Right. It can't really be stopped, and it's a shame, since behaviour such as this makes talented mappers nervous to share source files.
Depends on it, I think. If your map is well known and people know who made it, I wouldn't care too much about a small groupie that steals it as if it was their own, since everyone else knows I made it so it's easy to unmask them.
If that's not the case, I understand you'd get pretty frustrated about such people. Thiefs, indeed.
And there's little you could do I think... mailing them to stop, gathering some friends and telling them, perhaps you could form a front - maybe the pressure of a whole mapping community would do something, other than that, I don't know...
The only real defense is to achieve a high profile status so that as many people as possible will recognize the original map and its author. This is pretty much done by pimping the map everywhere.
The most common and cheapest trick is to just borrow a few screenshots from the original map, rename the shots and claim the map as your own. My first map was "stolen" this way.
It's sad how this is not unusual in mapping scene, fortunately, this is not so usual in other parts of game development. But there are stolen models and textures too, but mapping seems to be the first hobby young gamers take on who want to be on the industry one day, so it starts as innocent learning, like reading opensource code while learning coding, but then some who don't have the talent end up stealing the maps.
Somesort of file "watermark" would be good, when the map is compiled it would record the name of the original maker and date, and it could only be removed from the original source, not by hacking the map open.
Get his IP and report him to his ISP. If you're serious you can get the cops involved (It IS after all copyright infringment - a serious crime), find out his name and file a lawsuit.... But that depends on how much money you wanna waste on shit like this.
Gah just don't care. Do what stratty said and other people will do the job of annoying the guy for you 
Quote from -Stratesiz-The most common and cheapest trick is to just borrow a few screenshots from the original map, rename the shots and claim the map as your own. My first map was "stolen" this way.
That happened to me too. I was making some AHL map, and let some people from my chan test when needed. Someone that I thought was okay took the map, took screenshots, and posted them on another modification's forum as HIS work, to get recruited. He got recruited. Someone linked me to his forum post, I PMed the mod team. Guess who got their ass pwnt? 
Gah just don't care. Do what stratty said and other people will do the job of annoying the guy for you
As far as I know, that's already happening. This guy posted on several forums about his problem already and some other guys seem to be spamming the server of that clan right now. Ghe...
it would be nice if there were a map repository where you could upload your map along with your name and ipaddress so that in the case something happened like this it could easily be found who uploaded what when
as for legal action, i couldnt see it happening, although if it went through the original author would probably prevail
Heh. this is the map in question:
[Blocked Image: http://junx.home.comcast.net/glass_war0009.jpg]
Of course it's terrible to have your stuff ripped (I have) but it's not like he's going to build a career on something like this.
You're getting at the deeper issue of IP theft though, which is impossible to prevent - I figure, once you release something and it's out there, there is *nothing* you can do to control its dissemination and the best you can hope for is that your credits will remain intact or that a few courteous emails will fix the problem. Of course that doesn't always happen, but hey. It's just the internet. Take it with a grain of salt.
Dont you guys remember that "maxwell" guy that claimed that some of the best third party work was his?
An even more troublesome question arises: why would somebody want to steal such maps?
Quote from Captain PAn even more troublesome question arises: why would somebody want to steal such maps?
Cause he thinks that's as best as they come.
wasn't it like two days ago someone visited mapcore and stole half of our site's work and displayed it on their forums? They got pretty pwned pretty fast, espcially when they took my final project (inclomplete none theless0 and tried to pimp it. Whose else did they steal?
Mine I think, but that was more than two days ago
Wasn't that like months ago?
Quote from Captain PAn even more troublesome question arises: why would somebody want to steal such maps?
[Blocked Image: http://www.elca.org/countrypackets/germany/map.jpg]
I've personally given out any/all of my HL source files to whoever wants them. I'm well enough known (at least in TFC circles) that anybody trying to rip me off would soon be caught out, so it's hardly a concern. Has anybody truthfully ever got away with stealing someone's (decent) work and claiming it as their own? As long as the work was in the public domain to start with, I can't see how it could be successfully done.
narby stole inferno and aztec from a bum
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