I decided to check out the GPL licence terms and conditions, mainly because I was curious. I went here:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-license ... PLStandFor
Specifically, this paragraph:
Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
In general this is legally impossible; copyright law does not give you any say in the use of the output people make from their data using your program. If the user uses your program to enter or convert his own data, the copyright on the output belongs to him, not you. More generally, when a program translates its input into some other form, the copyright status of the output inherits that of the input it was generated from.
From what I understand of this, TMW is using the GPL licence, and so anyone can run a server using the software and art assets, and have it connected to legally by any mana-compatible client.
However the output, the player savefiles specifically, do not inherit the GPL licence, and they belong to the person or organization that is running the software on their own hardware.
For example, I am legally allowed to obtain a copy of the TMW server program file(s) and I am allowed to run it on my computer. My copy of TMW server does not belong to me, but any player datafiles / savefiles that are output by the program do belong to me.
Please excuse me, if I have misunderstood the GPL, but in the advent that I am correct, it would seem that all the playerfiles / datafiles that were hosted on platinum are the actual property of Platyna, and are not part of GPL unless she chooses to make it so. Under those conditions, no one would have the authority to take these from her, even if they honestly heartfelt that it was in the best interests of the game to take them.
I'm not trying to get into what is "best for the game", but I'm merely attempting to ask a legal question based on what I found in the GPL licencing, on their site.
EDIT:
1) By "take", I am also referring to making copies, or any other action that would normally violate a non-free non-GPL copyright ownership.
2) Much has been made of Bjorn and Elvenprogrammer in all of this, but while the GPL covers their development work, I don't think it covers the output from the platinum server (or any other TMW server) unless specific legal arrangements were made prior, where Platyna would have assigned ownership of these files either to the community or (those) other developers. But in the absence of such official documentation, I would guess that the datafiles (program output) belong solely to any given host.
Even if a host is declared "official", I would doubt that this changes ownership of those datafiles, unless it is officially mentioned somewhere, in some legal contract, somewhere.
EDIT (more):
By host, I am referring to an actual person or organization that officially takes legal responsibility for the server's output, by virtue of installing and running the server program and making it available online. Host does not refer to an ISP, server farm, data hosting center, cloud computing, etc, as these are simply mediums that allow the files to run and they typically come with contracts that assign the legal responsibility to the actual person or organization that is using the service to install, run, and make available the software.