ZoS Webmaster program

[Faugaun]

I have posted this on the official game forums please show your support:

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com...-program?new=1

[Ayantir]

What do you want from ZoS ?

From a legal aspect, it's easy :
ALL the addons belongs to ZOS
ALL the screenshots belongs to ZOS
ALL the data extracted belong to ZOS
ALL from Elder Scrolls Online belong to ZOS

Since you don't abuse, you can use them as you want. Since you start making bull****, big brother will use their legal authority. "Hey John, that's not good, please delete". 2/3 mails after. "Hey John, it's ZOS again, you don't listen to us, your ingame account is banned".

From a data aspect, we got all tools to grab data from game. We can extract all strings, all items of the game, what kind of data would you like to see you explained ? Maybe formulas ? there not hard to guess for a lot of them.

More love for twitchers or youtubers ? There are community managers for that, the french one is quite approcheable for us, he regulary post on fan sites forums.

Okay, there's maybe one thing they could do, a website kit with some icons, graphics to start a website., but game is 1 year old, so it's not a problem now.

Then you said, a forum where we could share with ZOS, and from webmasters

who need RSS feeds, API linked to the game to their websites, icons, screeshots, rankings, videos, broadcasting, skill lists, item lists, quest lists, etc

you quote RPlayers, PvPers, and so on.

I do think having
- 1 ZOS UI dev on dev forum (here)
- 1 ZOS pvp maker on official pvp forums
etc..
is nice

etc.

I know that in the middle of random bull****, ZOS can be lost, it could be nice if (per exemple) when a raidlead of a large pvp guild talks, he get attention, but does he need attention? Listening mainly those people could be interesting, or not. because they represent only a small part of gamers.

PvE exemple is even more subjective.
A raidlead from a strong guild will ask "Give us more strats, more difficulty, more loots and more challenges !". And another random player will maybe ask more funny little quests. What is the best to do ? Give attention to the silent majority or give content to the few community leaders that the wide population won't have never access ?

Then the pve content project manager will say to his devs, "What the best ratio in devtime / gamer fun we could do ?" Building a raid will need some huge time for few leading players, building a quest where a Khajiit ask you to steal the puppet of the princess lot less.

[Sasky]

First off: I am not a lawyer, and if you want a definitive answer you'd need to talk to one, preferably in software law.

Originally Posted by Ayantir From a legal aspect, it's easy : ALL the addons belongs to ZOS

While the other portions are clearly Elder Scrolls IP, this portion isn't nearly as clear.

First off, the part under copyright is the API not the addons themselves:

As part of the ongoing Services provided to You, ZOS will make available an application programming interface (the "API") to allow You to create, download, enable, use, or associate Content, including user-generated Content ("UGC"), that modifies or otherwise provides enhanced features to the user interface ("Add-ons") for The Elder Scrolls® Online software-as-a-service product purchased by You (the "Game").

The usage terms are related to using the API itself -- not addons, and you'll notice there aren't any provisions that state you concede copyright of any addons.

From there, it falls to regional laws for whether it's considered a derivative work or not, and that depends on the addon. For US guidelines, a quick google search turns up a paper (below) which contains a summary of several cases about user content in conjunction with games. Some are considered within the copyright of the original owner while others aren't, depending on the type of content. Throw in other regional laws and it's far from a simple cut-and-dry answer.

Personally, I'd suspect it'd be the API itself and use of any ESO assets, text, etc would be considered derivative, but any actual logic/algorithms wouldn't. It'd be possible to extract the ESO-specific parts of an addon to have a copy that is solely under the author's copyright.

http://www.academia.edu/1428208/Comp...t_and_Copyleft

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For the OP about displaying content on websites, it'd basically be whatever "fair use" covers at least in US. Which if you don't claim the work for your own and aren't selling it, it'd probably cover most of what you could do online. Something like Uesp might come the closest with putting up full text from books, quests, etc.