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Deletions & Archiving at Nexus Mods


lmstearn

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On 7/5/2021 at 9:47 PM, Sigurð Stormhand said:

The system went live a few months back, at least, but ToS at Nexus was only updated at the end of June, and the change only announced in July.

Thanks, that helps explain some things. So this is mostly about them removing the ability to publicly remove files without telling anyone about it first?

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9 hours ago, Tasheni said:

Anyway, I will not look back again, I will go on. There will be options to proceed, they have to be found. I go searching :)

 

Hi @Tasheni, OneDrive has better size restrictions- although not being a cdn, the transfers work well enough. Another option is to package the large mod into smaller chunks. :)

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8 hours ago, deaths_soul said:

Thanks, that helps explain some things. So this is mostly about them removing the ability to publicly remove files without telling anyone about it first?

I think, if we are honest, this debate is about different things for different people. However, the big sticking point seems to be that Nexus' backend was changed, then the TOS was changed, then people were notified.

Nexus are now giving authors the means to delete all their files, as in remove everything, but only by filling out a manually processed email template and only until the start of August.

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16 hours ago, maxarturo said:

@Tasheni.
First of all, hello my lady and nice to see you !.

I'm calm, very calm. My post was not made in anger and was made just to inform others of the current practice followed, plus i'm not the only one that has been silenced. And i'll not analyze further the Nexus issue here, it's was one post and the last about it.


But why not gather here and help this site take the next step ?, does this sound a so impossible task ?, if you ask me, no it isn't.

100 euros by a 100 modders is 10000 euros.

And i personally have absolutely no problem in supporting this site as long as it needs, and we are all together in this.

Respectfully, you have said you piece on this topic. The impression given by your posts is not a "calm" one and some posts border on slander against Nexus.

So this is your friendly warning, dial it all the way back or I'll purge the thread.

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1 hour ago, Sigurð Stormhand said:

I think, if we are honest, this debate is about different things for different people. However, the big sticking point seems to be that Nexus' backend was changed, then the TOS was changed, then people were notified.

Nexus are now giving authors the means to delete all their files, as in remove everything, but only by filling out a manually processed email template and only until the start of August.

Actually the backend of Nexus never deletes a file, I just found out, when I purged all my mods today, there were some mods I deleted back in 2006 from oblivion and it showed up, stuff I totally forgot I even had! lol
So now it seems they want to make it clear there is no deletion in their DB, they never had, that is also why when you deleted all your mods before the script that runs to check whether you have 1000+ downloads to give you access to the GMAD, still gave a true value.
Now if you purge all the mods with the support, the script will run and give a false, you will lose access to the GMAD.

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17 hours ago, Sigurð Stormhand said:

I think, if we are honest, this debate is about different things for different people. However, the big sticking point seems to be that Nexus' backend was changed, then the TOS was changed, then people were notified.

Nexus are now giving authors the means to delete all their files, as in remove everything, but only by filling out a manually processed email template and only until the start of August.

Thanks, now I have a better understanding of things. Been rather out of touch lately. :)

Edited by deaths_soul
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22 hours ago, Abyssi said:

Actually the backend of Nexus never deletes a file, I just found out, when I purged all my mods today, there were some mods I deleted back in 2006 from oblivion and it showed up, stuff I totally forgot I even had! lol
So now it seems they want to make it clear there is no deletion in their DB, they never had, that is also why when you deleted all your mods before the script that runs to check whether you have 1000+ downloads to give you access to the GMAD, still gave a true value.
Now if you purge all the mods with the support, the script will run and give a false, you will lose access to the GMAD.

Yikes. This could land Nexus in even more hot water if someone decided to sue, as it carries the implication that they were outright lying in their old Terms of Service when they said that deleting your mod would terminate the distribution agreement.

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@ Sigurð Stormhand.

Thank you very much for the warning.

I can't see where you saw that i'm border on slander, and i'm very calmed and i've moved on.
I was just trying to find a home and a functional solution for all the refugees, but if i'm annoying here, then you won't see me again.

* The only reason why i made this post was because i don't have access anymore to my contacts and i don't have backups of their emails to inform them.

Don't purge the thread because of me, i'll not bother this place again.

Afterall and how everything has turned out with the new generation, i think that after 30+ years of modding, innovating, educating and creating games it's time for me to walk into the sunset... cause it seems that i'm the only one trying to actually do something about it.

Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for your hospitality.
I wish you all the best !!.

PS: In the world of business, when golden opportunities show up they last a few seconds only...

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On 7/7/2021 at 10:59 AM, lmstearn said:

Hi @Tasheni, OneDrive has better size restrictions- although not being a cdn, the transfers work well enough. Another option is to package the large mod into smaller chunks. :)

Thank you, Imstearn, I collect right now ideas of what is possible for me. To split large mods to upload them here would be not very fair. Disk space needed is the same, but management more difficult. I will use this break to overhaul my mods and upload the smaller ones which are also resources for others. For the two big ones I maybe will setup an own server and just post links here where to download them. But they are WIP and it will take some time to finish these.

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Maxarturo, you are not the only one who tries to rescue our comunity, I posted on nexus that we need a solution and anyone who decides to leave nexus could join me to find one. And keep in touch. It is way too early to tell, what the mod creators who feel not home there anymore, will do. The time for deletion is still running. It's no easy decision to go - you loose your audience, all the comments and you need to find a platform who does not act the same like nexus. Mod creators will still find a way to have a voice, so I doubt they will all vanish to nowhere.

To be honest, I also doubt that there will happen much on nexus. Some few will go, like us, but most of them will stay. The storm will pass away and the daily routine will take place. Many mod creators like Mihail do not even have the choice to go. I spoke to him and he doesn't agree with nexus the same way we do, but he can't move over 200 mods away from there and manage that all. Completely understandable.

I'm a bit sad about you are not feeling well here, I respect you being an always helpful, friendly person on nexus forums. I can only say once again, time will tell. There is always a way for something different or new. Nexus is not the world. Maybe this unvoluntary downtime is good for something. I myself will be happy to hear from you from time to time. So don't be too far off :) :) :)

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The Nexus TOS change is a bad faith contract that will not stand up in court.

The new terms state:

Quote

"Nexus Mods does not claim any ownership of your content. By submitting content to our services, you are granting an infinite, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license for Nexus Mods to store, distribute, copy or reproduce, edit, translate, reformat, publicly display, or perform the submitted content, at our discretion."

First of all, this change to an INFINITE license, removing the ability to EVER revoke it by deletion of your mods as you could before, is like an art gallery signing a simple license to display your work temporarily, then after you hang it up quickly scribbling that out and changing the terms to say that if you display your art there, they are now free to use your art for profit FOREVER, regardless of the spirit of the original agreement, even if you choose to take it down, and that you CAN'T ever take it down, which absolutely DIMINISHES OWNERSHIP, creating a direct contradiction to the license which states you maintain all ownership.

It is a bait and switch entrapment into fraud.

But it gets worse. Ever heard the saying, "possession is 9/10ths of ownership?" How about "rare is always valuable?" By removing your ability to delete your own file or revoke this new "forever license," they are preventing you from re-asserting exclusivity which diminishes the value of your alleged ownership. They SAY you keep ownership TECHNICALLY, but really they are using a grey area to loophole you into a non-revocable "contract" that STEALS ownership and transfers creative control to them in perpetuity while damaging the value of YOUR assets.

Furthermore, they state:

Quote

"We reserve the right to change this document, as well as our various policies and guidelines, at any time. By continuing to use the service, you automatically agree to any revisions of these terms." (This might as well just say "you automatically agree to anything we do moving forward," since you can no longer STOP using the service by deleting your files, at least not after August 5th, 2021.)

The original TOS was just a boiler plate temporary license to display YOUR work on their website. This is SO outside the scope and spirit of the original agreement, it is absurd. It completely changes the entire meaning and nature of the relationship.

Under this new TOS they have removed any choice to consent to future changes. Since you will no longer be able to reject whatever changes they make by deleting your files to revoke this license as you could before, you lose all choice to consent and automatically agree to WHATEVER they decide to do, FOREVER. They could literally change the TOS to give themselves full ownership of your content, or sell it as an NFT, or that they now own your first born child for that matter, and you would not be able to disagree, because you no longer have any WAY to disagree by deleting your files to revoke their license.

Aside from suing them in court of course.

Hijacking choice to consent and recourse to EXERCISE ownership, is absolutely stealing ownership, defacto.

Obviously the whole firstborn thing would never stand up in court, but neither will this bait and switch ENTRAPMENT INTO FRAUD.

If I were a betting man I would say Nexus is planning on selling our mods, or some "collection" of them as a "digital asset," as NFTs.

One of the requirements of an NFT is that it is stored FOREVER in the blockchain. But they couldn't do that with your property unless you had already signed away your rights to allow them to store your data as theirs forever, and removed your ability to revoke that totally unfair and bad faith contract change which they are unilaterally imposing against all prior spirit of intent of that agreement. Once they have that and the ability to make future TOS changes without consent, they are set to move on to the next phase.

They are setting this up with their refusal to compromise on an opt-out for collections and maintaining author ownership to delete and revoke this illegal "contract."

And make no mistake, changing the spirit of a simple license to use in such a way as revokes one party's right to consent moving forward, or to revoke said contract when the original terms explicitly allowed it, absolutely SHOULD be illegal. It is certainly corrupt as hell.

Literally all they would have to do is change the phrasing of the TOS again to legitimize their confiscation of your work and packaging it into some merger/acquisition/NFT scheme and there would be no recourse but to issue a formal DMCA and/or sue them for property damages.

In the United States the 14th amendment ensures that no state shall pass any law that deprives a citizen of their rights under the Constitution. This includes the right to property, which includes intellectual property. Further, in the spirit of this Law, no contract shall be legally enforceable which requires violation of existing law or rights to fulfill.

Finally, governments are only granted authority under law that is explicitly spelled out in the letter of the law. I would argue this must apply to corporations as well, if the Spirit of the Law is to survive. 

These alleged "contracts" you click to access a social media site cannot be seen as legally enforceable when abused and changed after the fact to grant unfair advantage to one party, and in such a way that is totally outside the scope of any rational interpretation of the original intent of said agreement. I know I would never have consented to an agreement that said "we can change these terms without your consent at any time and give ourselves permission to revoke your creative control and ownership of your property FOREVER at any time," just to save time having to set up my own mod hosting page on a free web host somewhere.

This is absolutely moving in a direction to sell author's property without consent to cash in on the digital art/NFT craze. Mark my words. At the very least it is a shameless and legally unsupportable attempt to hijack intellectual property through a bait-and-switch entrapment into fraud with this post-facto, out-of-scope, totally unfair removal of author's rights to revoke future contract changes simply by not deleting their content which was posted in good faith within a short time many will miss, all to push a paid subscription service.

It is theft and inflicts real damage on content creators and property owners, not to mention being just a totally slimy and corrupt thing to do to long-term supporters that earned them revenue all these years. I guess it wasn't enough though.

I guess sometimes when you get those sweet sweet dollar signs in your eyes, you become blind to all that ethical morality crap.

That is why sometimes, it is the DUTY of the Law to step in and slap those bad actors back down in their place.

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the big question is why are they doing this, is it just plain greed or are the advertising revenues drying up. I tried to become a patron recently but was only given one method of payment, one which I choose not to use for my own reasons. the point being they lost the chance to get my money. If they had offered the option to use the accepted local payment option (as other large companies do such as Steam/ Microsoft and Apple to mention a few) they would have got more revenue.

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My recommendation as far as alternatives go for hosting the files themselves? Post here and link to the mods on another mod hosting site. ModDB and Curse Gaming come to mind.

Take your mods down, rev them to a higher version number, and post them elsewhere.

 

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MODDB is no alternative for me. I may delete my files, but before, they share them with various companies around the globe and sell every collected data as well. Most public hoster do. But maybe this is pointless - my files are spread all over russia already.

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Hi, folks. Another refugee here.

I really liked the Nexus, but their assertation that they are now enforcing parts of a now-fluid ToS that they weren't before is almost certainly going to drive me away by the end of the "grace period". The idea that I can't disassociate myself from them should they do something I can't support, and that they can edit my content without my consent in any way for any reason without my ability to delete said content is just horrific.

So, given my opinions on mod ownership, copyright, authors rights, and so on, it looks like this will be a good fit for me and my content.

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1 hour ago, Gruffydd said:

Hi, folks. Another refugee here.

I really liked the Nexus, but their assertation that they are now enforcing parts of a now-fluid ToS that they weren't before is almost certainly going to drive me away by the end of the "grace period". The idea that I can't disassociate myself from them should they do something I can't support, and that they can edit my content without my consent in any way for any reason without my ability to delete said content is just horrific.

So, given my opinions on mod ownership, copyright, authors rights, and so on, it looks like this will be a good fit for me and my content.

Your the guy from all the signs and poster mods right, really great mods use them a lot in Fo4

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1 hour ago, Uncus said:

Your the guy from all the signs and poster mods right, really great mods use them a lot in Fo4

Yep, that's me. Glad you liked the mod.

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I'm a Nexus refugee as well. This seems like a good place for me to host from, but I haven't quite figured out how the site works yet.

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9 hours ago, Helgatheangel said:

Hi, @Gruffydd I used your mod in Fallout 4. I liked it a lot! Thank you for creating it! :clap:

Glad you liked it.

I've already uploaded it here (it just squeaked in under the size limits). If you still play, I'd been working on a big overhaul to add a bunch of faction-specific stuff to give different ways to represent each faction, starting with the Minutemen. Basically, there's a big group of signs for a version of the Minutemen where they are very community-based, with a lot of shared/free resources and a government/legal system based on the old Althing, a more militant version of the Minutemen where they function as guards and enforcers, but otherwise leave the citizens to their own devices, and then a version that is a dystopian tyranny led by an absolute dictator.

Now that mod size is an issue for me, I'm probably also going to do something that I've been wanting to do for ages, but never got around to, which will also help with that issue, and that is to split the mod into chunks thematically (all the settlement signs in one, all the businesses in another, all the factions in another, all the entertainment in another, and so on), so that the end user can pick and choose which bits they want or need for their playthrough. It would work the exact same way that my Signs of the Times (vanilla signs and posters) mod works, where it's a separate mod that you don't need if you don't want it, but if you do want it, it becomes a submenu in the main mod.

Since I do this as a hobby in my free time, though, and that's fairly limited these days, I have no idea when I'll actually get around to that. The Minutemen signs and stuff are all pretty much done, but I want to get the framework in place before I do anything else with it.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if you still play the game and still use the mod, keep an eye out, because eventually there's some good stuff on the way. :)

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I’m playing Skyrim at the moment using it as a backdrop for a fan art story, so I’ll be there for a while, but I would be very interested in a new mod from you. Will you be posting news about it here.

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40 minutes ago, Uncus said:

I’m playing Skyrim at the moment using it as a backdrop for a fan art story, so I’ll be there for a while, but I would be very interested in a new mod from you. Will you be posting news about it here.

I'll be uploading the update here. I'm sure I'll post somewhere when that happens.

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8 hours ago, Gruffydd said:

posters

I use your "Signs of the Time - Posters" mod on xbox. Although i don't play F4 or build that much anymore it always remains in my loadorder. Really good to adding some flair to the buildings. Thanks for the console version. 

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An interesting idea that I had while responding to some posts over at the Nexus...

An argument could be made that the changes there are commercial in nature. Collections - in addition to providing a service that many mod users enjoy - appear to be designed to increase sales of Premium Member subscriptions, for which prices have just been increased and the "lifetime" option removed. All of the arguments against why opt in/opt out or authors being able to delete old versions of their mods or remove them entirely appear to be based on such activities breaking the new business model. And the service itself adds a convenience function of one-click installation that is only available to Premium Member subscribers. In other words, the company is instituting changes that are apparently specifically designed to increase revenue, while at the same time explicitly claiming eternal publishing rights to mods hosted on their site to use with this new business model.

Given this, I think an argument could also be made that any mods hosted there are now being used commercially, and as a whole this commercial use is specifically designed to generate profits for the site.

I'm starting to think that the issue is no longer do I want or not want to have my mods hosted there, but can I legally allow my mods to be hosted there and still meet the licensing obligations on the assets (fonts, images, textures) I am using. A good number of them are specifically licensed to me for non-commercial use only.

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1 hour ago, Gruffydd said:

An interesting idea that I had while responding to some posts over at the Nexus...

An argument could be made that the changes there are commercial in nature. Collections - in addition to providing a service that many mod users enjoy - appear to be designed to increase sales of Premium Member subscriptions, for which prices have just been increased and the "lifetime" option removed. All of the arguments against why opt in/opt out or authors being able to delete old versions of their mods or remove them entirely appear to be based on such activities breaking the new business model. And the service itself adds a convenience function of one-click installation that is only available to Premium Member subscribers. In other words, the company is instituting changes that are apparently specifically designed to increase revenue, while at the same time explicitly claiming eternal publishing rights to mods hosted on their site to use with this new business model.

Given this, I think an argument could also be made that any mods hosted there are now being used commercially, and as a whole this commercial use is specifically designed to generate profits for the site.

I'm starting to think that the issue is no longer do I want or not want to have my mods hosted there, but can I legally allow my mods to be hosted there and still meet the licensing obligations on the assets (fonts, images, textures) I am using. A good number of them are specifically licensed to me for non-commercial use only.

on the face of it sounds feasible, I would however think they would have had their legal department check it out before this stage.

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15 minutes ago, Uncus said:

on the face of it sounds feasible, I would however think they would have had their legal department check it out before this stage.

I'm not so sure on that... it doesn't really affect them directly, as they're not the ones with the non-commercial use only licenses.

I'm the one with the licenses, so if I then license my mod to the Nexus by posting there, and they're considered commercial use, I'd be the one in violation.

I'm also not sure how much they're sending through legal at all, since the whole "we can change the ToS any time we want and it's your responsibility to spot when it changes, but as soon as we change it if you use the website you're agreeing to it" thing has lost big in a number of court cases, including one where the judge declared the entire ToS invalid because, since the ToS could change at any time without notice, it was in his words "illusory and therefore unenforceable". But that's a different issue....

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