Legal

[Arcan]

I know this is probably a really stupid question, but i am new to the whole private server thing and i'm just interested if private servers are legal? I mean; don't they break some sort of copyright regulation?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Far]

they are 110% illegal. running, playing, even having a copy on your pc means you are commiting a crime.

 

[Arcan]

Okay.. anyone been caught?

 

[Demonic]

Wemade or whoever fist wave of attacks is to report web sites to ther web host for hosting Copyright images and/or files - this is normally productive as the web host will not want to chance it and shut you down until you remove the offending items.

Private Server come and go by the day - it would be a waste of time and effort on Wemade part to go to the trouble of fighting in Court a private server which has like 10 people on - if they leave it long enough it closes down itself anyhow sooner or later.

If you hosted a server though and had 1000+ online with 20k account - then this might get there attention as you would then be stealing players away from the Pay to Play side - although in China this number is common on private servers. They do have the connection and machines to match though (in China) - one is running on a Quad Xeon with 4 GIG ram plus 100mbit Connection and they get money back in from the player by a different route - they have various NPC's in game which require points - only way to get these is to pay for them -- sounds good to me..

 

[Arcan]

Couldn't you get out of it if you put something like "all content is copyright to WeMade Inc and their respective owners"..?

Or could you even ask permission from WeMade, although i doubt they would grant it.

 

[Biohazard]

No. If you ask "permission" they would just laugh. They licence the LoM server files out to companies for around $250,000/year. Or 10%-15%. Whichever if bigger. =)

And all content is copyrighted by WeMade. Everyone knows that. No point in putting it because it is copyrighted. And if you take something that is not your that is copyrighted, you commited a crime. It would probably cost them more money to sue a private server owner. But like Demonic said, if they catch a server having thousands of users, then they will probably take force. Because it is taking away from their profit.

LOMCN and various other sites have been threated to close down by WeMade, and there was a time that LOMCN did not have Private Server adverts for Mir, but that was a long time ago. As far as anyone going to court yet is still unknown, I doubt it though.

 

[NotMeAgainAgain]

No. If you ask "permission" they would just laugh. They licence the LoM server files out to companies for around $250,000/year. Or 10%-15%. Whichever if bigger. =)

And all content is copyrighted by WeMade. Everyone knows that. No point in putting it because it is copyrighted. And if you take something that is not your that is copyrighted, you commited a crime. It would probably cost them more money to sue a private server owner. But like Demonic said, if they catch a server having thousands of users, then they will probably take force. Because it is taking away from their profit.

LOMCN and various other sites have been threated to close down by WeMade, and there was a time that LOMCN did not have Private Server adverts for Mir, but that was a long time ago. As far as anyone going to court yet is still unknown, I doubt it though.

To be honest, i don't think that "Emulators" are illegal, look at all of the UO shards out there, and the DAoC emu's etc, and considering that some Mir2 files are coded from scratch, as maybe the KingNF files are (Shhhhh! )

Wemade have no way of knowing whether you are running a "Legal" emulator or "Stolen" material, and as few of the server file components are branded with "Wemade (C)" i don't really see how your infringing copyrights, plagerism maybe, but not copyright infringement, thats just my way of looking at it, and if i turn out to be in the wrong, i'd gladly pack up my things and leave the scene if wemade required it.

Pah!

 

[Ragnar]

I also doubt that WeMade would take any action of any europe server. On all the europe private servers together there is maybe 300 players playng at a time, so i doubt they would care over such a little thing. But i agree, if one server would have 1000+ user's online that would get their attention, tho i also doubt they would do something about it. It is 1% of their total community lol (if i remember right).

 

[TritoN]

there is even 1 more point: mir private server could also be considered advertisement for wemade which they even dont pay money for...as its sad above pserver come and go and if they get some peeps hooked to the game what do this peeps usualy do if server closes? yup they look for other servers..maybe the p2p ones or Olymp lol

 

[Far]

@NMAA - you cant use UO Shards as an example, as origin have actually released their server files and made it legal to run private servers.

wemade could easily take action on everyone of us, it would cost them more money than its worth and probably wouldnt solve much. they fell we arnt a big threat to them as we dont have the propper server files. when we do come off as a threat they usually take action. its happened atleast 3 times that i can remember.

 

[Ragnar]

there is even 1 more point: mir private server could also be considered advertisement for wemade which they even dont pay money for...as its sad above pserver come and go and if they get some peeps hooked to the game what do this peeps usualy do if server closes? yup they look for other servers..maybe the p2p ones or Olymp lol

I doubt that anyone who will start mir would even start from private servers.

 

[TritoN]

we got many players on Olymp who started playing mir here the first time..mostly germans though

 

[stan]

I started on pservers....

Euro sucks

 

[Demonic]

Bottom Line

Any/Most MMORPG Servers are Illegal and we should never have the Code to run these, if companies managed to allow themself to be hacked and the code stolen then its' not our problem. It is expensive to take people to court and even harder to extract £XXXXX costs out of a Teenager running a Game Illegally in Court. The numbers on P-Server is way too low on the radar to even worry then slighty and as we dont have the Latest Code, no Backdoors etc can be found and exploited for use in the real game.

Hardware, Line Speed

Proper Companies have Server racks, a team of programmmers and the source code along with Very fast comms lines to support a Lot of people playing at once, is always there and as they get in XX per month per person - it carries on running for years on end - no matter how crap people say it is (look at Mir2 for example).

As Most if not all P-Servers are provided off a Home Broadband Connection (there is a few exceptions to this - so dont you dare post Triton), along with running on one Server - then at some point the server count hits low numbers and the server Dies. The Only Updates that Happen is when Wemade push out some new things and these get added to the server - Wemade on the other hand can sit and code in new Magic, Mobs etc on a frequent basis to keep people paying and thus making them money.

SO basically - run a server, advertise it on LOMCN - have some fun for a while until you get bored of it, Wemade wont be knocking on your Front door anytime soon. Points to Note though:

* Dont replicate Euromir3 Website this is asking for trouble.
* Dont try and Charge people, this tends to get people E-Mails Euromir3 telling them of yet another P Server on the block.
* If people send you Fake emails, Ignore them.

 

[Biohazard]

To be honest, i don't think that "Emulators" are illegal, look at all of the UO shards out there, and the DAoC emu's etc, and considering that some Mir2 files are coded from scratch, as maybe the KingNF files are (Shhhhh! )

Wemade have no way of knowing whether you are running a "Legal" emulator or "Stolen" material, and as few of the server file components are branded with "Wemade (C)" i don't really see how your infringing copyrights, plagerism maybe, but not copyright infringement, thats just my way of looking at it, and if i turn out to be in the wrong, i'd gladly pack up my things and leave the scene if wemade required it.

Pah!

Yes, they are ilegal. Believe it or not.

I don't believe that any Euro servers have been taken to court, but I know that Chinese have.

And Chinese servers are ran by professional companies.

 

[Arcan]

What your saying sort of reminds me of the whole music industry taking people to court for d/l illegal songs, although very different; would players of the server be liable or just the developers?

 

[Far]

players and developers.

 

[Biohazard]

Just the players. Why the *** would the developers be responsible?

 

[Demonic]

Just the players. Why the *** would the developers be responsible?

He means the Develeopers = the people who run the server (hosts) and the players, well they are the people who play it... You confused Developers with people at Wemade Towers writing it I think..

Its different from say Kazaa etc as the devs there wrote the software to faciliate getting illegal files, this cannot be proven though as there is legal software you can download using such a program - the end user though is the one that gets targeted in that instance.

Its on many levels - something like this:

Wemade / WHoever is Auth to Run the Server get hacked
The Hacker Spreads the files far and wide
We pick them up, get them working and present the files + Guide on running a server.
People download the files, run a server
People grab the client and connect to said Server and play.

Add to this, some people Add code to the orignal server to give more features, it is still underneath the Code that the hacker Stole though, def not a emulator.

The Hacker can be caught and put in Prison and fined....
The people passing on the files can be closed down but hard to keep down
The Server Hosts can be closed down but as one is closed, 10 more pop up.
The Players cannot be held responsible as they have a Proper client downloaded from the Official Site...which is Free last time I checked..

 

[Arcan]

So the players cannot get in trouble, in reality?

I suppose, like i said before; i'm thinking about the whole illegal music d/l where players seemed to get in just as much trouble as the people providing the illegal music.

Obviously very different as the music industry is probably a thousand WeMade's and can afford to sue people.