This official news post is copied verbatim from the WoTMUD website. It is copyrighted by wotmud.org.
Folks,
It has come to my attention that WoTMUD zones are being distributed verbatim in a so called 'offline' version of WoT. Let me be clear, conceptually, I have no problem with something of this nature as long as it is limited and fully specified by both parties (WoTMUD and whomever creates this). It is for this purpose that I ok'd Grishnakh's project. It was not known however, that it would be something of this scale/method/completeness. In essence, those zones were not even created only by the admin staff, but created for this game by hard working members of the public. Simple copying of every aspect of such work is therefore not permissible. In fact, several have rightfully complained to me that they did not authorize their work for this.
Grishnakh and I need to work out some details with regards to this, details/permissions of authors/etc so once that is done (should only take a brief conversation) I can once again 'bless' his effort and folks can freely use it. There will be one open question though, I am not sure that I have ability to grant Grishnakh permission to do quite everything he wishes. According to the permission granted us by https://web.archive.org/web/20030102042208/http://...wotmud.org/wotperm2.jpg I may not be able to do this. I will have to research that as well.
Until then however, the materials in their current form are unacceptable. Given that we only have limited mechanisms for enforcing our wishes, it would unfortunately be some form of permanent zap/ban/etc. Additionally, if this content were to be put up on a public network at any time, do not be surprised if complaints to ISPs or even a lawsuit were initiated.
Thanks
[ This Mail was edited by: Flash on 2003-03-09 13:17 ]
Addendum: I have spoken with Grishnakh, and he has agreed to no longer distribute/support this because he appreciates the amount of work that went into those zone details by many folks over the last decade. For those who already have the materials, please keep the consequences I listed above in mind if you decide to use or further distribute this. In essence, you probably all appreciate the great efforts people just like yourselves spent creating these works in a similar manner to how you respect Robert Jordan for creating the intellectual material. Please respect the creative work of these folks as you would his.
[ This Mail was edited by: Flash on 2003-03-09 16:05 ]