If Horizon Had A $1 Monthly Fee

I think it would be more fair to compare if would you have an actionable argument if youtube just scrapped all tiktok content and uploaded it as a youtube short, copying the function does not copy the content.

They absolutely are not using SE's art inside the LSB. The LSB is 100% original work and therefor not subject to copyright claims.

It's only in your mind that you are making the mental connection of "Colibri" and "LSB / Horizon", no such connection actually exists. Servers do not use client resources, there are no dats, no textures, the only "Art" is the compiled code itself.

You want to see what's inside the LSB, look here.

https://github.com/LandSandBoat/server

MMO servers are what's called "Persistent Worlds", game worlds that have a state that persists even after the players have left. In single player or local coop games, the world state is loaded when the game starts, and then unloaded when it ends. PW's keep the world state active the entire time regardless.

The LSB is just the code base to enable someone to create a PW that is compatible with the FFXI Client. Servers like Horizon take the LSB and use it to create the infrastructure required to support a PW. The biggest piece being the database servers that hold that state. That's right, "Private Servers" are really just database servers with a client facing front end emulator that holds and processes "now".

You are trying to argue that Horizon's database server is stealing Colibri and Mithra art from SE. That is the most ridiculous and ill informed argument one can make. This is the reason that no company has ever gone after the opensource software entities that make emulators like LSB. The artforms are so radically different, it would be akin to arguing someone's song is stealing your picture.

no, i'm saying that simply by displaying and calling a Colibri or Mithra by the names they are known as in FFXI, that's the violation if they profit from it.

I am curious that if private servers don't use any of SE's art, where do the mobs, NPCs, and storylines come from? Is Shantotto not called Shantotto when displayed? Is there no Shadow Lord storyline in the nation quests? No Zilart? Does background music play?

I don't care if they "don't steal"- they are using them, and once money gets involved in that, there are problems.

If I had released a plushy kraken club on Etsy called "FFXI Kraken Club Plushy" and sold it, even if I had completely designed it off of personal memory, it would be a problem. If I instead call it "spikey MMO Club", I'm probably fine.

Neither the LSB nor Horizon is displaying any such thing. Server side is just a text console, or if they are suave some sort of C# admin gui.

I think you are really confused on what is kept server side and what is kept client side. I gave you the repo you can go look through and see the ID values, the server doesn't actually reference anything by a name and instead use's an ID. It doesn't say "Shantoto" in the packed binary message but something like "NPC ID 17093448"

Creation and distribution are different things. The LSB does not have art assets made by SE in it.

That does not change the fact that no one other than SE can distribute copies of the XI retail client, which is required to be used to connect to private servers.

If XI is shutdown tomorrow and this distribution stops, how are all these people getting copies of the retail client to play on private servers? Legally?

To be fair "giving someone a repo" if the someone is a normal human is like giving someone a text book in a foreign language and expecting them to get the point you derived from it.

If the someone is not code literate or even a SME in that specific niche topic, it doesnt matter that you threw a book at them, they still won't get your point

It doesn't matter where a file is kept, this is what I keep harping on. That file isn't what's protected, its the image and content within that file. Whether that idea was put client side, server side, or on a bookshelf in Fujito's office doesn't matter. Its the improper use of copyrighted intellectual property. NOT the code, NOT the location of the file, THE IDEA.

And as I've said several times now and Wiccan mentioned, distributing the retail client would likely be a violation of SE's license and trigger a copyright claim. This is why PW's are encouraged to not distribute the original client, unless the game is abandoned.

Which is going to your second claim, if SE shut down the FFXI servers and declared they would cease operation, then it could be stated they have abandoned the FFXI Client. When that happens, third parties are allowed to jump in and redistribute it themselves.


I present the ultimate example of this happening.

Earth and Beyond Emulator
https://www.net-7.org

And for those who are like "WTF is that"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_%26_Beyond

Earth and Beyond was a space MMO that is owned by EA, yeah that EA. EA shut it down September 2004.; EA still owns the license to this IP, it's very much still EA's property. When one goes to download the client we get this message.


Horizon and other Private Servers (not the LSB) would have to do something similar. Get someone else to host the links, then reference those links as a community service and loudly declare they are owned by SE.

This is how you have to handle abandonware when it's IP owner is still in business.

That was the point, the people here arguing are not literate in the subject they are arguing about and are unable to create informed opinions on the matter. I've been laying out the breadcrumbs showing that these people are essentially the peanut gallery.

All you've done is claim you know better and throw things out there, some of which is verifiably incorrect.

OTOH, atom0s at least cited references and proved his points using actual data and case information.

That's why people aren't taking you seriously. Waving your hands around going "I know this" is different than backing it up with actual information that can be verified. Most people here are reasonable enough to learn and discuss things like adults, but calling things you don't want to or can't reinforce gibberish/noise/whatever and insulting people doesn't prove your point.

No, code is art. And nothing inside the LSB or Horizon uses SE's art. Legally the discussion ends there.

What you are arguing for is insane. It's guilt by referenced association. You draw a picture, I see the picture and write a song. You sue me for using your picture in my song.

As demonstrated you lack the knowledge of IT and software to properly understand the artform. We've explained it, in detail, how the artforms are different, you refuse to accept that explanation and insist that you can copyright and idea (you can't).

Uh huh, sure Mr "it's not am emulator!!!!"

While the creators of the code plainly state "it's an emulator"

When did calling a project something make it that thing? Can I just post whatever I want and claim it's an emulator then immediately be entitled to legal protection?

People in court argue over definitions CONSTANTLY, so unless you can establish the actual legal definition of what constitutes an emulator, we can argue till we are blue in the face and it won't matter.

See peanut gallery.

To everyone else, as I said in the beginning, the courts in the US treat software as Art (copyright / trademarks) and Machinery (patents).

The code and assets themselves are art and trademarks. The protocols, methods and formulas are machinery. To have a successful copyright claim you need to demonstrate that the offender stole and reused your code and assets. To have a successful patent claim you need to demonstrate that the offender is using your patented protocols, methods and formulas.

The LSB is written in an entirely different language then SE's FFXI retail, and thus it's impossible for them to have stole or reused SE's copyrighted code. The assets and trademarks are stored inside the retail FFXI client which is distributed by SE themselves, and thus it's impossible for them to have stolen or reused that either. There could be a license claim, but that would be against the users not the private server and definitely not against the creators of the codebase.

As Wiccan already discussed, FFXI is using common protocols for it's Client - Server communication, there is no patent claim there. Internally the various PS's are using commercial off the self (COTS) databases that all use standardized protocols between the various components, so no patent theft there either. The last thing we are left with is if SE patented the various formulas, and there is no patent application for them (it would make reverse engineering 100x easier). And since both systems use entirely different languages, the formulas used by the LSB are just approximations and not the actual formula SE is using.

For those wondering, the FFXI server is almost certainly written in some form of assembly language. Every fraction being based on 1024 is a dead giveaway, because in assembly you can do mathematical tricks to avoid an expensive division operation but only if there are no fractions to deal with. Making everything a value of /1024 ensures we can represent all the math without using decimal places. It's a trick that old ASM programmers did back in the day to save CPU cycles.

Go ahead and sell subscriptions to private servers using retail XI client, let's see how long that lasts.

That happened already.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!


Bleem required you to get a copyrighted piece of software art, namely the Sony PSX Bios in order to operate. Sony sued them but lost, Bleem actually posted pictures from Sony products and won on appeal as it was considered comparative advertising. Sony never won any of it's legal battles, but the defense costs to Bleem were so much that they couldn't focus on making a product better then the opensource projects of ePSXe and PCSX, so they eventually folded.

Private servers are not in a competitive market with SE. SE provide a service. Private servers provide a method to use SE assets without that service.

Go ahead, make money off it.

Already provided a link to an exact situation where a company used emulation to make a direct competitor to an existing company. That company sued and lost using the same arguments presented here.

That's about as direct a comparison of your statement as possible. But lets be real, this is the internet, nothing is going to change your mind and make you lose face. Instead it's really about showing others observing.

As Wiccan already provided the legal links, the only time anyone's ever won in these cases is when the offender is directly using art assets on a website. That's pretty much textbook copyright violation.

This is a bad comparsion.....Bleem doesn't use released games/IP to generate money/exposure/traffic, FFXI private server does.

Just because Bleem won, it does not mean the same result can be applied to Private server case since they are fundementally so different in terms of every party involved.

That doesn't mean it's written in asm, writing a server like this in assembly would be an astronomical task with no benefit even in the late 90s when they started it.

Most modern compilers will optimize out division operations in favor of other arithmetic (multiplication, shifts, etc) automatically if certain conditions are met. I don't know how far back this goes but I know at least 15 years ago several compilers were doing this, the need to do this manually hasn't been needed for a while unless you were writing asm directly.

Aligning data structures to 1024-byte boundaries could do a lot of things aside from this, including ease of packet handling or file data handling. If you are receiving a packet buffer, it's a lot safer and faster to receive data in known aligned boundaries than it is to calculate differences in remaining data sizes. You also simplify memory allocation if you are using your own allocator, which the server possibly is, although 1024 seems a bit larger (admittedly I don't know much about the parsing the client or server does). The downside is the need to pad smaller structures, which is a little surprising for a game this old, but shouldn't cause sizing problems too much. (All this assuming that's the 1024 alignment you were referring to, again I'm not familiar with the protocols/file structures/etc).

Oh but they did do it back in the late 90's. Especially with consoles, which is the majority of SE's experience. ASM was my first language, those mathematical tricks are not used by HLL compilers because the compiler can not guess that is what you are really doing. ASM lets you do some pretty crazy tricks for performance, but if something is broke its mega hard to find. Why do you think all those early console games had weird bugs in them (FFVI SNES evasion stat being meaningless).

This is from an era before all you C# / Python / DotNet developers.

Comparing private servers to emulators of PSX, a hardware product for which other companies write games for, is hardly a "direct comparison".

oh, I'm aware early console games were written in assembly, still blows my mind when I see it published.

Compilers can pretty easily resolve most division instructions against a hardcoded value, if there really is alignment to a 1024 boundary then that would be something a compiler could resolve, I've seen in many times. If it's specified outside the code, then yea, you are correct. It can't optimize arithmetic for values it doesn't know.

I still don't think there's much benefit here to justify writing an entire server in assembly, maybe certain stubs, but not the whole thing even in the late 90s. There's just no need for it.


Couldn't get by without taking a jab, could you? I've been writing asm (mainly x86, x64, and now ARM, a bit of PIC and MIPS) for about 20 years now (admittedly as part of C code or RE efforts more than anything, but I'm not unfamiliar with writing machine code and I largely despise todays interpreted languages), nice try though!

That would be more happier but it's 2023 and nobody is going to universities to learn how to make a PS2 game. Just as long as Fujito-PD and "used to be producer" Matsui are still alive to work on the current game. SE just can't find anybody who know how, that's why they created FFXIV whether you like it or not it's there. I am in a FC with FFXI vets who are happy with that and aren't looking forward to go back to the old game.

Modern compilers, especially with modern CPU's. Late 90's early 2000's are a different story. The issue here is the compiler needs to know that you don't care about the remainders when doing a division operation or extra decimal places with multiplication. Bit shifting also becomes easier. Like I said lots of cool stuff to save CPU cycles which was important back then. Same reason we have segmented memory addressing modes, and combined operands. Nowadays that's not really necessary, yeah it might make things faster but most devs are more concerned with things working and implementing features instead of optimizing for limited resources.

I'll give you that they might of used C back then, because C allows you to imbed and reference ASM functions directly in code.

Like with FFXI, notice how everything is "floored" after every single operation? I don't think they actually called a floor() function, instead the binary math doesn't have a decimal place and just drops everything that would of gone there.

That's fair. I wouldn't have had as much exposure to compiler output until the mid 2000s and I know optimization improved a lot in that time period, I can't say I recall seeing much of that sort of optimization in the few binaries I looked at that were compiled in the 90s. I think everything was awful then, but my experience on things then is more limited.

On the optimization side, I also agree. It drives me up the wall, even a lot of modern embedded developers have gotten really sloppy. I have to pick my battles but it bugs the hell out of me seeing the way people write C code now, even in performance sensitive situations the lack of awareness about how to optimize certain operations for space/cycles is really astonishing and the way they write the code just makes my head hurt. The biggest clusterfuck I ever saw was a project written in C by interns who learned C on the job and learned Visual Basic in school. It was so bad, not just from an optimization perspective, but in every way possible. It "worked"...at least until it got something unexpected.

I started learning ASM on the Intel 803086 in the early 90's and would write in edit.com and compile with nasm on a DOS 6 system. I was in highschool and got my hands on a book titled "Assembly Programming for the Intel 80386".

I got very familiar with interrupt vector tables and how the CPU actually views the world, something most HLL programmers never think about.

Nowadays Agner does a great job of publishing optimization guides.

https://www.agner.org/optimize/

It's sad that modern Windows no longer include the debug command.

I am pretty sure when the term "idea" was used by Cele, they don't meant some vague concept in a game dev's head. Of course you can't copyright something in someone's head.

However, if that game dev turn their idea into dialogue text, character designs, music, world building text etc, those 100% are copyright protected in the US according to wiki. Those are actual output of a person.

Source: IP protection of video games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_video_games

I think those copyrightable outputs are what Cele meant when they used the term "idea".


Now imagine a comic book artist published their comic on their website, the book is free to download but after 16 pages the ebook will charge $12 if the reader wants to read more content.

Then Jack took the comic book, offered it on his website for free AND he removed the 16 page pay gate limitation, then argued that this is legal because the comic book is free to download on the artist's website to begin with, and anyone can access the whole book without paying if they reverse engineer the content.

After that Jack argued that he changed 5% of the book content so this new comic book is no longer the same book, this book is his creation now. Therefore it is legal.

Now change the comic book in the above example and replace it with ffxi client. That is exactly what was going on here.

I was amazed at the fact that people try to argue, with 100% confidence, that this is legal. Because I just don't see it, personally. (Feel free to prove me wrong though)

Film maker made a shitty movie and lost $millions after bad reviews.

You illegally downloaded that shitty movie for free.

Film maker caught your ip address.

Your ISP only gave the film maker your phone number due to its privacy policy.

Film maker is trying to call you.

Are you going to answer the call?

I don't see how SE would do anything.

I was watching a HorizonXI streamer channel (LevelSync Radio), and the amount of mental gymnastics the guy was jumping through should have gotten the guy a gold medal in the Olympics, when I said that he and the Horizon team were pirating the game.

The same game that's playable today for a fee from SE. With art assets, reverse engineering, quests and text, characters, items, mechanics, EVERYTHING. They're basically pirating an MMO, it doesn't matter if they've changed it to be closer to what it was back in the 75 era, and made some other changes unique to it.
They're pirating FF11. I wasn't even showing any anger or anything. But geez, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.