Hi, I have all Rope Knocking maps. Rope Knocking is a scheme by Swordfish that he dedicated a lot of time on it. However, few years ago he decided to delete all his maps from WMDB and other websites.

What I want to know is:

Is it ethical to upload all the original maps of an author when this person decided to delete all of them from the database? It would be something without his permission, because he is not active. I'm holding this Mappack all this time thinking on this. I feel that they are beautiful and important to the game history, but at the same time, maybe he would get mad to see his maps available again.

Another thing that is making me think a lot is that I obtained the few remaining maps that I was missing thanks to Cgar. But, Cgar's last actions were very controversial, to don't say worse things. I know he is responsible for a lot of bad things about this game, and the last message he posted publicly was offending me for no apparent reason. Despite this, Cgar made A LOT of contributions to this game, helping hundreds of people on Help Channel, on the wiki, with custom terrains, obtaining and revealing all the random names of the worms, and several other things. If I upload this Mappack, I would have to credit him, despite his stupid last actions on this game.

What do you think?

Yes, it's ok to upload them.

Worse comes to worst, just "remix" them slightly, then upload them.

can you still get in touch with them?

Swordfish profile on WMDB is still up. I doubt he will answer me and probably he didn't change his mind. I'll send him a new message, let's see what happens.

Anyway, nothing impedes me of creating a cup for the scheme without uploading the maps to TUS. I could host all the games of the cup and people could still extract the maps from replay. All his schemes are still here on TUS. He deleted all his maps and the video he produced.

EDIT: Oh I already sent a message to him long ago about this, but he didn't reply.

Quote from: FoxHound on December 12, 2024, 03:00 PMSwordfish profile on WMDB is still up. I doubt he will answer me and probably he didn't change his mind. I'll send him a new message, let's see what happens.

Anyway, nothing impedes me of creating a cup for the scheme without uploading the maps to TUS. I could host all the games of the cup and people could still extract the maps from replay. All his schemes are still here on TUS. He deleted all his maps and the video he produced.

EDIT: Oh I already sent a message to him long ago about this, but he didn't reply.

I also previously thought about the idea of ��a cup, and corrected something in the original scheme, so that it would be more dynamic.

I'd get in on touch with them to make sure but if they didn't respond, I'd say respect their wish.

@FoxHound Send me the maps and I'll upload them for you if you're worried about anything.

Quote from: TheKomodo on December 12, 2024, 10:04 PM@FoxHound Send me the maps and I'll upload them for you if you're worried about anything.

Honestly, I'm very inclined to do this. But, if I send to you now it would be almost the same as publishing it: outsourcing the task.

I'd prefer to at least see what people has to say or vote first. Nowadays with Internet Archive, in almost everything you do on the internet there is no real turn back, still, people sometimes take legal action against companies like YouTube. YouTube might delete all videos on his database and will prohibit it of being published again in cases like cyberbullying or at least copyright stuff.

Of course, TUS is not exactly a company (I guess? Maybe a philanthropic one if yes), but still, it is a website responsible for many players and even legal/justice stuff. So, if MonkeyIsland opined that is better to respect Swordfish wish, I'll take that into consideration, because I holded these maps until today, even though, I really think it's very sad that Swordfish took this decision.

I have a wormy friend that made the same with his good-looking shopper maps and until lately he decided not to publish them. He was desperate to recover his maps, and fortunately I and a wormer friend helped him to complete the collection of his own maps. I wanted him to publish, but he wanted to update the maps first. He is inactive now and didn't upload the maps (his name is Danelius, Genreakablind in the past).  Until today I could, but I never uploaded his maps to respect his choice.

In the case of Swordfish, it's worse because it's a different scheme that requires special maps, and he made a lot of unique (and BIG) maps that have good graphics too. In total they are 29 by Swordfish and there are also 2 Rope Knocking maps by DassFass (these were not deleted). So, I'm still in doubt about what to do, but I know I'm not the only one with his maps. There is Cgar and another guy that had only one missing and I sent him. So, I think it's a matter of time to these maps be uploaded by people anyway.

Nobody has any legal copyright for Worms Armageddon maps other than I imagine Team17 for the official maps , it's not like Swordfish invented shapes, colour, size etc, that was the universe that created that stuff, so it's an open market.

If you try to make money from maps you would probably get sued by someone.

It's like, if you don't want your picture taken, don't go out in public, the same thing applies to map making in WA. If you don't want your maps recorded and kept for historical reasons or shared with whoever and wherever, then don't make them and share them in the first place.

They forfeited the privacy card when they first made them public.

For any digital content that have already entered the public sphere (except those leaked to the public without the author's consent):

Preservation > Erasure