ROPP Policy: Aegis Support Boards

Overview

• Gravity is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to content we cover here, and we do not defer to Gravity in terms of what content we can publish here or why because there is more to the world of Ragnarok Online than what Gravity made or did -- the public domain efforts around the game matter, outline real human endeavour, are interesting, and provide crucial insights into human behaviour. Corporate interests are not everthing, this must be stated, and restated until we're blue in the face.
• In game-guide information, of course, information should reference what is considered canon and official, from Gravity for the purposes of accuracy.
• Materials which come from AEGIS (configuration files, binaries, or other related materials) via releases, leaks or any form, can be reported on because they have appeared in the public domain.
• AEGIS-related binaries however, must not be distributed here, nor any related materials which could not have otherwise been obtained legally.

Discussion

The topic of the Aegis Support Boards is something which brings up several issues around research on this wiki. Aegis Support Boards were always operating on the periphery of legality, and sometimes stepped out of that boundary in the way they redistributed property that belonged to Gravity and its partners or subsidiaries.

A value judgement on these issues -- to state whether they were ethical, or moral is not something this project wishes to do because it goes beyond the remit of preserving the history of the Ragnarok Game. Individual authors may decide to make that decision and have that right. The project avails itself of the right to document this history from a historical and sociological perspective. Some people may argue that by simply covering this subject, we have already tipped our hand, however, that is not the case.

Gravity itself has punished and will continue to sue and take action against people who it feels have encroached upon their Intellectual Property. Its interests are to protect its profits and its shareholders, and to that end, it holds various positions that private servers and the related community (what are called "public-domain ragnarok" in this project). However, because Gravity holds that position does not encompass all of the arguments or discussions that can be had on the topic -- a corporation's view of what it finds expedient is far from the entire picture.

The entire picture, including conflicting viewpoints, including disagreements and battles, is what we want to cover in this project, because that is truly operating a project which operates in the public interest. We do not want to simply be a stenographer for corporate power, and for this reason we cover these topics.

On AEGIS binaries and ASB releases

It must be noted that the question of the legality of the binaries is very much up in the air and beyond the scope of this wiki -- particularly as we operate in a non-profit basis and base our research on publicly-available documents, and specifically do not accept materials which are expressly the copyrighted property of Gravity and its subsidiaries and partners.

While we think that the question of what AEGIS did and does is valid, and we do reference anonymous sources about AEGIS, we do not reproduce, distribute, or reference specific files or contents of AEGIS binaries or files, such as those which were distributed by the ASB among others as this would be fruit of the poisoned tree.

We do not want to, and will not, reference internal sourcecode or files within AEGIS specifically because we feel this is stepping over a line of preservation and non-profit Ragnarok stewardship, and into a legal gray area which we do not wish to, nor have the legal resources to dispute.