Undesired Third-Party Mod Hosting

[Nils277]

Hi,

while investigating some unexpected download statistics from my mod on KerbalStuff i came across a third party website that is hosting mods for KSP:

<Link removed>

It seems the site takes mods from other sources and hosts them.

I didn't even know that this site existed, still my mod is hosted there. The description is written in a broken englisch in addition with (some) wrong screenshots. Some of the "screenshots" are not even from KSP. The download is dated too....

I haven't found any thread mention this site here and just wanted to let you know that maybe your mod is posted there too.

Is this even allowed? The site does not mention the licenses for the mods and some of the mods are definetly standing under a license that forbits commercial use (like B9 or MKS/OKS). I haven't seen any ads there but google-analytics and google-adsense are mentioned on the sites "privacy-policy". Isn't this on the borderline to commercial use?

Best regards.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Nils277
Removed link.

[Red Iron Crown]

Thanks for the report of this, it looks like some mods are being redistributed without permission or license. I've passed it up the line for consideration, in the meantime I've taken the liberty of removing your link.

[KasperVld]

I will ban links to that website from the forums, but other than that there's not much I can do here. I suggest that mod makers whose mods are being redistributed against the terms of their license file a report with the hosting provider and the domain name registrar. Contact details can be found here.

Edited September 22, 2015 by KasperVld

[Nils277]

Thanks!

I totally agree with you that the link to the site should not be mentioned here.

Is it still allowed to mention the name of the site? Otherwise the other mod developers will not be able to find out whether their mod is hosted there.

I will ban links to that website from the forums, but other than that there's not much I can do here. I suggest that mod makers whose mods are being redistributed against the terms of their license file a report with the hosting provider and the domain name registrar. Contact details can be found here.

When clicking your link who.is displays this message:

ERROR

Invalid Domain Name: .com. Please double check your input.

Is that intended?

[Tex_NL]

Just wondering: What's the point of one mod removing a malicious link and a second mod posting a link that indirectly shows that same malicious link again?

[Red Iron Crown]

Just wondering: What's the point of one mod removing a malicious link and a second mod posting a link that indirectly shows that same malicious link again?

I removed it while the moderation team considered how to handle it, it has since been added to the forum filter to prevent it from being linked anywhere else (directly at least).

[KasperVld]

When clicking your link who.is displays this message:

ERROR

Invalid Domain Name: .com. Please double check your input.

Is that intended?

No, the link works for me (and apparently for Tex_NL as well).

Just wondering: What's the point of one mod removing a malicious link and a second mod posting a link that indirectly shows that same malicious link again?

The intent is that it stops people linking to the website as a source for a mod (by ignorance or malice), which is a different purpose than my link which aims to provide information on how to report the license infringement

[Tex_NL]

OK, that explains a lot.

And yes, the link does work for me. But ... the link you posted BEFORE you edited your post did not.

[Nils277]

The link to who.is works now. Must have clicked it too early

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

The funny thing is that they're not hosting anything themselves (so far as I can tell) -- they're using Google abbreviated links, which redirect to KerbalStuff, for whatever reason. (I suppose this could become a vector for ads or what have you, without the costs of providing bandwidth themselves.)

[Nils277]

That is a really unfair way to "earn" money...

I just reported another website from the same author to KasperVld. It just has four mods for KSP(and many more for Minecraft) but doesn't even bother to name the authors!

The four mods "hosted" there are: RCS BUILD AID, KERBAL ALARM CLOCK, NEAR FUTURE PROPULSION and TEXTUREREPLACER.

Here's the who.is link for the authors.

I found it while trying to find a way to contact the author to at least correct my entry. The license of my mod does not prohibit commercial use but the description and images should at least be correct.

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Now there's "kspplays.net", which appears to be setting itself up as a "portal" to CurseForge (that's where it's cribbing the screenshots, categories, and parts of its descriptions, and where the download links lead to). The site creator also seems to be convinced that there's a KSP 1.0.7, and that some mods are compatible with it.

[Guest]

I just saw some of these web sites. It's quite annoying. Is is possible that they're stealing them out of CKAN? It is relatively easy to automate that with the database.

- - - Updated - - -

Just found my mod on there.

- - - Updated - - -

It's an old version, too.

- - - Updated - - -

That explains the large amount of older versions being downloaded

[sal_vager]

This is one of the problems, old unsupported versions floating around that may not even work with the current release.

Or no licenses which is why it's very important to have a license in the download, though that can be removed, thankfully the KSP communities are good at spotting rebranded mods.

Not to mention advertising revenue from others work, or potentially gaining access to your KSP forum or store account if there is a sign-in and you use the same username and password.

Plus I hope anyone who does use some of these sites has an up to date anti-virus, I'm sure Curse has protections in place as a standard duty of care for their users, and Kerbalstuff has a reputation to uphold so I expect protections are in place there as well.

[Randazzo]

Since this person isn't actually hosting these mods, only linking to Kerbalstuff, are they actually doing anything wrong? The English in the articles might be a crime...

[Guest]

The issue is that they are only linking to the download. When they do that, they are required to give credit for the work. The issue for me is the fact that this old version on there has my old license. I upgraded it to Creative Commons since that version, so I cannot actually prove that I have this license on that one.

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I came up with a way of making it go to a 404 instead of the download. I downloaded all versions for my record keeping, and then deleted them all except for the newest one.

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I did some backtracking on the IP and found that it is located in San Fransisco, CA, as long as they aren't connect to a Tor like network.

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Accidentally looked up the DNS server. The actual server is in New Jersey

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I figured out sort of this site's 'algorithm.'

It is most certainly a bot.

Step 1. Go to Kerbal Stuff

Step 2. Click random mod

Step 3. Grab title + download link

Step 4. Put title in + "Mod For KSP" + versionNumber (you can tell I program C)

Step 5. Grab description, put it in

Step 6. Go onto Google images and search for Title + " KSP Mod"

Step 7. Add the first 2-3 images that pop up

Step 8. Go to YouTube and search the same thing. Grab the first video, and embed it.

Step 9. Add download link.

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Also add captions of the title to the images

[HafCoJoe]

The issue is that they are only linking to the download. When they do that, they are required to give credit for the work. The issue for me is the fact that this old version on there has my old license. I upgraded it to Creative Commons since that version, so I cannot actually prove that I have this license on that one.

- - - Updated - - -

I came up with a way of making it go to a 404 instead of the download. I downloaded all versions for my record keeping, and then deleted them all except for the newest one.

- - - Updated - - -

I did some backtracking on the IP and found that it is located in San Fransisco, CA, as long as they aren't connect to a Tor like network.

- - - Updated - - -

Accidentally looked up the DNS server. The actual server is in New Jersey

- - - Updated - - -

I figured out sort of this site's 'algorithm.'

It is most certainly a bot.

Step 1. Go to Kerbal Stuff

Step 2. Click random mod

Step 3. Grab title + download link

Step 4. Put title in + "Mod For KSP" + versionNumber (you can tell I program C)

Step 5. Grab description, put it in

Step 6. Go onto Google images and search for Title + " KSP Mod"

Step 7. Add the first 2-3 images that pop up

Step 8. Go to YouTube and search the same thing. Grab the first video, and embed it.

Step 9. Add download link.

- - - Updated - - -

Also add captions of the title to the images

Heh... Hehehehe... Wow. The atrocities that occur in the backwash of the internet... I've had a number of my videos appear on 3rd party sites but luckily none of my mods. It's sad that this type of thing happens. How many adds are on the third party site?

[Nils277]

This is one of the problems, old unsupported versions floating around that may not even work with the current release.

Or no licenses which is why it's very important to have a license in the download, though that can be removed, thankfully the KSP communities are good at spotting rebranded mods.

Not to mention advertising revenue from others work, or potentially gaining access to your KSP forum or store account if there is a sign-in and you use the same username and password.

Plus I hope anyone who does use some of these sites has an up to date anti-virus, I'm sure Curse has protections in place as a standard duty of care for their users, and Kerbalstuff has a reputation to uphold so I expect protections are in place there as well.

At least the downloads don't seem be harmfull. I downloaded the old version of my mod in a VM and it didn't recognise any weird behavior. Also the filesizes and the hashes of the downloads are equal. I can't speak for other mods though.

Heh... Hehehehe... Wow. The atrocities that occur in the backwash of the internet... I've had a number of my videos appear on 3rd party sites but luckily none of my mods. It's sad that this type of thing happens. How many adds are on the third party site?

It looks like the site has ~500 mods hosted at the moment. What cheek!

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

At least the downloads don't seem be harmfull. I downloaded the old version of my mod in a VM and it didn't recognise any weird behavior. Also the filesizes and the hashes of the downloads are equal. I can't speak for other mods though.

They should all check out. Checking a few download links (using RequestPolicy, which halts redirects and shows me the destination), the sites in question are just linking (via Google-abbreviated links) directly to the file on KerbalStuff or Curse. Saves them some money on bandwidth, I suppose.

(This may not be true for all downloads, of course, and even if it is, it could also change at any time.)

[Guest]

On the contact page there is literally nothing.

[Randazzo]

I had forgotten about this, but I wonder if it's somehow related now.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84154-Kerbal-Stuff-an-open-source-Space-Port-replacement?p=2174787&viewfull=1#post2174787

[Nils277]

On the contact page there is literally nothing.

There is an email address at the "Terms of Service" page. But i doubt that the mail will be read.

I had forgotten about this, but I wonder if it's somehow related now.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/84154-Kerbal-Stuff-an-open-source-Space-Port-replacement?p=2174787&viewfull=1#post2174787

I'm experienced the exact same behaviour as you mentioned in your post. The oldest version of the mod with disproportional high download numbers. That was the reason i started to search for links to the older version and eventually found the site.

But there must be other reasons to that, the site links to an old but not the oldest version...