As you might know, I’m the creator of a Minecraft resource pack (What is this?). I put a lot of time into it and the effort pays off as I’m getting a lot of downloads.
Resource packs are of course property of their creator. I respect the creators of other resource packs and do not for example reupload their packs using my name. I expect people to have the same respect for my resource pack as well (and also for all my other work).
The earlier versions of my resource pack contained some textures from other resource packs. I made sure that the licenses of these resource packs explicitly allowed me to include some of their textures in my resource pack and I gave credit to the original creators. I also allow other artists to use some of my textures in compilations or in their own resource pack, if they give credit to me.
In a tutorial about resource packs I was advised to choose or create a license for my resource pack. It is generally good to use an already existing license, but because none of the common ones was exactly what I wanted, I decided to put my understanding of ownership and respect in simple terms and use that as a license, which is now displayed on each download page and is part of the download itself. The most important part of said license is: Do not reupload my resource pack.
Although I know the internet is a very strange place, I was still very hurt, when I was told that exactly this rule had been violated.
A this point I want to throw a big thank you at insomniac_lemon for pointing this out to me and for helping me resolve the issue.
Anyway, my resource pack could previously be downloaded via it’s Minecraft Forum thread only, but insomniac_lemon spotted it on Planet Minecraft. It was uploaded by a stranger with a random looking name and was getting lots of downloads and diamonds there.
Thankfully I did not discover the fake myself, but it was shown to me by a very supportive and nice person, so I had help from the very beginning.
insomniac_lemon then reported the fake to the moderators of Planet Minecraft. I wanted to do something as well, so I decided to take the opportunity to post my pack to Planet Minecraft myself and it’s been getting a lot of attention from the Planet Minecraft users.
As you can see there are also friendly people on the internet and although there’s a saying which goes like ‘100 positive and 1 negative comment will still make you unhappy’ you should never allow such an incident to stop you from doing what you like, but instead use the opportunity, do something creative and make the best out of it.
