The Death of Tau Online and a Rebirth

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Thor

If you happen to visit Tau Online you’ll notice that a bomb has landed there. For those who did not know, I’m a moderator (was), at TO. About a year ago the site was sold off to someone called skylight. For the most part things ran smoothly under the new ownership. Recently, skylight implemented running ads on the site. Nobody had a real issue with it but some of the ads became invasive and a real annoyance and thus the community spoke up.

Fast forward a little, we (the moderators and admins), asked skylight to purchase TO from him. We wanted to give the site back to the community where it belonged. Skylight was willing to sell but not at a reasonable price, far from reasonable. More email exchanges took place and I sign on today at TO to find my moderator abilities removed, as well as all moderators. Skylight has decided to remove the moderation team from TO and rebuild it, so be it.

During all this we had been discussing possible outcomes of recent events and we were prepared. The team of Tau Online has packed up and we’ve moved to Second Sphere. Members of TO are spreading the word at the site to let everyone know. Second Sphere is in a holding pattern at the moment but a full backup from TO will be restored there and all the forum posts and content restored with it. This restore process will take a few days but once done it will be just like it used to be, minus the ads and greedy ownership.

So, I’m getting the word out there. Tau Online is now dead. The current owner is not interested in any GW product and purchased the site as a financial investment. His rebuilding of the moderation team will surely prove interesting but it will all be for naught as any active member of the site has, or will have, moved over to Second Sphere with the team that ran TO.

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About Thor

Programmer by trade and miniature hobbyist by night.
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  • http://bloodofkittens.com/2010/07/02/40k-douche-bag-tau-online-ownership/ 40k Douche Bag: Tau Online Ownership | Blood of Kittens

    [...] from Thor a mod from Tau Online and regular here on Blood of Kittens taken from this blog post. If you happen to visit Tau Online you’ll notice that a bomb has landed there. For those who did [...]

  • http://www.heresy-online.net Jezlad

    Are you seriously considering duplicating a database you don't own?

    The law will be on you faster than flies to a cow crap mate. One email to your host and they'll pull the hosting from beneath you.

    You simply can't duplicate a database you don't own, every word in that file belongs to the owner of the server it was stolen from… ie – Skylight (sorry to say it).

  • Colonel Marksman

    I don't think he (Skylight) owns the database, just the url name. The individual posts (like my articles that I've written) belong to the community. In turn, none of us actually own GW IP either. I doubt posting a picture of a model I own on any particular site gives the owner of that site ownership of that picture. Did I get that right?

  • Tylermenz

    this is what the legal on the site says.

    “All pages, content, forum posts and other media on Tau Online are copyrighted to Tau Online and their corresponding authors in so far as this does not conflict with any existing trademarks, copyrights, intellectual property and/or patents.”

    meaning that individuals still have copyright to thier work, but not anyone elses.

    then there is this

    “Copying, reproducing or duplicating any parts of this website is not allowed without express permission from Tau Online. If you wish to use any of our content, please e-mail ftyross@tauonline.org for permission. This copyright notice isn’t against fair use; we only ask that you quote no more than two, 7 line paragraphs, and that you give credit to this website and its author for its use. If you wish to quote anything more, please get permission to do so from the above e-mail address.”

    which would mean taking the database and posting it will probably get you into legal trouble.

    My theory would be that you will need to get individual users permission to re-post stuff, and therefore cannot just re-post the whole database.

    On another note, why not just join with Advanced Tau Tactica instead of creating a whole new forum. I know that many users from Tau online are already there.

  • The Strange Child

    As CM says, Skylight doesn't own it. He owns the domain, the forum, but the code is FT's, the content is the members', the IP is GW's.

  • KDXQ

    http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OJJUf_V0nSwC&pg=SA5-PA21&lpg=SA5-PA21&dq=online+database+ownership+laws&source=bl&ots=cgxYy2nZcf&sig=hZJ6DEBC_eSvfJL05K7ht66cwwQ&hl=en&ei=QUExTIiOOab-0gTYieDdAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Database ownership laws in the EU, say the creator has ownership of the database. It would seem that this Skylight didn’t create this database at all, and so the creator of it (presumably the other admins and members) would have ownership rights to it. It would get very murky especially with international law crossovers causing all sorts of problems, but I don’t think it’s as clear cut as you suggest Jezlad

  • tylermenz

    I would look at the Legal on Tau Online. The content is copyrighted to the member that created it AND to Tau Online. It would be my opinion that copying the entire Database, would be quite illegal, unless you had every single member who posted's express consent to copy their submissions, OR Skylights permission, which is doubtful.

    Taking this and the fact that the site is a “financial investment” into consideration, Skylight will almost positively have you in legal trouble in order to protect his investment.

    The easiest way around this would probably have a petition where members can sign up to allow their work to be published, or having them do the new re-posting themselves. Ultimately, i think that making an entire new “Tau Online” would be foolish. It would be easier and safer to move to Advanced Tau Tactica which is an already established Tau forum. This would provide a much greater support base to protect you from any legal problems, and since many users from Tau Online already are on ATT, it would be a smooth transfer, and easier to get knowledge about the shift to the masses.

  • http://creativetwilight.com/ Thor

    The thing is though that Tau Online was not a Tau only forum. It began that way and a majority of the members were certainly Tau players but the site was not strictly for them. I can see how ATT would make sense, at least for some of the players, but not for the community as a whole. Aside from the basis of the forum, the community itself was a very different animal than that of ATT.

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