I was thinking about this the other day, and I wondered what your opinions were.

In the event that we have a Minecraft update, but the server doesn't update, meaning that players who have updated their client and not backed up their bin/ folder cannot get on the server, we always say "Do not distribute files," as the client itself tells us.

What I wondered is, what does it matter?

Unless there's a way of playing Minecraft without logging in to the Minecraft server that I'm not aware of (entirely possible), then me distributing my Minecraft files is only useful to people who have paid for Minecraft and have a Minecraft.net account, ie: people who have a legitimate right to play the game.

I'm sure it's possible to hack the game to play without logging in, but people who do that hardly need to rely on someone giving them the files to do it.

I realise there's an element of covering ones behind in stating that you do not endorse the distribution of copyrighted files but, personally, I don't see what harm it would do in this situation.

Anyway, I wanted to know y'all's thoughts on the subject are, and, if there's a technical reason why it WOULD do harm that I am clearly missing, feel free to enlighten me.

well...ya got a point there.

Do not publicly distribute files.

Now look to the left hand menu.

I wasn't trying to imply anyone aged our disagreed with that view, just asking if they did. Where on the left?

Just a guess.

Good point

it has probably something to do with internet security. ppl might set in a keylogger/virus/backdoor in their publicly distributed files and its hard for moderators to check every file distributed. you cant trust people over the internetz these days.

Long story short, If we provide the files, then there are two problems.

1) Due to the license, nobody but notch & his company can redistribute minecraft.

2) [completely ignoring #1], we became a supplier for the software, and responsible for what it does to other's machines. Especially important, since somehow (most likely through a client mod), someone gathered a bunch of minecraft usernames/passwords). also, remember the story of mcadmin, where the programmer had the power to op himself on any server he connected to (could just as easly did a "delete home directory" command.

The main problem(For notch) would be that it would help people not upgrade. Meaning less people would test the latest version.

Iv been maintaining a game called Original War for years. One problem is that people havn't always upgraded to the latest version, you have people who just think that the latest versions are going to have more bugs introduced. So as a result you get less feedback and you also get feedback about older version's bugs which have already been fixed.


Though as others have said, its a major security risk for users as it can easily be modified to do malicious stuff. You could modify it in lots of ways which are never going to be detected by any Anti-Virus/Malware software.

You're both right; I don't think Crazy Fools should whack a link (or promote one) on the site to whatever version of Minecraft the server is presently running, and anyone getting the files from a random on the Internet is running a big risk, especially with an easy-to-mod program like Minecraft.

However, my question was more on what everyone thinks from an ethical point of view.

For example, say Notch brings out 1.6, but Broonie decides to hold off on the update after the crap storm that was 1.5. He gives all CFUK players plenty of warning not to upgrade, but somebody does it anyway, and can't get on the server.

Personally, I would have no problem sending them the files (that I know are clean and free of hacks/mods) as the person in question has paid for them.

The reason for this post is because I am always interested in starting discussion around anti-piracy measures, as I believe most of them are approached badly (see Ubisoft DRM) and the first step to preventing bad practice of this kind, is to make sure the consumer knows it's bad practice in the first place.

Then make a post about anti-piracy. Giving people old versions of Minecraft isn't really piracy.

Piracy discussions are a bit pointless though since it can be summed up like this:

Anti-Piracy Mesures are useless due to the fact that pirates remove them from the pirate copies they distribute days or weeks after a game is released. Thus the only people that "Suffer" are the end users as they are the only people who have to put up with the hassle of the over protective systems. That said a simple method should always be used to deter normal people from just copying a cd and giving it to a friend(I.E CD Keys).

"Me, I just wrote this!"