In regard to: MapleStory Wiki and its ownership.
On January 4th, Crrio was made aware that a developer that previously worked on our team, Andy / Inumedia, had removed an MIT license from a self-hosted version of our MapleStory Wiki project's repository. The issue was voiced by a developer who was concerned about their safety using the code; as with the removal of an open source license, rights and legal protections are stripped away from anybody using this code. Read more about this here.
As the removal of the license violates licensing laws and also endangers developers (which we can't condone nor support), it was in our best interest to send a DMCA to GitLab to request for strictly the removal of just the MapleStory Wiki repository. We consulted GitLab's DMCA Policy which specifies that only in cases of repeated infringement will additional actions be taken as follows:
We will review your submission and take whatever action we deem appropriate under the DMCA, including removal of the challenged content from the website. Further more, we may, in appropriate circumstances, disable or terminate the accounts of users who may be repeat infringers.
A copy of our DMCA request can be viewed by clicking here.
To whom it may concern:
My name is Tyler Liberman and I am the CEO of Crrio. A git repository that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by my company.
A git repository was copied onto your servers without permission. The original repository, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, can be found at:
https://github.com/crrio/maplestory-wiki
The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at:
https://gitlab.com/senpai_house/maplestory/maplestory.wiki-laravel/commit/9ec59d644964a9cc0429453c55799c43b86a7b19 (commit removing our LICENSE)
https://gitlab.com/senpai_house/maplestory/maplestory.wiki-laravel
The aforementioned commit effectively removes our company's license, breaching copyright laws and confirms the hosting of an illegally altered copy of our original repository.
This letter is an official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned infringing material from your servers. I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future.
I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of perjury, I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the company of the copyright(s) involved.
Should you wish to discuss this with me please contact me directly.
Thank you.
Andy's Response
Upon receiving the DMCA request, Andy stated on his Discord server that he felt it was a personal attack against him. He then proceeded to shut down all servers associated with IO (and their other projects). On numerous occasions, he has stated that the loss of his GitLab account was the cause of this shutdown and that Crrio's actions were directly to blame for any services (including MapleStory Design) losing functionality due to this.
Andy blaming Crrio (Tyler directly) for everything shutting down due to DMCA request.
In messages following, Andy informed others that his GitLab's closure meant the immediate need to shut down all servers for his projects (including IO) and that without his GitLab everything was doomed.
Andy stating that losing his account means currently live services need to be shut down, and that restoring it will take months.
This is false. In this situation, Andy intentionally misled others by portraying a false scenario.
Prior to Andy hosting code associated with his IO project (and other MapleStory-related projects) on GitLab, it was hosted on a private instance of GitLab that was used to host all Crrio projects. For a majority of its existence, Crrio paid for the servers that housed IO-powered projects, including: IO, the Wiki project, Design, and the GitLab instance itself.
This instance was personally set up and maintained by Andy, who had a great understanding of its infrastructure and requirements. Additionally, this instance was used to deploy and update all of our services (IO included) using continuous integration (CI).
Andy's statements regarding his account's closure, as mentioned above, are not a valid excuse for shutting down all servers. GitLab is designed to allow for transitioning between gitlab.com and private, instanced setups with little to no effort. Only a one-time setup is required to enable continuous integration, taking more than an hour of time.
A mutual friend of Andy and mine agreeing that restoring services should not be difficult.
Update (1/8/2019):
After becoming aware of this page, Andy responded briefly to a few concerns brought up in this page, in addition to banning a member of the Crrio team based solely on suspicions of providing screenshots. It is saddening to hear of attempts to silence transparency, but fortunately, there are many individuals of good morals willing to continue this conversation.
Andy's response to this page.
1. "And ye, I don't have prior dmcas against me"
This conflicts with GitLab's own policy, so unless their legal team was caught on a bad day, we can't validate this statement.
2. "And the problem is Tyler is liable to send other false DMCAs"
I'm confused by this statement, and Andy has not responded to my inquiry for more information.
3. "And it would take hours to setup a new Gitlab, hours I don't have"
You mean this one? Andy updated the email address of this account to match the now closed account; showing activity within the last couple days and contradicting the above statement.
Ownership of Wiki (Evidence)
Before continuing, please read:
It is important to note that Andy received payments for working on Crrio projects and was legally considered an independant contractor by the IRS. This includes work on Maple.fm, Wiki, Henesys Chat, in addition to Design and IO. A significent amount of time was put into building the APIs to support Design, adding new functionality based on Crrio's and MapleMation's communities, which are managed by Crrio.
(with this in mind.. everything that was slapped with a Crrio brand, was in fact, a Crrio project and legally owned by Crrio.) It was Andy's duty to contribute to, maintain, and uphold Crrio's services. As no service can function without the dependency of IO, it is legally sound to assume that without IO, Andy's duties would not be unheld.
When Andy left the Crrio team last year due to disagreements over the direction of Wiki, he made statements to the rest of our team that Wiki had always been his project and that Crrio did not own any rights to it. This same belief has been voiced following the aforementioned events, and Andy has publicly stated he intends to take legal action against our team (or me personally) for sending a falsified DMCA.
The following section will provide numerous screenshots and statements confirming this as false, and that Andy's attempts to mislead the MapleStory community have only caused harm.
At the beginning of the project, I personally requested for our team to use Laravel, a PHP wrapper and framework used by a majority of Crrio services (new and old).
In contrast to Andy's current position of the Wiki being solely his own project, past conversations use language that indicates a collaborative effort between Crrio team members.
There are also numerous mentions to Crrio in the actual wiki source code, including, but not limited to, an entire core library called "crrio.class.php" and "A Crrio Project" in the footer.
While Andy did contribute toward the Wiki project, there were also instances during which they were focused on other Crrio projects; I was the one spearheading development during these times. Here are a few cases of Wiki not being a priority (which isn't meant to be looked at negatively, just as a notion of healthy collaboration).
Andy has also publicly stated that the MIT license was removed to "avoid confusion" over the true ownership of the Wiki project, although acknowledged its existence three months prior and had no qualms or objections.
From the very beginning, Wiki had Google Adsense advertisements placed on it that were managed by Crrio. While never profitable, it wouldn't make sense for our ads to be running on a service that Andy "owned" himself.
In this example, the phrase "our wiki" was not questioned.
Lastly, the actual contributions made to the project are presented below. While outdated, this directly represents that throughout a majority of the Wiki project's existence (before ultimately being moved to our own GitLab instance as aforementioned), I had contributed a majority to the project.
Conclusion
For many reasons, this whole situation has left me dismayed.
I believe Andy shows a greater understanding of MapleStory development than most in the community, and it was a privilege working with him throughout the years. I believe we created some outstanding projects together.
However, as our individual visions with the projects changed over time, scenarios in which conflict arose became unavoidable. I acknowledge there were times that he might have felt pushed aside because of my public figure within the community. I believe that I could have better facilitated a healthier open forum for discussions and project growth.
From one developer to another, I feel terrible for the impact that the DMCA has had on his account. That was never the intention, and I wish GitLab had treated the issue less severely. If there were prior infringements against Andy, I was not aware of them nor had they been communicated.
Most importantly, I feel awful for the impact this has had on the MapleStory community as a whole. I don't think anybody gained from this, and I can acknowledge that my actions, while I feel justified, did not result in a positive outcome for the communities that I uphold.