Am I being trolled or are mods suddenly allowed to be copyrighted?

No, your logic is not flawed. Unfortunately, the law can be quite illogical about these sorts of things. Derivative Works violations will be construed every time you modify another modder's objects directly or indirectly either at compile-time or at run-time. The user has no say in the matter (aside from not using the mod, but that's beside the point). Fair Use cannot be claimed, because that only applies to referencing someone else's work for the purposes of advertisemant, education, or criticism. Once you touch someone else's work, you infringe on their intellectual property. If you created the script that was designed to perform the changes, you are the person at fault.

Mods that use global scripts that do not discriminate towards particular mods are within Fair Use, so Bash and SkyProc are fine.

And then ignored the fact that no, there was no consensus about the things you claimed were agreed upon.

How binding an EULA is is very open to debate, and even if all those terms are held to be perfectly legal and binding, those rights are not waived, they're transferred to Bethesda, and it's still illegal to modify and redistribute without the rightsholders' permission, in this case Bethesda (or more probably, ZeniMax).

Modders waive any legal or moral rights when publishing mods created through the Skyrim Creation Kit, so no, it isn't.

How binding an EULA is is very open to debate, and even if all those terms are held to be perfectly legal and binding, those rights are not waived, they're transferred to Bethesda, and it's still illegal to modify and redistribute without the rightsholders' permission, in this case Bethesda (or more probably, ZeniMax).

Of course mods are allowed to be copyrighted. They're copyrighted by default.

I'm reasonably sure that you're wrong. That argument would mean that it would be illegal to make mods at all, let alone mods that use anything from Skyrim.

You as a mod maker cannot copyright a mod of your own creation.

So you are saying it is illegal to mod? Or I have to ask Bethesda's permission to mod?

You as a mod maker cannot copyright a mod of your own creation.

Of course. Bethesda already grant their permission within certain constraints in the CK's license agreement.

You have no idea what you're talking about. Copyrights are not things that need to be actively acquired. When I create something, a copyright exists purely by virtue of it being my work. This can be restricted depending on license agreements for the tools I used in its creation (the CK, for example), but this is the general rule.

You're not really adding anything productive to this conversation, just criticizing those that are trying to. The last thread was nearing the 200 post limit for threads on this board. Adraeus's post did not need reposting as it only clarified 2 points about a different subject and wasn't related to this topic, which he specifically said he had no interest in. And the only consensus we reached all day was that we'd never reach a consensus on any of these points, Chesko is merely trying to sum up the last thread to avoid the reposting of a lot of old comments.

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Fair game; I'll remove that portion. I'm not attempting to actively ignore anything. I certainly haven't ignored you, because... well, to my knowledge, this is the first time you've spoken up. Do you have an opinion on the topic?

Permissions regarding mods have no legal or moral standing, and it is patently ridiculous to claim that they do.

Plenty of legal standing. Plenty of moral standing, too, for the general community. You may not think so, but morally, most believe it's right to notify others of mods upon mods. That was a general consensus reached with only a couple against it.

Besides that, though, there's quite a legal standing regarding content.

GameVoxColour - The topic of discussion is the legality of runtime modification of another mod. If you don't have anything to contribute to that line of conversation, you are welcome to start your own thread.

43 of his posts (All of them prior to this thread?) are in the Brink section. I don't think he has any experience with modding or mods...

Why are random people showing up and making statements like they're a lawyer? I honestly don't understand. We're trying to have a discussion and establish some ground rules and random people keep throwing bees into the car...

What Is Infringement?

Copyright is a bundle of exclusive rights. http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106 of the copyright law provides the owner of copyright in a work the exclusive right:

• To reproduce the work in copies;
  
• To prepare derivative works based upon the work;
  
• To distribute copies of the work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending;
  
• To perform the work publicly;
  
• To display the copyrighted work publicly
  
• In the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html#501 of the copyright law states that “anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner ...is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author.”
Generally, under the law, one who engages in any of these activities without obtaining the copyright owner's permission may be liable for infringement.

Under the terms of US copyright law, http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#what. The moment it exists, it is copyrighted by the creator and can only be redistributed, altered, etc with permission.


Now the EULA transfers PART of the copyright of all mods to Bethesda Softworks in the sense that Bethesda Softworks can legally change and/or appropriate any user made addons that are made using their toolsets and they (Bethesda Softworks) can't be charged with copyright infringement by the author who holds it. That same protection is not afforded to other modders.

Is it better to debate this or work on moving forward? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Mods are derivative of Bethesada's work, therefore they are illegal. That is your argument right there.

Is it better to debate this or work on moving forward? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Let me just jump in here since the modding forums seem to be a freaking pit of drama lately and the amount of grandstanding, as some of you who have known me for a long time, really gets up my noie and makes me pretty cranky.

I expect people to be civil to each other. Period. No exceptions. If I see any more potshots like "What, did you close it because no one wanted to listen to your misinformed opinions?" and comments of that ilk, not only will the conversation get shut down, some of the offenders will get shut down until their perspective mode re-sets itself.

I realize this topic is something people feel passionate about, but be mature about it and be mindful of the forum rules. And dial down the drama please.