What I see now is that WST is pissed by Mr_Sweed/DMTM's actions. What's so disturbing about them, he just asked for credits? I know from members of the Sonic TAS community that it's just the way he acts, claiming authorship on everything, pissing off people, doing absurd stuff. I experienced it as well when I tried to teach him how to encode.
Now let's get back to the co-authorship issue for a while.
- If a person actively participates in the process of TAS creation, he is a co-author.
- If a person contributed some notable portions to the run, he is a co-author.
- If a person was considered by the author as a major contributor to the project, he may be added as a co-author per real author's will.
#3983: MESHUGGAH, feos's NES Battletoads "Glitched" in 00:56.76
#3825: STBM & iongravirei's GC Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg "All Levels" in 2:38:33.47
- If a person has made a run that was partially used to make the new one by someone, the previous author is credited per real author's will.
[1656] Genesis Sonic 3 & Knuckles by nitsuja, upthorn & marzojr in 29:51.20
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14440
- If someone's artistic decisions were directly copypasted, the author of the original input deserves a credit (this is still case by case).
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13699
- There's no copyright on a trick
- There's no copyright on a glitch
- There's no copyright on a strategy
- There's no copyright on the fastest known input.
The last item deserves details. If there's only a certain macro that can proceed the fastest way, no one owns this input. It's just considered optimal, and anyone is free to use it. However, if the gameplay allowed various kinds of moving around during that section, all being equally fast, if someone's "style of moving around" was copypasted, it will deserve a credit (as said above).
I'd also add about framewars and other group improvements. If a user submits a movie, it is then common in terms of reusing tricks and starts, so if someone improves a bit and also submits it, the original author does not need a credit. This way there may be (say) 5+ submissions with nearly similar input, all having different authors, and no one demanding his authorship on the tricks used in all those runs. On the other hand, if several authors improve each other before submitting the result, they all deserve credits:
[2406] NES Kirby's Adventure "game end glitch" by MESHUGGAH, CoolKirby, Masterjun, MUGG, TASeditor & illayaya in 00:35.91
[2062] N64 Super Mario 64 "70 stars, no Backwards Long Jump" by Jesus, Kyman, MICKEY_Vis11189, MoltovM, Nahoc, snark, sonicpacker, ToT, CeeSammerZ, coin2884, Eru, Goronem, Mokkori, Nekuran, Nothing693 & pasta in 42:58.52
As we can see, as long as DMTM's input was not improved, and was considered optimal, if it was copied, it does not mean he is a co-author. It's just the fastest path. If his input contained some important playaround features that were copypasted, he can arguably be considered a co-author.
Now to personal stuff again. The way DMTM/Mr_sweed acted was 100% unethical. What's worse is what his actions resulted into: a great TAS made by others (first submission, hype) gets cancelled just due to being upset. And yes, that's just the way DMTM acts all the time.
There existed the Xkeeper's issue where he was pissing people off here and there. He got banned because it's not what TASers and staff need to deal with to see him contributing. DMTM's contributions are nothing comparing to what Xkeeper contributed to emulation community overall. And now we see a great TAS cancelled because of him.
I say: WST, please get it back to the bench, and leave the original (2) authors only. And if DMTM does something like that once more, he must be banned.
