Plaguerizing Erecia's For Glory Guide

[oberonqa]

I made a post on my blog about this topic, but it has been suggested I post about it here on the forums to increase visitor awareness and promote discussion on the topic.

That said, I'm copying-n-pasting my latest blog entry. The URL for the blog entry is as follows:

http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/weblog_entry.php?e=737

I made my montly visit to Erecia's CoP guide this evening and was met with a shock...

June 29th

Kind of important annoucement

This site will no longer be updating due to my lack of interest in FFXI.

I’m not sure if I’m quitting the game right now. It’s a definite possibility, but I don’t want to say that I am and then have to eat my words later. So I’ll just say that I’m seriously considering it.

I will leave the site up, as it is in its current condition. Even though the information has been eclipsed (read: stolen and had the life sqeezed out of it by editors of FFXIwiki) by other sites, enough people have responded to it that I must have done something right. So it will stay up. Linsaran, the administrator of the website, will be able to decide what to do with it. If paying the bandwidth that supports the site is too much of a hassle then he may remove it, though I still have offline copies of everything in case it needs to be put up somewhere else.

Please don’t send me any more emails or messages about FFXI or this site. I am, as I said, not updating the site and so I’m not looking for information to fill the few holes that remain. And honestly I don’t really want to talk about FFXI stuff right now.

If people won’t leave me alone about it I’ll have to take the site down. I don’t like threats though so just, ya know, leave it be.

It’s been fun guys. Thank you all for the support and feedback you have given me over the past 8 months or so.

- Erecia


I am deeply saddened by this. Erecia is one of the great FFXI pioneers and her departure (if she chooses to depart) would be a massive wound that will probably never fully heal. How many people have benefited from this woman's hard work and devotion to bettering the FFXI community I wonder?

Beyond the sadness I feel... I feel anger. What could have happened to have pushed her to this? I cannot imagine what might have happened... but let me say if anyone who reads this blog and was harsh to her or disrespected her... SHAME ON YOU!!!! I cannot and will not tolerate such abusive behavior to someone who has given so much to us as a community. If anyone reading this did something that terrible, I ask that you LEAVE MY BLOG and never come back.

Also, in that note, Erecia mentioned this site had stolen her work. To that, I pray it is a misunderstanding. I admit I am new here still... but stealing this woman's work and claiming it as your own is a serious offense. Is the quest for being "the ultimate FFXI resource" really so important as to disregard the ideals of common courtesy, respect, and most importantly, integrity? To the administrators of FFXIWiki, I pray you look into this matter and deal with it in an expedient manner. Plagiarism is a serious matter and would be a heavy blow on the site.

Please find the content Erecia has hinted at and remove it as soon as possible. Ignoring the reputation hit for plagiarizing other people's work if you leave it up, you should remove the offending material for no other reason than IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!!!!!

Feel free to discuss this topic here on this thread or on my blog. Additionally, if anyone comes across wiki pages that appear to have been copied from Erecia's For Glory Guide, please contact one of the FFXIWiki administrators immediately.

Thank you.

[Jonas]

1. Erecia is a guy.

2. I would suggest that if people have used any part of his work, then give credit where credit is due. Put in your wiki page the link to Erecia's page and give him full credit for the finding and posting of the information. This goes along the same lines as Somepages Maps which are actually generated by FFXIAtlas. If you pull up a map there, you will see a disclaimer on the bottom saying as much.

[Ganiman]

I honestly am not impressed with Erecia's work and don't know why anyone would copy it... that's just me. That website is kinda crappy and hard to read too. Again, that's just me.

[Gahoo]

This goes along the same lines as Somepages Maps which are actually generated by FFXIAtlas. If you pull up a map there, you will see a disclaimer on the bottom saying as much.

All our maps should be direct from FFXIAtlas (from whom we have permission) and contain attribution information on the image's page.

[Blueblade]

LoL... that guide got me through the whole CoP missions. I think It's excellent work. Cept the ToAU part needs a ton of work now.

[Mierin]

The Administrators of the FFXIclopedia take charges of copyright infringement very seriously. We have been contacted in the past about such problems and dealt with them as swiftly as possible.

We have a copyright policy: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/index.php/FFXIclopedia:Copyrights.

We ask that if anyone, including Erecia, believes their copyrighted material to be infringed, they need to notify us so that we can review the matter and resolve the issue. We recognize that our material is licensed under the GFDL, and that not all people would like to see their material republished under a site operating under the GFDL. We will always respect such opinions.

We also ask that our contributors, if they do not get the original author's approval, should at least credit their sources to respect any copyrights. Because this is a contributor based website, we cannot police the legality of every entry, but are alway fully willing to respond to any copyright complaints. Specifically, please feel free to PM me personally or make a post on any offending Talk page so that the issues can be resolved.

----

As a reference, it should be noted that we have pulled down information in the past, including complaints about our Chocobo Digging information and several guides originally published on Allakhazam. We do respect these complaints and will do everything possible to respect the copyrights of original authors.

[Mierin]

In addition, I took the proactive step of attempting to contact Erecia to express our regrets that some of his material may have been copied without his consent. However, he has removed his contact information.

If you are in contact with Erecia, please tell him to contact me so that we can rectify any wrongs that have been committed.

[oberonqa]

Thank you Mierin for your replies. I have sent you a private message with the only contact email I have for Erecia. Additionally, I have posted a thread on the For Glory forums requesting that Erecia and/or Linsaran visit this thread in the hopes of establishing contact between the For Glory and FFXIWiki administrators.

The link to the thread on the For Glory forums is as follows:

http://promathia.runtimerepairs.com/Forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51

[Reinhardt]

I doubt it was actually copy righted. He'd have to register it with the US Patent office. Plus iot would infringe on a lot of SE's copyrights. I have a feeling a few people gave him a hard time, and so he's taking out his frustration on this site. Kinda lame if that is the case.

[Chrisjander]

Copying someone's guides to a game without their permission is wrong, especially if they have bits on their website requesting that your don't (I don't know if this is the case with the site in question). Either way, if you're going to copy stuff that someone else made (guides, elaborate walkthroughs, etc) then its only polite to ask for permission.

I came into contact with a copywritten site that I felt would benefit the wiki, and it only took about a day for the site owner to give me permission, so if its not yours, ask first

[Jengel]

I doubt it was actually copy righted. He'd have to register it with the US Patent office. Plus iot would infringe on a lot of SE's copyrights. I have a feeling a few people gave him a hard time, and so he's taking out his frustration on this site. Kinda lame if that is the case.

Copyrights don't have much to do with the US Patent office actually.
Every written text has rights on them protecting it from being copied, not sure if it's called copyright in english though.

All in all, I know I have read the policies about copyrighted material of the ffxiclopedia before and they are very clear and it is my believe any complaints about copyrights are handled well by the admins, so I hope they can get in contact with Erecia and get this 'mess' solved in a nice way.

[Mierin]

A copyright does not need to be registered to be enforced. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape or a letter), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. These are the standards by which the FFXIclopedia maintains itself, and therefore we find it of the utmost importance to respect the original, written works of others.

Do not think that written material is free for everyone just because it is on the internet. Just because it is freely obtained does not make it free to publish. Technically, any Internet posting (such as blogs or emails) could be considered copyrighted material unless explicitly stated otherwise. The internet is a fixed medium and therefore works published on the internet may fall under copyright protection.

On the contrary, there are areas considered in the public domain. The Administrators of the FFXIclopedia have interpreted the notion of public domain to be strictly limited to internet forum discussion threads and such. (The reason for this is because no one person can claim that the material is their original, written work.) Any personal site, or guide on a public site, would not fall under this category, because it is easily established that one person created the original, written work. Therefore, a discussion thread full of ideas and theories on Allakhazam or FFXIOnline would be deemed to be public domain by the Administrators of FFXIclopedia, but a guide posted on those forums would be copyrighted material.

However, just because material is copyrighted, does not mean it cannot be copied. There are fair uses of copyrighted material. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include: 1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 2) the nature of the copyrighted work; 3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

It should also be noted that one can not copyright ideas, but the tangible words can be copyrighted. If someone did research on the CoP missions, and used Erecia's guide as a source, that may be okay. But if Erecia's guide was copied word for word, than that would be a copyright infringement and must be taken down. One can also not copyright lists. So if someone creates a list of suggested gear for a job, this cannot be copyrighted.

Please feel free to refer to the following pages for general information on Copyrights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright, Fair Use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use, and Public Domain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain.[/i]

[Mierin]

Plus iot would infringe on a lot of SE's copyrights.

Just a side note, for those that are curious:

As for all of SE's rights, we have noted that all the material is credited to SE (http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/index.php/FFXIclopedia:About), and any material we use from SE is used under the Fair Use doctrine.

[Tenudin]

I do CAD design work IRL and in every single one of my drawings there is a statement in the bottom left corner stating that the drawings and the design itself is copyrighted. None of our documents are registered with any patent office.

[Reinhardt]

I retract a lot of what i said but still, he doesnt give a reason why he singled out this site.