While anybody can start their own archive, they’d have to go back to each individual author and get a license from them to distribute their work on the new archive. Simply forking the IF Archive’s contents is not permitted:
You hereby waive any moral rights you may have in your User Submissions and grant each user of the IFTF Services a non-exclusive license to access and archive, but not to distribute, your User Submissions through the IFTF services.
I completely agree—but if the perceived concern that IFTF might commercially exploit a submission is stopping some authors from archiving their work, I don’t see the harm in carving out commercial use from the IFTF’s license.
I agree. Seems like something relatively easy to address, even if IFTF might need some time to make it happen (assuming, of course, that they agree, I don’t speak for them). Having it explicitly spelled out that a platform will not sell your submissions or sell access to them might help alleviate concerns.
It’s why I suggested that JKJ submit their concerns. I was not being pedantic; I meant it.
Has anyone said this is bad or difficult? Have you messaged the IFTF about this yet? Has anyone? This might literally be a new idea that just got brought up, and there is a delay in effecting it, and nobody is saying you’re wrong. It just cannot happen yesterday, yeah?
If I were to make a suggestion, it’d be more integration with the Comps. If various folks entering a comp were prompted with an optional offer to archive their entry on their behalf, along with a link with something like “what is the IF Archive?”, that would probably do quite a bit right there.
If it’s an evil lawyer, he could suggest selling some games before making the change to pay the fee
The license is something we can argue for hours. But ultimately, if any of you don’t trust the IFTF to not sell your games, I guess don’t upload anything to it ? (And don’t make me believe some legal linguo on a webpage will immediately change your mind, that’s obvious bs.)
The mission of the IFTF is to provide technical means and operations to preserve IF history. If you don’t want your work to be archived for you, then good for you, they won’t. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Also you won’t get a review from mathbrush.
Is there a “canon” path ?
Like, is there a risk that by bulk uploading games a tool could duplicate a game in the storage ? (Say I upload my work under my name, then submit it some time later to a comp, the organizer may reupload my game a second time at another “path” ?
IIRC the last upload in one same path will overwrite the previous one?
I’ve updated the Archived version of one of my games mmultiple times, but it only appears once there.
Probably not…? @zarf would know more than I do about this, but it doesn’t seem to be a thing of a file having like a profile or identifier. It’s just a file that’s located somewhere on the archive.
There’s a very real chance that @mathbrush will upload the previous version of I Am Prey (which has a soft-lock bug) because that’s what I sent to SpringThing 2023, but I have had the fixed version on the archive for a while now, and my IFDB page connects to that one. But the SpringThing version will still be on the archive and be just as valid as the one I submitted.
Again, as I understand it so far. This is assuming the game being in two different folders because of two different uploads.
Again, I think it’s a fine idea, but the only drafting difficulty is that you’d need to do it in such a way to ensure the change doesn’t create a negative inference that commercial exploitation of material uploaded under the earlier version of the license was allowed. All solvable, but it does add a little complexity, plus any change to the Terms will cost money to ensure the new language is legally appropriate and doesn’t create cascading inconsistencies with other portions of the terms; I’d guess this would run at least a couple hundred to a thousand bucks, which if you look at the IFTF transparency reports would be a not-insignificant expenditure of resources.
And of course once you open up the terms, there’s a possibility folks will think of other changes they might want to make, and/or people will feel unsettled because if the terms can be changed once, they can be changed again. So there are certain costs associated with making any change.
Anyway, like I said I think it’s a fine idea in principle, but it might also be something they’d want to consolidate with any other planned updates to the Terms, or otherwise hold off on until they have other legal work being done.
Here are my two:
Some kind of integration with IFDB, so as you’re editing a page there there’s as close to a one-click process to put something on the Archive (since I think IFDB is way more public-facing and easy to use).
A clear way for additional volunteers to help cut down the processing times, or maybe even an alternate process that doesn’t rely on personal decision-making to allow stuff to post, since that delay is a major pain point (currently, my experience of getting my game posted is that I load it into the Archive, it goes in the temporary uploads directory, I put a link to that on the IFDB page, then a week or so later I get an email telling me the file’s been accepted, so I have to go back and edit what’s now a dead link of the IFDB page to point to the new, final place).
This is already the case, isn’t it?
When you edit a page, you have a Upload to the IFArchive button, which sends you to a submission form. When submitted, the submission is linked on the IFDB page (pending processing)
Oh you’re right! It’s been a couple years since I last had to do this, which I think was before they added this feature, but at first blush it seems like exactly I was thinking!
Hypothetically, if the personal decision-making is necessary, could it be done after the fact? Like a YouTube copyright strike? Your upload goes up and clears with a final link, but a week later you receive an email saying “nope” and the link no longer works. Otherwise, you receive nothing at all and the link just stays active.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking – personal decision-making is a good idea, but having it be a hurdle to initial posting might not be. I’m stating that tentatively though since I don’t know what the risks are; are there waves of spam or bots trying to temporarily host illegal materials or things like that which affordably-available automated tools can’t weed out? I dunno, but if that’s the case it could just be a need for more volunteers (as far as I can tell from the about page and my experience, it’s just @DavidK doing yoeman’s work – God bless, this is definitely not a kick against the folks doing the labor!)
IFDB has a feature for that, too. If you submit a link to ifarchive.org and check the “Pending” checkbox, IFDB will keep the link hidden, and then automatically reveal it when the link goes live.
The “pending” checkbox for an external link tells IFDB that the file isn’t available for download yet, but will be soon. If you check this box, IFDB will do two things:
Hide the link on the game’s home page, so that users viewing the page won’t be confused by a broken link error.
Check the URL periodically to see if it’s working yet, and remove the “pending” flag as soon as the link works.
This option is especially useful with the IF Archive, because files uploaded to the Archive are not available for download until they’re reviewed by administrators. This process usually takes a few days. You could just wait to add the download link until the file appears on the Archive, but the “pending” option saves you that extra editing step. Just check the box, and IFDB will monitor the Archive for you, updating the link as soon as it’s working.
