A Little Troubled

[jacksonbarno]

In te past few weeks, we have seen several accounts of stolen meshes, assets overtly shared against content creators wishes, release of assets reskins without permission, even sharing of content in a route release without permission.

My question is this. When will something be done? This is getting way out of hand, and it would seem that no action is being takwn against those responsible. For such a massive problem as this, you would think something would be done, but instead these people are allowed to run loose and continue their illegal actions.

Seriously guys, this should be a priority!

 

[LNERlover5]

It does seem to be getting a tad out of hand. From what I can see it's a few recurring names who don't seem to understand why the above actions are frowned upon.

Jack

 

[pware]

Not a new issue. The problem, as Tony Hilliam has explained many times before, is that they (N3V) must be absolutely certain that a copyright violation has occurred. They can only act when the complaint has come from the original creator of the asset, which I appreciate, is not always an easy task. There have been cases where the violation was reported by a 3rd party but permission had been granted by the original creator, so there was no violation.

 

[jacksonbarno]

Except when the creators have left, in which case their last word goes.



If something doesn't get done on this end, I assure you, a few of us are working on it from another angle, and trust me, the first option is preferable. The problem has been getting worse and one way or another it is ending.

 

[wilts747]

Is this not a copyright issue and whomever owns the copyright, other than taking legal action, should be able to demonstrate to those responsible for managing the DLS that there has been an infringement to the copyright they own requesting the offending asset(s) to be removed.

I appreciate that with permission one person may clone and modify the work of another without realizing that perhaps a third parties mesh for example was used in that work which required permission or acknowledgment in its own right but such oversights I would have thought would be few and far between as most respect the rules.

I'm not sure how practical it would be for example to suspend the accounts or First Class Tickets of those unable to toeing the line. Peter

 

[clam1952]

I used the md5 hashes of the mesh and TGA for couple of my assets that got cloned as proof. Got removed in a couple of days.
@ jacksonbarno
Think I know where you are coming from, it does look somewhat dodgy given the past history!

 

[ZecMurphy]

Good Evening All
As we have pointed out numerous times, it is entirely up to the author (or copyright owner) of the artwork to decide of their artwork is being used without permission. If you believe that someone is using another creator's work without permission, then please contact the creator and they can then contact us directly. Copyright law is relatively clear here, only the owner of the copyright can request their work be taken down. This is pretty reasonable, as only the owner of the copyright, and the person using the artwork in question, can know if permission has been granted. Anyone else is either guessing, or at minimum is a 3rd party who may not be aware of all of the facts.


I know a lot of people may not like this, but this is to protect all parties. Otherwise it would be very easy for someone with a grudge to start having content removed, members banned, and so on. Unless you have access to the email accounts, letter boxes, and any other communication channels available to both parties, you really cannot know for certain of the artwork/content/etc is being used/etc without permission.

Unfortunately, if the owner is unwilling r unable to contact us we may be unable to act. This can be taken on a case-by-case basis. An example is that it is well known that LandLvr (apologies if I have spelled his username wrong, it's 1:30am!) allows his content to be redistributed via email, but does not allow it to be hosted on a website. As such, we can take some action here (e.g. removal of download links from the forums). But, only LandLvr could request the server host to actually remove the files if it came down to it.

As to piracy of content (e.g. redistributing payware, or even freeware, content without permission), please report any posts that relate to this for our moderators to look into. I'd suggest stating that you believe the poster is pirating content so as to ensure our mods are aware of what the post relates to. As always, the action taken is up to the moderation teams discretion, but we try to keep on top of posts of this nature as much as possible. I'd also recommend reporting this to the creator. If they can confirm this then we may take further action in relation to the posts.

Regards

 

[JCitron]

Jackson,

To reiterate what Zec has said here, I went through that exercise a couple of years ago and did some cross referencing of content. In the end I was able to narrow down the offenders and I reported these to the team here and to the original content creators who also contacted the helpdesk and had their content removed.

It took a bit of time though I will admit. I used a combination of Content Manager, Excel, and a lot of time to get to the bottom of the mess. In the end it was worth it, I think.

John