Moot because that did not happen. No he wouldn't be stealing, I would have expected tasvideos to still honor me because I got it first. Of course that view has changed.

So you expect TASvideos to "honor" all persons that first discovered/used tricks, glitches, strategies etc that a run is using, in the submission/publication? You got your mention by P4wn3r in his submission. A submission that you wasn't involved in the making at all. You only taught him a new strategy that he used for that run and that he didn't claim as his.

What if someone found out how to do beat the game the same exact way as you did it, without watching your run? Would that person be stealing the run as well? Of course not. The only difference now is that you were nice enough to provide the strategy for anyone to use in a run, which p4wn3r did.

Moot because that did not happen. No he wouldn't be stealing, I would have expected tasvideos to still honor me because I got it first. Of course that view has changed.

We can't "honor" you if you won't submit. You cry for fairness, and yet expect to be granted an exception to the rules. Hypocrisy. We won't bend the rules for you, especially since you won't even explain why you didn't submit. Case closed.

p4wn3r, well, that adds to the disappointment, thanks for letting me know what you think though. You are meant to honor the will of others people when it doesn't truly affect you, and my will didn't.

I'm also disappointed. Being more open, I disagree with a lot of your "philosophies" (or whatever you call it) and that's the reason we don't talk much. Take a look at all my submissions, I mentioned everyone that helped in the making of it. What's it that you want? The publication to have "p4wn3r's (actually gia's) GBC Pokémon..." ? lol I'll be helpful enough to share my views on this. You say you initially thought this was a misunderstanding of mine, you had ample opportunities to contact me trying to clarify this, sending me a PM here or in YT, which you'd done in the past, so I assume you were aware of that possibility. Yet you post in the submission topic, wanting to talk to an admin requesting that the publication is taken down. Saying that you did this hoping it was a misunderstanding is ridiculous, you weren't born yesterday and neither was I. You were perfectly aware that I could have severe punishments if what you wanted happened, talking softly to me now is useless. To sum things up, you can't just turn up here after stating your disinterest for this site several times wanting to talk to the boss and say "yo bitch, take this down because I don't want it here and I also don't want to say why". Please revise your morality, it's a little off. You wanted credit to be given to you for finding it first and so it has, it's the first phrase in the submission. You didn't want to be listed as an author and indeed you weren't. You didn't want me to be listed as an author for it, you had the chance to stop this from happening through seven months and didn't, don't complain about it now. I was kind enough before, now you really pissed me off, if you don't want my name there, frame war it and submit it here.

What? You were the one supposed to frame war it, I congratulate you on pulling it off like this though, never expected you try and even less to succeed, me not posting the vbm not was as a safeguard from you but from some random troll, but well it seems it also safeguarded me from you, if only for some months at least. If I were to publish an improvement to this you would have won, and that won't happen. After adelikat's response which given the course of this thread is to be another negative I am quitting this hobby altogether.

The main reason, I think, that we are all negative towards your stance, gia, is because we can't see a reason why you do not want to submit it here. Maybe a suggestion is to tell your reason to an admin?

Why do you even post videos of your TASing if you don't want your TAS to be seen and analyzed by others? You should probably quit if you don't want your TASes* to be public and you don't find private TASing rewarding. * Input files are TASes. Decimated videos of those input files being played back are not.

1) I agree with Gia that his motivations for not submitting should not be a factor in this issue. One should not have to justify why they don't want to contribute to a site in order to not have their work used. Gia doesn't want to contribute his TASes to this site. We will honor that. We strive to have permission by the authors, even in cases where someone else submtited the work. 2) I agree with Gia, I don't think this thread should have been split, while the content is a "flame war" is a very ontopic flame war about this publication. I requested that DarkKobold merge it back. 3) Gia, I think you have failed to explain something important. What is it that you think you OWN here? I can't sufficiently honor your request without knowing what it is specifically that you need. This input file that was published was not created by you, I see both you and the author agree on that. You also both agree that he has never seen your input and that only you know exactly the contents of that file. So instead is it that the OUTPUT of his movie file exactly matches yours? We have some authentication issues here if that is the case since we only have access to half the video frames of your movie (we only have access to a 30 fps video). But even in those video frames that we have, your two movies do not match exactly. Notice at 45 seconds on both videos. Pw4ner moves the cursor down to get to the save option where you move it up. Do you own the TAS record itself? Do you feel that we should not be allowed to published a run that is a length of 4178 frames / 1:09.63? Would a movie that is 4177 frames be acceptable? What about 4179? Either of these scenarios would still be a movie that beats our previously published movie. Would you feel that these times are not your work and instead are the work of the author that submitted? Is it the new trick itself? Do you we feel we can not publish input files using this trick without your permission? (If so, we will have to discuss what qualifies as this new "trick" as it seems that it is just corrupting two specific addresses instead of some other addresses. But I'm confident that could be hammered out) Are we not allowed to post videos that have segments that match your movie? If so, are we allowed to the use the segments that are identical to previous runs by this author that are also in your movie? I am sincere when I say I am not clear as to what aspect of this input file is your work and not that of p4wn3r's. I eagerly await clarification. And I apologize that admin sponsored activities of this site have upset you to this degree.

For what it's worth, I have to side with gia here, even if I am likely to be the only one. gia, you are not alone.

For what it's worth, I have to side with gia here, even if I am likely to be the only one. gia, you are not alone.

So, you agree with gia's claim that using a strategy not discovered by you is not allowed? Or did I misunderstood gia's complaint?

All I have to say here is that even if we can all agree on something being copied from gia's thing we need to consider if it is an infraction. What matters here is if things could have been differently and still resulted in the same thing. Menu navigation is patently trivial and not worthy of copyright. If we move up one level of abstraction we get the actual glitches abused. You can't claim ownership of a glitch and it has already been established that the honor of finding it goes to gia. Another moot point. Finally we reach the strategy for the execution of the glitches. It's pretty much "find the fastest way to access the glitch and then do it". Since said way is patently trivial this is moot. My opinion in short: whatever happened wasn't a legal infraction on the grounds of there being no other options for what to do.

I don't even understand the requests being made, let alone the rationale behind them. But my immediate impression, from reading through this topic post-merge, is that Gia voluntarily excluded himself from the TAS community, expressed violent outrage from being excluded (by himself) from the TAS community, and then threatened to leave the TAS community he didn't want to be a part of in the first place. What are his goals? It's hard to say. It feels like he wants everyone involved in the run banned, and their little dogs, too. And the run taken down from the site, given only a minor footnote that there was this unprovable record from some guy whose only reason he didn't submit himself because he, evidently, not only didn't care for the TAS community, but actively wanted to damage it. And so we're left with an impartial side of the story. And the only conclusion I can think of on why Gia won't release the truth about his side of the story is that, maybe, he thinks we'll somehow violate copyrights by using it to formulate discussions and decisions.

OK, now I've taken a shower, thought a lot about this and I'm much calmer now. I apologize for the incisive posts before, I'm extremely hot headed.

What? You were the one supposed to frame war it, I congratulate you on pulling it off like this though, never expected you try and even less to succeed,

I couldn't tell that was your intention, you just uploaded your run to youtube and told me you'd done it. I'm also not sure if I understand what you're saying, you were expecting me to improve it but didn't think I'd match it? I did try to improve it after I made this movie some months ago, I started debugging it to find out what actually happened, I had many ideas, but after testing them out they didn't work. Seriously, I'm burnt out by this game, I don't think I'd be able to do that run at this moment.

me not posting the vbm not was as a safeguard from you but from some random troll, but well it seems it also safeguarded me from you, if only for some months at least.

Well, Safeguard only lasts five turns First, about me submitting a run similar to yours: Do I think I did anything illegal or morally wrong by submitting this? No, I didn't look at your input or copied it, I just watched your video, tried some stuff in my computer, found out how it worked, debugged a little to get the meaning and did the input file. I think I'd be unethical if I submitted it few days after you posted it, in this case I doubt this submission would receive the same feedback that it got. I only submitted it this late because (1) I thought there was a remote possibility of you working to improve it (2) I didn't care really, I'd give this run a 5 on entertainment if I could rate it, I don't think it's a movie people would miss. Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the Yellow runs were my best work, I give this title to the pokédex run I coauthored with Mukki. Do I feel fine after submitting this? No, what motivated me to submit this was people requesting it, at first they wanted a vbm so I provided mine, then the community said it should be submitted, which I did. I do respect your position to not want a run using your strategy in this site, gia, but I take the desire of the community far higher into consideration, sorry. However, there can never be unanimity, and I'm sure that by doing this a considerable amount of people lost some respect for me, if they had any. Do I think this should be taken down? No, because I did nothing wrong with this submission, legally or ethically, in my ideal world you would submit your run, but you confirmed this won't happen several times and I see no need to hide it from the community. And don't keep vbm's private because of trolls, TASers are rare creatures, few people would bother to even download them, and trust me, 99% of youtube watchers don't even know what a TAS is. The only difference is that it'd be proof that your run was valid, and even with the vbm we still couldn't link to your video in the movies page because you didn't want it here. In the rare instances where people submitted the input of others claiming it was theirs, this was properly dealt with. Ironically, you posting the vbm would be a much better "safeguard" from me since it wouldn't be so clear that I didn't have it in possession.

If I were to publish an improvement to this you would have won, and that won't happen. After adelikat's response which given the course of this thread is to be another negative I am quitting this hobby altogether.

I'm not sure if you're gonna reply to this after adelikat's post, but anyway, the gia that first beat Yellow in 1:09.63 is a great TASer who received three awards and, seeing from the submission of the very first Yellow run published, a skilled programmer, probably with a much better formation in this area than me and he'll always have my full respect... as a TASer. I'd never expect this person to quit TASing because of an event like this, and I regret being involved in it. I politely say now that I disapprove of your initial attitude towards me and that this discussion was totally unnecessary. If you get offended by anything that I do, you can discuss it with me without needing to resort to higher powers and I'll gladly try to reach an agreement or defend my reasons for not changing my position. Right now a lot of people are against you because you've failed to state clearly what you want and seem to have nothing to back up your complaints despite some vaguely defined morality and your strong personal convictions. I really don't want this to continue because I don't think you deserve to be bashed. If this might help the person who decides what to do with this submission, this post states my position about it clear enough, I hope.

For what it's worth, I have to side with gia here, even if I am likely to be the only one. gia, you are not alone.

Then perhaps you could explain to me his position, because I don't understand it. It looks to me that he is having a tantrum because someone is using the same strategies has he did, as if he had some kind of right to them and could forbid others from doing the same things. (Well, that's the impression I get because he doesn't explain himself clearly.)

Menu navigation is patently trivial and not worthy of copyright.

All this talk about "copyright" is moot, if not a bit ridiculous. Unless you are a lawyer specialized on copyright laws, and hence you really know what you are talking about, I don't think discussing what might or might not be copyrightable is useless, if not even counterproductive. Copyright is really fuzzy, and varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In most of them for example things like food recipes, computer algorithms and chess or go game records (which parallel key input files) do not fall under copyright. Whether a key input file falls under copyright is, as far as I can tell, completely undecided because there's no official statement about it. (It would have to be either tested on court, in which case it would still be copyrighted in that one jurisdiction, not everywhere, or some kind of other official statement would be needed.) Hence discussing copyright issues with regards to them is rather moot. Methods for doing things are more clearly not copyrightable (which is why things like food recipes and computer algorithms aren't). In the US you could file a patent, but I think that even there that's no longer the case (AFAIK they changed it recently). You simply can't claim ownership of a computer game strategy and forbid others from replicating it. That's, as far as I know, pretty unambiguous. (Check, for example, this.)

Saethori I'm not sure those are the conclusions every person out of the loop will make out of this. But one pokemon yellow tas is not the only thing I have done with tasvideos. Not submitting improvements to it twice was the only such distance I made (there's another improvement I made that was beaten by p4wn3r a long time ago and I didn't make an outcry because it was fair game). I am more of a speedrunner than a taser though, but being a programmer in order to speedrun I like to check out the game code if possible, and tas capable emulators often come with debuggers so that saves me work, if I can't find what I need I have no problem coding it on my own and then releasing. Like I think I said I haven't done a lot but I have also coded some and released it here, if people use or don't use what I did is a different matter. I hope the movie generator wasn't removed from tasedit since it was pretty functional as far as i know (something else was removed I recall). Worked for me at least. I think people prefer to bot with lua though. I usually post my findings and strategies in tl;dr posts for tasers and speedrunners to use if they wish, again don't know and don't care about my success in that regard, my success may be zero for all I know. To whoever pointed it out. It may be cool that you offer me to have my record protected if I submit from now on. But you are offering me protection from yourselves. I feel bullied. I do not appreciate that. adelikat yes I would certainly accept one frame faster (or better) to beat the record as that is generally the rule, I would feel really stupid if such frame was a glaring menu mistake of mine but would accept it without problems just taking note to not be so careless next time, I've always had such mistakes, specially in math exams. And as I may have pointed out in the past (or not, no idea) enjoy to be beaten with something interesting, such thing has happened at least thrice that I recall. Asking to myself I do believe I have the record as of now because I got that frame count first and released it to the public, so I assume the answer is it would be the record that I own. That word implies legal ownership of some sort I believe. Legally, I've always assumed I did not own anything, this is an emulated game after all th eonly ones to own something are the game creators, and my lack of legal ownership has sort of been validated by everyone else's answers. While they may/not be lawyers, my knowledge on that area is zero so they have a good chance to know better than me. The word could be wrong, but I am not in a good position to argue word meanings, I am a mere C on english, and that is kind of outside the scope, but maybe I am reading too much between lines. Now, asking me to dissect my rationale, is it really necessary? Why should we rationalize this, you want my movie file I can mail it to you, want a 60fps video? sure, I should have the folder with the "project" it had the avisynth script, the butterfree animation files and my notepad notes. I would have given them to anyone had they requested them personally as a favor, just like I have mailed lots of things before. For some reason I recall shooting down someone's request but I think he was requesting a public release of the vbm. I don't see it as an input file, a record, a strategy or trick I see it as a run, perhaps that's because I am more used to SDA, you don't submit your button presses on a speedrun, you don't even have to submit the raw file, all you have to do is to show a video and your comments, which is what I did here. I still believe that is enough for this, if I had tased let's say metroid without glitches I suppose I would have released the input file, if only because the game must be more complex and definitely longer, here it was just some keypresses visible in real time or a couple replays, and the ones that you couldn't see were much better explained in text since they were luck manipulation mostly. I had decided not to submit to tasvideos but at the same time knew members of it would want to have it. Then there's two big problems with posting the vbm: 1. I publish on youtube and provide a movie file. Then someone else submits for me to tasvideos and the movie gets published. I have already pointed I did not want it submitted for me. Much worse if the movie was submitted for themselves with the claim that they had came up with it on their own and never saw my video, in this regard I wasn't expecting p4wn3r (just to leave that clear) but some random person. On the first case I wasn't sure of the outcome because I have lurked other incidents in the past, so rather not make it easier for you. In the second case I was expecting to win in the end but didn't want to fight in the first place. 2. What I did: To prevent 1 I do not publish the vbm. Now the main argument of most is that my record doesn't exist because I didn't provide a vbm, which is technically correct per your site rules, I laugh at that, because even if I attached the vbm to my post right now the next claim would be that I possibly forged it, which again is technically correct, and those would surely be followed with more buts. By not giving the vbm I expected p4wn3r to have some fun reverse engineering the run as well, that also provided me the best peer review possible, if while reverse engineering something clicked on his mind and beat my run with something clever it would have been great. He messaged me shortly after asking me if my run was 4178 to which I assumed he had been successful at it, then waited for the improvement, although thinking about it he could have just calculated from the timing I provided. In the other cases, longer/equal movie, I wouldn't have made an outcry, just pointed out my run was faster on the thread so that the judge didn't publish it because there was a better record out there, which now I think of it may be possibly wrong because your rules aren't like that yari yara, I assume too much as you may notice. Last time I didn't do so because I was beaten, I didn't post at all I believe because then I would have had needed to include a link to my video which used the same strategy (with mistakes so ended slower) and I didn't want to take away from his record. In the case someone with an equal time claimed they came up with it on their own without seeing my video, and assuming I believed them, which would have been hard, I would have offered coauthorship and submitted to tasvideos if he so wished. But now it was already accepted and the run had not added anything at all and while there was a chance the judge had not noticed it was likely he did so I got very angry. I still had to post so there went my first post on which I noted my state and apologized had it been my mistake and went to sleep so I could calm down and it was the very late anyway. And now I realize this is a wall of text... I hope you know how I think so please just give me my answer. EDIT: actually before you point out, on the case of equal by copying before the judge decision my text is wrong that would only fit longer, I would point out its copied and request the judge cancel the submission. Copying and reverse engineering basically everything besides inputs that do not affect the run are the same to me.

I can't figure out if you are complaining or apologizing. Could you please clarify?

Saethori I'm not sure those are the conclusions every person out of the loop will make out of this.

Unfortunately for me, I'm not every person. My autism has made it somewhat... difficult to both interpret things and restate what it is I understood out of it, and so I tried to be as careful as possible to state that these were simply my thoughts on the confusing matter. I apologize if I said something that was negative, I attempt to avoid using such terms or phrasings but aren't always successful.

EDIT: actually before you point out, on the case of equal by copying before the judge decision my text is wrong that would only fit longer, I would point out its copied and request the judge cancel the submission. Copying and reverse engineering basically everything besides inputs that do not affect the run are the same to me.

Copied? He didn't stole your vbm. He only analyze your youtube video. Is that against the law? To use a strategy found from a video? I seriously don't get why you want p4wn3r's moive canceled. He used "your" strategy. So what? It's a TAS! Once an optimal strategy is found, it'll be used! If you don't want competition, don't submit your "awesome, orignal" video on the web then, especially on a popular site like Youtube..

EDIT: actually before you point out, on the case of equal by copying before the judge decision my text is wrong that would only fit longer, I would point out its copied and request the judge cancel the submission. Copying and reverse engineering basically everything besides inputs that do not affect the run are the same to me.

When will you get into your thick skull that you can't own a method of playing a game? Not by any law, nor even by common practice. If someone comes up, for example, with a new trick in a game to save time, he doesn't own that trick, nor can be forbid others using it. If he publishes the trick, it's fair game for anybody to use. It doesn't matter how closely others replicate the trick.

I had decided not to submit to tasvideos but at the same time knew members of it would want to have it. Then there's two big problems with posting the vbm: 1. I publish on youtube and provide a movie file. Then someone else submits for me to tasvideos and the movie gets published.

This is where you're completely wrong. If you had posted your movie file, p4wn3r wouldn't have needed/wanted to reproduce the input and the TAS would have been considered your work only (especially because p4wn3r wouldn't have made his own copy).

I think what he is saying is that he feared that if he released the vbm on some other location then someone who isn't he would have submitted it here. But obviously that isn't what happened, point is moot.

gia: You do realize if you had posted the vbm publicly, and then some third person submits it here, you can easily show that you made it, right? It's much easier to believe a person who had a history of TASes in the same game than some new person.

This welcomes another question: what if someone publicly displays a movie file outside of the site, someone uses the same method (But different input), and submits a run of the same movie length? Do we reject the submitted run? Do external records have any influence on the acceptance of a run? As long as the input isn't copied exactly, then why should they? I'm wondering if the fact that input wasn't provided in this case really matters in the grand scheme of things.

I don't see it as an input file, a record, a strategy or trick I see it as a run, perhaps that's because I am more used to SDA, you don't submit your button presses on a speedrun, you don't even have to submit the raw file, all you have to do is to show a video and your comments, which is what I did here.

In essence, you believe we should operate more like SDA, by accepting raw video, youtube clips, shaky video camera images and the like? I'm sorry, we already have enough people screaming "FAKE" with our current way, and this entire site would lose credibility if we were to deviate from validating our runs through an input file. If you want to continue to claim that you came up with the strategy first, it appears you have that right to. But you did not satisfy the burden of proof that this site requires, and instead decided that your 30 hz youtube video of your accomplishment should be enough. As a site, we disagree, and that is why your run isn't official here. You've made your bed, you get to lie in it now.

The whole idea that if someone takes someone else's keypress file and submits it here verbatim without the author's permission (regardless of whether the submitter claims he made it himself or fully admits it's not his) we automatically reject it on grounds of ownership (and shaky arguments of copyright) is, IMO, a bit dubious. Granted, it's common courtesy to not publish something verbatim without an author's consent. However, this kind of rule can open a can of worms. For instance, what happens if the person who submits the keypress file makes some modifications to it? Can it then be considered acceptable to publish? How many modifications are needed for it to be acceptable? (Certainly if he modifies just the last frame of the file and nothing else, it's not "enough", but if he modifies 50% of it, it probably will be considered acceptable. Where is the line?) As I commented earlier, claiming copyright on a keypress file is dubious at best. You can claim copyright, but that doesn't mean it necessarily has any legal weight (in the same way as you could claim copyright on a chess game record or food recipe, which would mean squat in most jurisdictions).