Re: Harsher action for copy paste
I would say that, while your gathering evidence and trying to get ahold of the original game's creator, the link should be removed ASAP. If it's a false alarm, an apology can be given and the link reinstated. Otherwise, for every minute that link is up, the BS is spreading.
Something in the guidelines you have to read when signing up specifically about stolen code/assets would be good too, so you can't plead innocents.
It does get confusing though when you don't have people with the time/knowledge of the original to comb through and see if the code is the same, because then you only have the word of the supposed original creator to go on, and often times their is drama involved between the two parties that makes everything they say suspect. Not to mention that some projects use code snippets from multiple games, some of which could be open source or freely offered classes from the past, and the people sharing the clones take every advantage they can to confuse the issue.
Also, stolen sounds. Unless it's a commercial game, or care was taken to protect the sounds, instead of just leaving them out their for everyone, or if the original game was using stolen sounds to begin with (not always easy to tell if you don't recognize them) then it should probably be against the rules.
It gets into a gray area though when some of the sounds of the original are from other properties, but not all, does that automatically make it okay to take all of them, even if the sounds are protected? I mean oh shit and ah dammit did it...
And reusing sounds from the same library, while foolish, can't always be helped especially if the dev doesn't play many other audio games and wouldn't know, so you could get false alarms.
Not to mention the fact that so many respected devs already use stolen sounds to begin with...
I think it also lies on the original devs to somehow mark their projects, particularly open source stuff, so that we know. Something that can't easily be removed like hashing or some form of hidden text in the code it's self or the file's metadata like what producers do with their music tracks.
The key would be to share it only as needed, privately, such as with mods, so that the info doesn't leak and people start figuring out how to remove it. That still requires the original dev to be available for questioning though...
I guess I would just do more research on how other sites handle this issue, but it's clear that the community doesn't appreciate clones regardless. Maybe we've blown it out of proportion though and we should just let it slide and allow the idiots to have their fun, unless they are obviously cloning commercial products and can't defend them selves satisfactorily.
After all, if you already know people are going to be suspicious, then it would behoove you to get your shit straight before posting, so that you can say exactly where everything came from and have it confirmed. Laziness is really no excuse...
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