Garden of Shadows is down, but not out.

[strangetomato]

I thought I'd do my part to spread the word to anyone who might be wondering about Garden of Shadows, and why it's not working. It seems TSR made a legal complaint to GoS's web host about them redistributing their supposedly "copyrighted content." There are more details here on nymphynymms journal. (ETA: And also on Jenfold's dreamwidth journal.)

Thank you to simgaroop for bringing this to my attention. I'm a big fan of Garden of Shadows, even though I mostly lurk. They continue to create quality content for Sims 2, even though most other cc sites gave up the ghost a long time ago. I was thoroughly enjoying the Earth Day monthly theme, and I'm saddened that this messes with their next monthly theme right around that exciting time when the new theme is decided and announced (which theme won? Does anyone know? I was just going to go check). Way to ruin everyone's fun, TSR. Bunch of dicks.

Comments

[lady-talaie.livejournal.com]

Actually as I said above the creators them selves hold the copyright claims to any CC they make. If they then sell said content to TSR they kept there rights but TSr know holds some rights over it. Also if the CC is made by and owner of TSR then yes they do hold the right to that.

Just thought I would point that out. It falls under the heading of intellectual property.

[meetme2theriver.livejournal.com]

I thought EA owned it all, since any Sims CC is dependent on EA's products to be of any use. Also, a huge chunk of the CC on TSR is either recolours of EA content, or edits/chopped bits of their meshes, and this CC would definitely belong to EA, in the legal sense.

[fantasyrogue.livejournal.com]

TSR has a terms of use in place that basically says you sign over practically everything to them. I think you still retain your own rights, but they also get all the rights to modify, edit, share, rip apart, create deratives, sell, distribute, etc etc for ever and ever. Including a clause that says when you submit you basically grant them the right to pursue people at law on your behalve. In return they apparantly also do not have to pay you if they don't want to, if I'm reading this correctly. Nor do they have to tell anyone that you made it.

Frankly, their terms of use suck if you ask me.

[almightyhat.livejournal.com]

On top of ALL THAT, they don't encrypt passwords or financial information, so they don't have to resort to legal action (and kind of don't, since it's not like they have any legal right to sell this stuff and in fact signed a contract (by installing this software you agree to these terms) that they wouldn't)-- they just find any other place on the internet that user might have used the same password, email, blogs, other Sims sites, and hack the fuck out of it.

I can understand why GoDaddy's policy is to take ten to fourteen business days to review the situation, even if perusing the Sims 2 (make anything you want except money) and Sims 3 (upload anything you want, but once someone has downloaded it they can do what they want with it) EULAs would preeeeeetty much clear up everything in Liegen's favor.

On the other hand, apparently GoDaddy is on the expensive side (on top of being on the slow and apparently slightly stupid side), so perhaps this is a blessing in annoying disguise.

[ownsimscorner.livejournal.com]

If anyone can make a claim to CC ownership it´s EA, since all CC depends on EA`s products to be created. These copyright claims would only made sense if we were talking about an entirely original creation.