Checkpoint: ftp.sunet.se mirrored...

[zaimoni]

...other than some grossly IP-flouting variants, thanks to the U.S. DCMA.

To be a perfectionist, I'd resync against the following before mass-uploading to my website:
* ToME 2/3 master site
* Unangband Berlios.de master site
* V

Other than the above exceptions, I'm fairly confident that an immediate upload should be fairly close to current.

[konijn_]

...other than some grossly IP-flouting variants, thanks to the U.S. DCMA.

To be a perfectionist, I'd resync against the following before mass-uploading to my website:
* ToME 2/3 master site
* Unangband Berlios.de master site
* V

Other than the above exceptions, I'm fairly confident that an immediate upload should be fairly close to current.

You mean DMCA Which variants do you consider grossly IP-flaunting ?

T.

[ekolis]

Yeah, technically isn't Vanilla one of those? :P

[Timo Pietilä]

You mean DMCA Which variants do you consider grossly IP-flaunting ?

T.

Could someone explain what is DMCA in this context? Digital Millennium Copyright Act? How is that relevant here? Or was it a joke of some kind?

[Magnate]

Could someone explain what is DMCA in this context? Digital Millennium Copyright Act? How is that relevant here? Or was it a joke of some kind?

Sadly it's not a joke. The Americans have gone crazy over protecting business revenue from copyrights, so they take a hard line on innocent infringements like using copyrighted materials in *band variants. The OP is sensibly protecting himself from their avarice - I presume he lives in US jurisdiction.

[ekolis]

Hello? Does anyone realize that LotR is copyrighted, too? So ALL angband variants are infringing???

[Magnate]

Hello? Does anyone realize that LotR is copyrighted, too? So ALL angband variants are infringing???

But this is the idiocy. Copyright is about two things: the right of creators to be recognised (and nobody is denying that Angband recognises Tolkein's authorship), and the protection of revenue. Angband is free, so it can't possibly be depriving anyone of revenue.

[Derakon]

It could be argued that Angband is diluting the Tolkein "intellectual property", thereby reducing demand for other Tolkein-derived products and costing them money indirectly (why buy LotR Online when I can play Angband instead?). In fact, I'm pretty sure that such arguments have been made before for other free products that were based on popular franchises. Heck, Pernband got threatened into whitewashing away all the Anne McCafferey references.

Note that I'm not claiming that these arguments aren't spurious. Copyright law in the US is nuts. Unfortunately it's not like any of us have the funds to stand up to a court case.

[ekolis]

So, all y'all forreners out thar...

Would you please petition your governments to fly bombers over Washington simultaneously on, oh, say, hmm, when is Tolkien's birhtday, anyway? :P

Surely we can't shoot 'em ALL down...

[Timo Pietilä]

So, all y'all forreners out thar...

Would you please petition your governments to fly bombers over Washington simultaneously on, oh, say, hmm, when is Tolkien's birhtday, anyway? :P

Surely we can't shoot 'em ALL down...

You don't need bombers. Just normal civilian aeroplane with nuke inside. Nobody is shooting it down because it doesn't look like threat. We could of course make nuke-analog and put it in some wooden crate and drop it with parachute to...what's that place again...doorstep with written BOOM paper inside.

Building nukes is easy. Hard part is to get raw materials for it. That alerts all security agencies in all western countries. Or at least should alert them. Second hard part is to get it in the country. Some drug smugglers methods could be used for that.

[konijn_]

Hello? Does anyone realize that LotR is copyrighted, too? So ALL angband variants are infringing???

Hell, I'm pretty sure some of them arent infringing!!!

[zaimoni]

Sadly it's not a joke. The Americans have gone crazy over protecting business revenue from copyrights, so they take a hard line on innocent infringements like using copyrighted materials in *band variants. The OP is sensibly protecting himself from their avarice - I presume he lives in US jurisdiction.

Yes, I do. However, anything hosted on the leased server gets influenced by DMCA, by virtue of the server being physically in the U.S.

[zaimoni]

Hello? Does anyone realize that LotR is copyrighted, too? So ALL angband variants are infringing???

Between:
* the U.S. fair use loophole for derivative works
* For Koeneke-licensed variants, the non-commercial use clause strengthens the fair-use loophole considerably, and
* the non-filing of action when this first could reasonably have been noticed,

It's layman-implausible that a lawsuit filed against someone who actually could afford a lawyer, would get far in the U.S.

The only current variants that would come close to having a serious case under U.S. law are those that loosely replicate the plot (and note that these variants generally do not have U.S. jurisdiction primary developers anyway), and even that could be defended by the fact they don't try to duplicate either the exact setting, or the exact plot, nearly as closely as known-legal parodies. E.g., LucasArts outright failed to stop the SpaceBalls parody of Star Wars: A New Hope, even though the plot events were ordered identically to the main one.

[zaimoni]

You mean DMCA Which variants do you consider grossly IP-flaunting ?

PernAngband and PernMAngband weren't even downloaded in spite of being available to download, to avoid future accidents with the Anne McCaffrey exclusive distribution contract.

D11-Angband and Dungeon City were downloaded, but will not be uploaded: the 2nd Ed. AD&D rulebooks are very clear about reusing non-generic races and spell descriptions. [Moria actually did a good job evading this, and this was mostly retained in the conversion to Angband.] Blame TSR for this one; current copyright holder is Hasbro via corporate takeover of Wizards of the Coast, via corporate takeover of TSR.

Discband is in the same general class of variant as Gumband, Zangband, and Animeband (thus fine).

[zaimoni]

The content of the first edition of the mirror has been fixed: *.tar has been constructed for compression and upload. It's ~3GB uncompressed, so I'm verifying that it expands properly before doing anything else with it.

Content includes but is not limited to the Fury and ftp.sunet.se mirrors (subject to above caveats). Is the README.txt of general interest?

As I haven't seen an announcement elsewhere, I will note that Hajo's (primarily known for maintaining H-World) most recent Isoband release is 0.2.7.1 on March 31, 2010. Other minor-source checks today did not find any last minute updates.