WEB POLICY: compilation of previous discussions.
=====
by Geoff Conn
Promoting illegal products is one thing Steve, but forbidding the exchange of urls for player information is
another... I didn't realize that you had to be an 'approved' site for this.
REPLY: It should be fairly obvious why this is necessary, legal, and moral. Players should not expect to use the company’s resources to exchange url’s where they could find illegal copies of company property, items which violate various copyrights, or other items which violate company policy. It’s not hard to be an approved site and anything not approvable obviously doesn’t need to be passed around anyway.
=====
by Steve Cole Posted on Monday, June 14, 1999 - 7:14 pm
Someone wanted to post his own version of the order of battle on his web site. We noted that he could do this under the establish policy so long as he noted that it was submitted to and copyright ADB Inc. and that it was his own un-official work and could not be relied upon to settle rules arguments or historical disputes.
Submission of a site for approval means that we will, eventually get around to checking it and if there is a problem we will tell you what to fix. If you refuse to fix it, we have the legal ability to get your host to remove the material which violates copyrights or policy.
The main thrust of the policy is twofold:
1. Create a legal authorization for people to do what they will probably do anything so that we don't have to someday
defend in court our failure to stop them.
2. Stop pirate publishers from promoting on the web. If you "submit" your OB and it comes under our copyright,
you can never use it (or allow it to be used) in a pirate product.
=====
There was a considerable controversy over Yahoo (and other sites) claiming to gain ownership of material placed on their host. ADB inc. has not and cannot give Yahoo (or anyone else) ownership of any of its property or the right to give such ownership to anyone else. If you use such a site, you should consult with them on the steps you must take to avoid this issue.
=====
by Sean Young Posted on Wednesday, July 07, 1999 - 2:12 pm:
A contributor to my website (which includes new races in an alternate SFB history in the Galactic Core) has
requested to add a simulator race from module C4 to his timeline. Would this be a violation of the web policy?
REPLY: no problem.
=====
by Steve Cole Posted on Sunday, July 18, 1999 - 12:29 pm:
Other SFB Web Sites take note! You are NOT authorized to recopy files from this site to your site. (You can link to
them, but NOT recopy them.) This has been the policy since the day this site went up; "nothing from this site can be
reposted to another site without specific permission from ADB Inc."
This incident was regarding a site which had copied a file from the main site (one marked not to be copied) and then had failed to update it, resulting in an obsolete document causing a lot of confusion and hard feelings.
So, once again, if you are running another SFB site and you copied anything from this site, REMOVE IT
IMMEDIATELY from your site. There are several reasons for this.
1. We know that the copy on our site is the latest version; we cannot know that about other copies.
2. With a copy here, there is no reason for you to have a copy on your site (except maybe your
self-aggrandisement, which is NOT why we put stuff here).
3. You can have a link to our file if you like, but not a copy of the file.
=====
Q: Can I put photos of your miniatures on my web site?
A: They’re your photos of how you painted your miniatures. No problem. This comes under "personal gaming experience".
=====
Q: I created some SSDs and put them on my site under your web policy. Now I see other sites have copied my SSDs to their sites. Is this legal? Also, I have noted another site posting variants of my original designs. Is that legal?
A: First, if these are unauthorized sites they’re illegal in oh so many ways. Assuming an authorized site, one could argue that it is under a narrow reading of the policy, but common courtesy would be to ask permission from the original designer and to include a notice of the original design with the variant. There is no reason to repost someone else’s ssd (and this just takes up web site space) so a link to it should be enough. Anything else is just using someone else’s work to make your web site look cooler, which is the self-aggrandizement problem.
=====
Q: does posting my proposed new race on my web site hurt its chances of publication?
A: yes (since if we printed it, customers would complain that they already got a free copy and resent being made to buy another copy). But on the other hand, the odds for publication of a new race are very bad and you would have to wonder if a 0.00% chance is that much worse than a 0.00001% chance.
=====
by Steve Cole (Stevecole) Posted on Monday, January 24, 2000 - 2:14 pm:
USE OF SFB STUFF IN SFC STUFF:
Here is the legal paragraph agreed to by Interplay and ADB Inc.
Simply include this with each scenario, and of course comply with everything in question.
This scenario for Star Fleet Command is based on a scenario published in one of the modules of STAR FLEET
BATTLES. The original SFB scenario is copyrighted to ADB Inc., which has granted blanket permission for the use of
its property on the basis that:
1. The original ADB Inc. copyright is recognized in an area visible to the player.
2. The resulting SFC scenario is not distributed for profit (except by Interplay).
3. The resulting SFC scenario is uploaded ONLY to a site officially recognized by Interplay; said site must also
comply with ADB Inc.’s web policy (posted on its web site). This means, by the way, that the individual doing this must
notify ADB of the upload.
4. The copyright to the resulting SFC scenario is freely transferred to the joint ownership of Interplay and ADB
Inc. and may later be published by Interplay for profit under its licenses from Paramount and ADB Inc. Any
compensation to the scenario author is at the discretion of and solely the responsibility of Interplay.
5. This entire notice is included in the scenario file itself in a way it cannot be removed.
=====
by Steve Cole (Stevecole)
Posted on Tuesday, January 25, 2000 - 1:00 pm:
USE OF SFB SHIP MODELS IN SFC:
This can be done if you include the statement below and comply with the policy it covers.
This 3d "ship model" for Star Fleet Command is based on a ship published in STAR FLEET BATTLES. The original
SFB ship is copyrighted to ADB Inc., which has granted blanket permission for the use of its property on the basis that:
1. The original ADB Inc. copyright is recognized by placing "(c) ADB Inc" on the 3d ship model itself.
2. The resulting 3d ship model is not distributed for profit (except with approval of ADB Inc.).
3. The resulting 3d ship model is uploaded ONLY to a site which complies with ADB Inc.’s web policy (posted on its
web site). This means that ADB Inc. must be notified of each upload. No site may have more than 50 such models.
4. The copyright to the resulting 3d ship model is freely transferred to the sole ownership of ADB Inc. Any
subsequent use of the image by ADB Inc. will be subject to negotiated compensation.
5. This ENTIRE notice is included with the 3d ship model file.
=====
Q: Is it possible to announce new web pages on the board?
A: If they are "authorized", feel free; see web policy.
=====
by Steve Cole (Stevecole) Posted on Tuesday, June 06, 2000 - 7:57 pm:
If you posted something to your site that you copied from this BBS, remove it immediately as NOTHING FROM THIS
BBS OR ANYWHERE ON THIS SITE CAN BE POSTED ANYWHERE unless you got specific permission from ADB Inc.
=====
by Steve Cole (Stevecole) Posted on Tuesday, June 06, 2000 - 7:59 pm:
If your site has Star Trek stuff for SFB (for example, Voyager, next generation) you are in violation of Paramount
and ADB Inc. copyrights and must remove this at once. No "authorized" sites (actually, sites that have applied for
authorization, none of them have been granted authorization yet; everyone is still pending) can have TNG stuff. No
unauthorized site can have expansion material for SFB.
=====
Q: I was wondering if since I want to put up a website with a bunch of stuff I have done over the years if it would be ok
to do the site and not tell anyone the URL until you have approved it?
A: Put the site up, follow the rules as best you can, ask us if you are confused about anything, tell us where it is, tell everyone where it is, and fix anything we tell you to fix.
=====
Q: If I change the URL but not the content would it still be a authorized website?
A: Sure.
=====
by Hyun Yu (Hyunyu) Posted on Tuesday, September 04, 2001 - 3:08 pm:
I am thinking about putting up a personal website for SFB. Basically it'd be a
reference website of all the ships available in SFB Universe. I'd start out with one race and add more as time goes by.
All permanently-published (as opposed to play-test ones in CL) would be included. They would be sorted by the
ship class, then individual sub-classes underneath (for example, for Federation Heavy Cruiser category, there
would be entries for CA, CC, CAR, etc.). Each entry would have the text from the R section of the rulebook for the
class, known ship names, and scenarios involving ships of this class.
There would be a master index, where you can find ships by their class name, rule number, size, etc.
=====
by Steve Cole (Stevecole) Posted on Tuesday, September 04, 2001 - 3:18 pm:
Hyun Yu: Sorry, but we cannot authorize you to use the text of the R-modules or any other official stuff. The web
policy document rather clearly prohibits reprinting anything from the rulebooks.
There is no need for a web site for this; it's in the rulebooks.
If you want to do a web site about what you think about a few ships, with your personal observations, and you hold
it to a dozen or two ships total, knock yourself out. But you're basically talking about reprinting a major chunk of
the rulebook which is prohibited by our licensing agreements and would be really bad for business.
Bottom line: Forget about ever doing this. Sorry.
=====
Q: Ok, how do I go about getting my website authorized these days?
A: You send me an Email.
=====

By Peter Radford (Astronomypete) on Saturday, January 01, 2005 - 09:55 pm: Edit

I have just created a php script which accesses a mysql database with the DAC contained within it. This is accessed from a webpage that asks you how many internals are scored on a given ship and then returns using 2d6 distribution the results in a table, could this be used as a gamers tool on a website or not?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, January 02, 2005 - 05:39 pm: Edit

Peter: Email me. I'll have to ask a few people a few questions. And then ask you some.

Assuming that this thing cannot be downloaded and passed around, but only works with the web site, it shouldn't be a problem, although it would probably have to be put on either starfleetgames.com or sfbol. You can contact SFBOL and see if they'll put it on their site and Joe Butler and see if he wants to put it on ours. I don't have a problem with either one.

By Peter Radford (Astronomypete) on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 11:47 am: Edit

Email sent please feel free to use it on any website that you choose... Tho I dont have a contact for SFBOL

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Tuesday, January 04, 2005 - 05:10 pm: Edit

Peter,
I am the main contact for SFBOL.

Paul Franz

By David Damerell (Damerell) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 12:36 pm: Edit

I'm slightly curious about this, since I'm writing (for my group's private use) a simple Perl script to track Federation Commander movement and energy.

Now, pretty clearly, something with the SFB DAC in is a derivative work of SFB. But, hypothetically speaking, what would be the situation if the original poster had implemented SFB's DAC procedure (but not reproduced the expression of it in the rulebook, obviously) but invited users to input their own DAC (presumably with reference to their copies of SFB)?

I'm asking, obviously, because of the area of concern here; utility programs that, while they happen to implement SFB or FC procedures, aren't in fact derivative works in law. It would be a shame to write a bite-sized program to speed up FC games and not be able to give it to people who'd like to speed up FC games.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 12:48 pm: Edit

It would be a shame if people gave away the company's IP for free. Creating a piece of software designed specifically to allow people to input the FC DAC would be a constructive violation.

By David Damerell (Damerell) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 01:14 pm: Edit

Hm. I see this is perhaps going to be tricky.

Now clearly if one person gives another person a copy of the DAC, that's illegal. But I'm curious (honest question) as to what you feel is wrong with a program that a person who's got a printed copy of the DAC lying around can input the DAC into in order to do damage allocation more quickly. Sure, then they've got an electronic copy of the DAC they could send to other people; but then they could do that with a text editor...

If you can bear with two more hypothetical cases;

A Postscript/PDF output library to facilitate producing SSDs (so that rather than using a general-purpose graphics program to draw lots of boxes, the user would write down "Shields: 30/24/22/18" and off it goes and plunks them down around the user-drawn outline). Of course this makes it simple to create facsimiles of ADB's SSDs (but then, so does a scanner) but it would also ease the permitted activity of fan-creation of SSDs.

An SGML DTD and tools to support writing rules in the SFB format.

And one non-hypothetical case; a program for FC which says things like "Sub-pulse 2: Ships A : D : C, F : Missiles: Energy Torpedoes" and "Input energy used during Torpedo [1] Pre-loading Phase" - so is tracking ships' remaining energy and ensuring all movement's done in the correct order.

[1] Naturally, we can't use SFB weapon names...

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 01:35 pm: Edit

David: Is it really that hard to do this stuff by hand?

By David Damerell (Damerell) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 01:58 pm: Edit

Well, _SFB_ damage allocation's something that I think every player with any programming ability at all has tried to implement - I wrote one on an old Casio programmable calculator, which was a bit of a mixed blessing since the machine's storage capacity was so tiny that you had to have a paper lookup table that started 1: Forward Hull 2: Aft Hull 3: Centre Hull and so forth. Furthermore, of course, we see all sorts of proposed manual optimisations like trays of dice and game-mechanical optimisations for Damage Allocation, so I think it's pretty clear there that doing it by hand is felt to be actively irksome.

An SSD design library; certainly. I'd never mess around in Photoshop or the GIMP when I could have something do it for me - just think, for example, of the convenience of being able to review all the variants of a given ship in the text input file and see immediately the differences in shields, engine capacities, etc.

SGML DTD for rules; sure, although we're now into the area where my professional love for automation is influencing me. But there are some pretty useful applications there, like ensuring all the subrules of (Q2.569) you write end up numbered (Q2.569n) without you ever typoing (Q2.596) ever (I expect ADB _have_ something like this), or making it straightforward to write output engines so you can suddenly make the whole lot HTML or plain unformatted text or whatever.

And, specifically, a FC movement and energy monitor; sure. A screen up in the play area displaying every ship's energy, rather than constant questions about how much energy everyone has? I'd love it; we've done all right with a controller, but that does demand someone willing to track all the energy and constantly answer these questions. And FC's acceleration mechanic means the order ships move can be reordered every impulse; it's not actually as simple as SFB where the controller could just read leftwards across the impulse chart columns.

The thing all four of these have in common - as I see it - is that none of them infringes any ADB copyright and furthermore none of them (except maybe the SSD output library) can act as a tool to make it easier for other people to infringe ADB copyrights (which would render them undesirable regardless of the legal status of the tool). Clearly SVC disagrees, so I'm trying to understand his position.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 03:39 pm: Edit

The problem is that your software is specifically "constructively" intended to allow something to happen which is in itself not allowed.

If you did a program that allowed you to input any DAC from any game then that's one thing; software specifically configured for a specific game is another entirely.

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Friday, July 21, 2006 - 08:02 pm: Edit

Long ago, I sent SVC a copy of an excel driven DAC which I made up.
It worked great, deleted items that no longer existed, and was pleasing to look at.
I don't share it with anyone, but I use it for my own use and leave it at that.
I never got a response from SVC about it, but I didn't make it for him to say he loved it.
Also, PA panel control, while complicated, made easy on excel. Love that too.
And the movement chart on excel? done that, looks great, and became of staple in our game nights. Gotta love them laptops.

By David Damerell (Damerell) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 09:31 am: Edit

SVC writes:

"The problem is that your software is specifically "constructively" intended to
allow something to happen which is in itself not allowed."

Well, it's not _my_ software, the DAC program is purely hypothetical, but; this seems to say to me that inputting the DAC into a computer (at all) is not allowed. Now clearly that's not something we can legally do without ADB's authorisation, but is it actually the case that ADB don't authorise us to put the DAC into computer programs for our own personal use? Because that's going to be a nasty surprise to anyone who ever wrote a DAC program.

Conversely, if the concern is allowing people to input the DAC and distribute it electronically, well... they can do that with a text editor, so I'm a little puzzled by that one.

Non-hypothetically I would like to know what the position is on the FC impulse/energy play aid I described earlier, please.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 10:07 am: Edit

I did not say (never said anything remotely approaching) that you cannot write a program yourself for yourself and include anything you want as long as you are the only one who ever has it or uses it.

What isn't allowed is to distribute a piece of software with the DAC, or to distribute a piece of software that (wink wink grin grin) is specifically designed to have people input it themselves. If they write their own software and input it, no problem. Writing software specifically to get around the restriction in the manner you speak is a construction violation of copyright. That you "fail to see" the problem here means you see the problem and don't want to see why it is a problem.

I cannot find an understandable definition of this other thing you mentioned, but the concept is the same. Software for use with FC being distributed beyond the person who wrote it, not allowed (by Paramount or ADB).

By David Damerell (Damerell) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 12:21 pm: Edit

No, I really honestly fail to see the problem. If Bob can write a DAC program himself and input the DAC into it, then Bob's allowed to input the DAC into a computer for his own personal use, provided he doesn't distribute it.

So if Alice writes a DAC program and - without any wink-wink - gives a copy to Bob and says "input the DAC into this", Alice's program seems only to encourage Bob to do something he's allowed to do anyway.

Second question; it's not clear to me how the suggested FC program infringes ADB's copyrights (provided one doesn't make any stupid goofs like putting the words "photon torpedo" into it, say) and hence would require permission. I realise that the expression "For use with [ADB game]" is one that there is a certain sensitivity over.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 01:54 pm: Edit

David: Whether you see it or not, it's still wink-wink and it's still a constructive violation of copyright.

Any program which is designed solely or primarily for use with FC is a violation no matter what it says or doesn't say. A program that could be used with the same amount of effort for dozens of games by a dozen companies would not.

But, tell you what....
1. drop the idea of giving it to anyone
2. email me a summary of the plan
3. we'll talk and see if it could be done legally

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 03:27 pm: Edit

David: I really do not understand why you aren't getting this (and suspect you are, you just don't like it).

You're not arguing with the game designer about the logic of the klingon drone rule. You're arguing about the law. The law is what it is; you don't get to say "makes no sense" and ignore it. If so, I could say the law against robbing banks makes no sense.

To your specific question:

"If Bob can write a DAC program himself and input the DAC into it, then Bob's allowed to input the DAC into a computer for his own personal use, provided he doesn't distribute it."

Correct.

"So if Alice writes a DAC program and gives a copy to Bob and says 'input the DAC into this', Alice's program seems only to encourage Bob to do something he's allowed to do anyway."

Bob did not write his own program for himself. Most Bobs in this world could not write the program for themselves. Most of those that could would never do it (for a variety of reasons). Doing it for them is defined in the law as constructive violation.

You're doing something sneaky, devious, and wink-wink for the specific purpose of subverting the copyright law and stealing somebody's property. THAT is why you cannot do it. There is a reason things work the way they work.

Look at it another way. Let's say someday ADB decides (and gets Paramount permission to) market some kind of FC software.

If Alice has her own program and decides not to buy the official one, ADB has lost one sale.

If Alice constructively violated ADB's copyrights in the manner you speak, hundreds if not thousands of players will have the wink-wink version. Alice has cost the company a very significant chunk of the market, quite possibly so much of the market that ADB cannot sell their legal version of the product.

What you are proposing to do is stealing.

As the British say: "full stop".

As the Americans say: "period, end of sentence."

As the Australians say: "try that and you will be on the barbie with the shrimp".

There MIGHT be a way to do this legally, but your way is not it. Email me.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, July 24, 2006 - 07:04 pm: Edit

This is beginning to sound like the NAPSTER argument, "We didn't swap the music files; we only gave the users a way to swap the files." The judge didn't buy it. End of story.

But like SVC said: take it off-line to e-mail and maybe there's a way to make something work.


Garth L. Getgen