Map Usage of EQ Atlas Maps

Typical e-mail:

"Muse-- I plan on using your maps on my site because they are so good. Thanks for making such a great site, btw..."

I get some form of the above e-mail at least once per day, lately I've been getting it about two-three times per day, and I found myself writing the same discussion every time, so I wanted to put up a statement on my site about the use of my maps.

The Statement

I prefer that people provide links to the pages on my site that have the maps that they are interested in including on theirs, rather than place my maps directly on their site.

The Reasoning

Why host it on my site?

• All viewers to my site have access to all of the maps and the guides that are associated with them. These are kept as up-to-date as possible. Most people who post my maps post up the .jpeg files of the maps alone. These may be useful to some people, but many people like to have access to exactly what the numbers on the maps mean, as well as the accompanying guide for each zone, which provides the depth of useful material that the map alone does not provide. By linking to my site, your site's viewers have access to all of this.
• This site, for me, has become a source of income as well as a hobby that I enjoy. This is done through ad revenue which, for those who don't know how it works, pays me roughly on a per hit basis. That means that the more hits my page gets, the more money I make. By linking to my site, you are providing me with hits, which in turn provides me with money, which in turn provides me with incentive to make more maps rather than pursuing a life, which in turn benefits everyone who plays this game and likes my maps.
• Legal reasons -- see below for this.

Why not host it on your site?

• As a corollary to the first reason above, hosting the maps on your site means that people are not getting all the info that they could be getting. It also means that, chances are, your site will not be up-to-date, also hurting your viewers. Most of the maps that people have copied of mine are old ones.
• These maps hog bandwidth in a big way. I realize that this isn't a problem for some people, but a lot of people have web accounts that limit them to 5 MB of information transfer per month. This is a lot of transfer for a personal site. My site currently requires 25 GB of bandwidth per month, 65% of which is pure maps. Doing the math, this number is 3200 times larger than the average site's bandwidth per month. Admittedly your site may not get hit as much as mine for this purpose, but my point is that your space goes fast when every hit is around 70K in size. Serve about 70 maps per month, and the 5 MB is gone.

The legal side.

• I'll state it here: Any and all information included on this web site is the property of the EQ Atlas web site. This material can not be reproduced or transmitted in any way, written or electronic, without the express written permission of myself to do so. Copies may be made of this material for personal use only.
• All the material here is copyright 1999-2001 of EQ Atlas and myself. What copyright law states is that a material that is copyrighted can be reproduced only if certain rules are followed. First, the material can not be altered in any way from the original, and yes this includes putting the text that are associated with various numbers on my maps onto the maps themselves, altering their size or color in any way, etc. Secondly, obvious credit must be given to the person who created the materials, which in my case means that it must be obvious to anyone using the map who created the map and links must be provided to the site that it came from. Third is that you cannot be obtaining direct profits from the use of someone else's copyrighted materials nor can you be depriving the person whose material you are using of income that they could be making. This is kind of a grey area, as internet related copyright law is still an evolving field, but in relation to my site, I derive monies from people visiting my site and looking at the maps. This is more of a problem if your site derives income from some sort of hit-based revenue plan (e.g. advertising), as you will then be deriving monies that I could have been making.

With all of that said, please reread my statement above, I think it says it all.