NDAs...

Quote from von*ferret

nice rant. We hate "proffesional" acting mods.

nuclear dawn

Quote from Fletch

There is a huge difference between admissable evidence and a binding legal contract. In the U S court system, evidence is simply any outside object or testimony to support your end of the story. It can be challenged, thrown out, or proven false by any lawyer worth his salt.

Situation 1: The mod maker made people sign the NDA to get sole legal rights to the work and keep all the profits.

Result: Unless the NDA was written by a lawyer who knows what he is doing, anything you agree to online transfering the rights to your work over to somebody else will get thrown out. There are a reason real NDAs are pages long. US copyright law is very complex. You miss a little clause here or there and it's worthless. In addition, judges and juries are given a large amount of leeway in cases like this where a 'woker' feels like an 'employer' has exploited his work. If a mod developer tried to keep all of the profits without a fair distribution to the people who made the assets, they'd be taken down very quickly in civil court.

Situation 2: The mod maker made people sign an NDA to prevent leaks.

Result: Nothing. What? You're going to take somebody to court? First off you'd have to bring them to court in whatever state or country they're in. You really going to fly to Nevada to sure somebody over your mod? Secondly, it would be a civil case, not criminal case, so your burden of proof is to show they have cause monetary harm to you and the mod, which is hard to do since 99% of mods don't produce profits. You can't present theorhetical profits you would have made down the line unless you already have a contract signed with a publisher, in which case the publisher's lawyers ahve probably already sent the team real NDAs. So if you're not going to take anybody to court, the best you can do is call them a poopypants on your mods website, which will make you look like bickering 14 year olds (which might very well be the case).

The only real benefit to NDAs is they act like psychological leashes to 14 year olds on your mod team that don't know any better. Since they think it's real, they'll keep in line. But honsetly, if some mod team tried to get me to agree to one, I'd just laugh. It's just instant sign #1 that there is some bad management going on. Either they're greedy or they're inept at getting the team to behave.

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awsome. hahaha ^^^

yeh nothing to add that hasnt been said already

Quote from submdl

Ok...

just giving you a little flak, that's all.

Sanity 1....NDA's 0

Wel a NDA is really not a bad thing if youre a bit future minded and are looking for a publisher for example.

I doubt a NDA signed online or trough email holds much water but I have been in a mod what asked a signed papers trough snailmail.

The standaard mod NDA seems to be

I don't leak mod stuff, my property stays my own and I get proper credits for it, I can't deny the mod the content I made

I see no harm in it, ofcourse it should not be nessesary but jerks come in all kinds of disquises

Hey, just to play games or read forums we have to agree to some rules so why can't a mod have rules.

Even tough I doubt its that usefull and if 'bad' people would really care what they signed.

But if the mod I'm with wants me to sign something I have no problems with that as long as it matches with my own ethical laws.

On the other side I have been able te test beta's of games without having to sign anything

Fletch's post still reigns supreme.