Utumno

[medicinestorm]

I was able to get a hold of the elusive Matt Craighead (he seemed surprised that I was able to track him down... and a little annoyed. ). He has passed the torch of Utumno to me and I am doing my best to maintain it.

The programming is slow going, but definitely fun. I did my best to restore his original Utumno site to working status: utumno.medicinestorm.com/archive

If anyone is interested, I welcome any help with the restoration of this particular relic. Anyone familiar with the graphics file formats that utumno uses would be especially helpful.

-Medicine Storm

[APWhite]

That thing has to be about 13 yrs old isn't it? I remember when Matt got upset with the community because he wanted to get paid for the game.

[zaimoni]

Yes. If the license situation is cleaned up I'll include Utumno in my vaporware *band archive when it finally reaches the light of the Internet.

[medicinestorm]

Indeed it is old. How strange. Matt never mentioned requiring payment. All he said to me was "...do whatever you like with it subject to the license agreement."

What is the license situation than needs up cleaning? I was under the impression utumno inhereted the angband license. No?

"...when it finally reaches the light of the Internet."
What constitutes it reaching the light of the internet? source and executables are currently available for download at utumno.medicinestorm.com/archive... does that not qualify?

[zaimoni]

Indeed it is old. How strange. Matt never mentioned requiring payment. All he said to me was "...do whatever you like with it subject to the license agreement."

In that case we're fine.

The license agreement (Koeneke) explicitly prohibits charging money for it. Cf. APWhite's explanation.

"...when it finally reaches the light of the Internet."
What constitutes it reaching the light of the internet?

I'm referring to my internal master archive of angband variants; it sees the light of the Internet once it's on my virtual domain. (I may create a subdomain for it...not sure yet, it is vaporware. Robots.txt adjustment indicated.) I have most of the frozen FTP mirror at sunet.se [Pernband shall remain gone, ToME is fine], and need to also catch up the Fury mirror and check for exotic variant home pages.

[medicinestorm]

it sees the light of the Internet once it's on my virtual domain. (I may create a subdomain for it...not sure yet, it is vaporware. Robots.txt adjustment indicated.) I have most of the frozen FTP mirror at sunet.se [Pernband shall remain gone, ToME is fine], and need to also catch up the Fury mirror and check for exotic variant home pages.

??? what?

Let me see if I am translating the pronouns and jargon correctly. What you are saying here is: "I am still working on the master archive of angband variants. Utumno will be added to the master archive, but the master archive will not become available until I am done."

Yes?

[zaimoni]

??? what?

Let me see if I am translating the pronouns and jargon correctly. What you are saying here is: "I am still working on the master archive of angband variants. Utumno will be added to the master archive, but the master archive will not become available until I am done."

Yes?

A master archive, yes, to complement the ones at Fury and sunet.se. A *.tar.bz2 of the whole thing will be needed to give it a fighting chance of outlasting my virtual domain (My leased hosting is moderately expensive, it will die on the first bounced monthly CC# charge).

It won't be complete (thanks to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but I will provide badly documented links to anything I know about that I'm not planning to host.

[medicinestorm]

...It won't be complete (thanks to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act), but I will provide badly documented links to anything I know about that I'm not planning to host.

Groovy. Let me know if I can help.

P.S. Forgive my lack of understanding, but why would the DMCA be a problem? Are there components of the archive that circumvent Digital Rights Management? If the archive consists of angband variants, and if all angband variants have the "you can copy this freely" license, then wouldn't a DRM system on any of the *band content be a violation of the license?

[Magnate]

Groovy. Let me know if I can help.

P.S. Forgive my lack of understanding, but why would the DMCA be a problem? Are there components of the archive that circumvent Digital Rights Management? If the archive consists of angband variants, and if all angband variants have the "you can copy this freely" license, then wouldn't a DRM system on any of the *band content be a violation of the license?

I think he was referring to the legal issues surrounding PernAngband, the predecessor to ToME. I think it was about copyright in general, not circumvention specifically.

[zaimoni]

I think he was referring to the legal issues surrounding PernAngband, the predecessor to ToME. I think it was about copyright in general, not circumvention specifically.

Pernband is the only one my IP addresses must not be associated with at all (log of downloading is unacceptable risk).

There's a few other variants that I have downloaded, but that I may fail to upload because I don't care to guess wrong about U.S. legal issues.

[zaimoni]

I think it was about copyright in general, not circumvention specifically.

Very little about the U.S. DCMA is about circumvention, yes. It also defined new categories of U.S. copyright law violation specifically for digital media and downloads (as the odds the courts would throw out cases trying to apply the hardcopy violations to digital media were pretty high).

The DCMA is so extreme that the U.S. Library of Congress has explicit authority under the DCMA, to designate which violations of the DCMA may not be prosecuted.

(OT: that is, incidentally, one reason why Steam and similar distribution networks suddenly have these really old commercial games available; one of the standing exemptions for software is "only runs on obsolete hardware".)

[Magnate]

Very little about the U.S. DCMA is about circumvention, yes. It also defined new categories of U.S. copyright law violation specifically for digital media and downloads (as the odds the courts would throw out cases trying to apply the hardcopy violations to digital media were pretty high).

The DCMA is so extreme that the U.S. Library of Congress has explicit authority under the DCMA, to designate which violations of the DCMA may not be prosecuted.

Heh. The UK's pathetic and flea-ridden government is doing its usual thing of emulating bad US policy a few years later. The people made very rich by copyright have finally pumped in enough money to get themselves a bill which effectively gives the government power to respond however it likes to "unforeseen" violations in the future. It will be an interesting test of our democracy to see if we can stop it becoming law.

[Nick]

Heh. The UK's pathetic and flea-ridden government is doing its usual thing of emulating bad US policy a few years later. The people made very rich by copyright have finally pumped in enough money to get themselves a bill which effectively gives the government power to respond however it likes to "unforeseen" violations in the future. It will be an interesting test of our democracy to see if we can stop it becoming law.

OK, that's the camps for you, my lad.

[medicinestorm]

...My leased hosting is moderately expensive...

...I don't care to guess wrong about U.S. legal issues.

Understandable. If you would prefer, I can try hosting this archive.
I have sufficient access to legal experts (I am not a lawyer, but I do work for the US justice department) that I am willing to risk guessing wrong about US legal issues.

Also, my hosting service is moderately inexpensive. I have unlimited bandwidth and effectively unlimited storage. I'm sure I could set up an ftp account for you to do what you want with it (so long as I know what is happening) and I can do the stuff that you don't feel comfortable with. I don't really know if this is worth the effort to you. It may not be significant enough of an issue, but if you like my offer; I am serious.

[zaimoni]

Understandable. If you would prefer, I can try hosting this archive.

Thanks, but no.

My hosting's expensive because it's a leased unmanaged dedicated server that I take the appropriate 1040C deduction for. I'm not hurting for either bandwidth or storage space. However, I don't consider it "as reliable" as something run by a reasonable corporation or university -- and it really disrupted the *band community when clockwork.andrew.....edu went down. My wording was intended to avoid encouraging a repeat of that.

I have sufficient access to legal experts (I am not a lawyer, but I do work for the US justice department) that I am willing to risk guessing wrong about US legal issues.

That is what I'm weak on.

Note that when my archive goes up the README will enumerate what known variants aren't there and why. Advice on whether I'm being overly conservative (or liberal) would be good; I'd rather do any takedowns before the official requests come in.