clearly the footage is LotR mod biomes, NPC's, (small/medium) structures, etc. It's worse than the technique of Chinese B-movies that give a movie almost exactly the same name as the original, but it turns out to be some garbage movie. The difference is: he is actually using the original footage to advertise for it.

Not much that can be done against it, but maybe he listens to reason and at least mentions the original that he copied from. Would seem a weak excuse to pretend not to know, when it would take little time to find out what the source is.

The reason I agitate in cases like this, is that while this is already a good community by itself, growth can help to push it forward and give it fresh momentum with each new player. Exposure through such cases is underestimated: the more people actually get to know the mod, the more momentum it would get, so it is for the good of the whole community to have the name out. Not at all cost of course, but dignity is not lost through a gentle reminder to modders like this: a small mention and who knows how many more happy players that can draw in.. Just my 2 cents.