Let me put things another way.
The problem as I see it is that any mod without a clear licence could be being misused. Without a clear licence we have no idea in what capacity the original creator of the asset wanted it used. People have pointed out that there are a large number of issues with assigning any kind of default licence for mods on HLP and for the most part I tend to agree with them. Assigning any kind of default licence ignores the wishes of the content creator and
we're doing it all the time! 1) First, let's not get too comfortable on our high horses here. We're all on a website whose existence is based on a very loose reading of licensing and copyright laws. Have we got a licence which allows for the modification of stuff from FS1 or FS2? Or anything from the B5 or BSG universes? No we haven't. Maybe a few bits and pieces here and there, but the entire website would be dead if we had waited for everything we've modified. I once read a quite thought provoking book on media franchising which contained an interesting section on mods based on TV shows.
Despite both mods rejecting corporate proprietary control of cultural resources, they paradoxically insisted upon maintaining ownership and creative monopoly over their own production resources. Thus, a de facto system of authorship, ownership, and licensing emerged to limit open collaboration in the produsage networks of [Redacted name of a TV show] games, where single owners could govern the use of discrete 3D models, textures, and music.
So yes, pretty much every single piece of content on this forum (with the exception of things like Wings of Dawn) is entirely based on completely ignoring licensing. It's quite interesting that people would be livid if someone alters a forum members high-poly Sathanas without permission or credit but no one gives a stuff about altering the original Volition one.
But okay, lets pretend that licensing doesn't apply to big name corporations cause, you know, **** those guys.
2) We're pretty much doing the same thing within the community too. Very little has been released with any kind of proper licence. A hell of a lot of stuff comes from posts where all the creator said was "here's a link to the stuff I made" with no actual instructions on whether it could be modified or used. If we're lucky we get a "Use it however you want." but fairly often even that is missing. We still use that stuff though.
I'm sure at least a few high poly models and alterations of existing models also fall under this category - they were made to improve the quality of a mod in an existing campaign but I doubt we can say that the original creator of the asset was asked in every single case. I suspect fairly often if the original creator doesn't respond to emails, etc, people have just gone ahead and made the alterations and simply credited the original creator. Which basically is the same as assigning the asset a licence which allows modification.
Similarly we have situations where people use assets from big mods like Blue Planet, etc without checking back down the chain to see what licence Blue Planet got them under. The assumption is that "If they can use it, I can."
3) Why is this important? Well I can be fairly confident in saying I know the licence for at least 99% of the released or in development content of Diaspora. Even so there's still the chance I've missed something. I'm sure quite a few other hosted mods can't even say that. Which makes it much harder for them to come up for a licence for their releases without basically doing the same kind of relicensing that people have complained about. In fact I do have to wonder how many mods which have released under a "Use anything you want from our mod, but just give credit" have already done that.
4) I find the vehement opposition to formalising the current
status quo quite amusing. Especially given the attitudes when it came to
Droid's hypothetical situation. While most people were against screwing over someone who is an active member on HLP (quite rightly), I suspect the numbers would have been completely different had Droid been talking about an asset created by someone who has been gone for years. To be honest, I suspect if I hadn't posted this thread and simply updated the TOS very little would have changed. The people who ask about every single mod they use would still continue to do so regardless of any default position. The people who don't bother to check would continue to do so and have it all blow up in their face later on. And despite any licence, social pressure would be what decided the matter in the end.
Anyway, I'm not really arguing in favour of a default licence in this post, I just wanted to put a different spin on things.