Contents illegally uploaded to the DLS - N3V Please take action!

[RRSignal]

N3V/Auran's policy is STANDARD PRACTICE used pretty much everywhere. Only the copyright holder has the right/obligation to report infringement, and all a host like N3V, Google, etc. has to do is to take down the offending content. Strictly speaking, they don't HAVE to ban the offending uploader. Google's policy is the same

http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs

(Try selecting any item, then select content that infringes on your copyright, then select "No" to the question about whether you are the copyright holder or agent.)

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), we only accept copyright complaints from content owners or someone officially authorized to act on their behalf. If you have legal questions about the DMCA (the text of which can be found at the U.S. Copyright Office Web Site, http://www.copyright.gov), please consult your own legal counsel.

Frankly, I love the open system N3V uses and hope it doesn't change (aside from banning infringing users on perhaps the first or second violation.) Just be wary of content uploaded by Russian users...oh, wait, that actually means people will have to use their brains rather than have someone else do their thinking for them, and we can't have THAT now can we...

 

[johnwhelan]

N3V/Auran's policy is STANDARD PRACTICE used pretty much everywhere. Only the copyright holder has the right/obligation to report infringement, and all a host like N3V, Google, etc. has to do is to take down the offending content. Strictly speaking, they don't HAVE to ban the offending uploader. Google's policy is the same

http://support.google.com/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1114905&page=ts.cs

(Try selecting any item, then select content that infringes on your copyright, then select "No" to the question about whether you are the copyright holder or agent.)





Frankly, I love the open system N3V uses and hope it doesn't change (aside from banning infringing users on perhaps the first or second violation.) Just be wary of content uploaded by Russian users...oh, wait, that actually means people will have to use their brains rather than have someone else do their thinking for them, and we can't have THAT now can we...

Can we make this easier, include a tag that says this content creator has had content on the DLS for more than say six months? ie Kosher. Or can we build a search that does the same thing?

Thanks John

 

[sniper297]

"Auran is a bit busy trying to defend their position, instead of saying, "we'll see what we can do in the future so illegal clone items are stop before reaching the DLS" ..."

You obviously didn't read my post, if they said that it would be as empty as a politician's promise since THEY ARE ALREADY DOING ALL THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO without screwing the whole thing up.

The download station and download helper are a service they are providing for us, the customers, to easily share and trade our creations and modifications. The other two train simulators have nothing even remotely like it. If everything was removed from the DLS and nobody ever uploaded anything to it, then it would become the same as MSTS or railworks, all freeware hosted on 3rd party websites, some assembly required, good luck hunting for dependencies. Some of the activities for other trainsims list downloads required from 20 different websites, some of which return 404 errors a few months after they're uploaded. For all its flaws and problems you really should try the other two trainsims for a year or two before griping about the download station, it takes a lot of work out of the sharing process.

"Can we make this easier, include a tag that says this content creator has had content on the DLS for more than say six months? ie Kosher. Or can we build a search that does the same thing?"

Built into content manager.

Set the view for an installation time column, click the top of the column to sort by installation time, get a quick idea of how long ago that author started uploading to the DLS.

 

[shaneturner12]

I hope people don't react badly to my latest thought - perhaps N3V could look into a system where a user's first 2 or 3 uploads to the Download Station are manually checked by N3V staff before appearing, which would allow them to identify illegitimate cloning before it gets too bad. I know this will not affect uploaders that already have several such assets though.

I realise this may mean extra work, but it would reduce the amount of work involved in having to remove assets afterwards.

Anyone got any thoughts on this idea?

Shane

 

[sniper297]

Pretty much same objection to my suggestion that someone manually check the DLS cleanup project uploads to ensure we didn't get garbage like a KUID2 engine spec replacement which no longer works in CAB mode - who pays the bill? Checking each new asset against a quarter million previous assets would take a lot of time, anyone with half a brain wouldn't want to do it for free, anyone willing to do it for free would do a poor job and make the whole thing meaningless.

 

[shaneturner12]

I see where you are coming from, but most of the clones are fairly obvious by the thumbnail, and most of the time the config.txt file would give a clue as to the true owner of the content if it is a clone.

Shane

 

[sniper297]

Might be obvious if you spent your entire life buying and downloading everything. Pofig speed trees for example, I don't use speedtrees at all, how would I recognize an illegal clone of one of those? S&C assets, Blue Comet? Never bought any, wouldn't know what the originals looked like. You might be able to pick out suspicious stuff if the pirate was too stupid to file off the serial numbers, but you would miss a lot more than you caught and end up in the same place, there it is until a member of the community downloads and recognizes it as somebody else's work.

 

[clam1952]

My thoughts are let bring this back to what it actually is, it is not hundreds of people cloning assets all over the place, we have a tiny minority that are causing the problem, get them stopped and there may not be anything other than the occasional one off again. You don't need a sledge hammer to crack a nut, for all we know N3V are taking this seriously.

Anything that can be done to stop it happening at the outset needs to be simple, effective, not involve extra manpower or cost and not detract from actually using and creating for Trainz especially new possibly talented creators whom we need. Need to be careful what we wish for or we could end up with something worse than the problem and a lot of extremely fed up Trainzers.

 

[shaneturner12]

That may be true, but something is needed in order to sort out this mess.

As it stands, it is a minority of what seem to be Russian users that are causing issues for the majority.

Shane

 

[clam1952]

Might be obvious if you spent your entire life buying and downloading everything. Pofig speed trees for example, I don't use speedtrees at all, how would I recognize an illegal clone of one of those?

SpeedTrees are easy as only a few people have ever produced any, that's mcguirel, pofig, gawpo50, jankvis and is it falcon500? did some reskins, anything from anywhere else is probably dodgy.

 

[clam1952]

May well not be Russian, you can stick any country you like on a profile.
Could do with some help from the Russian community perhaps? Anyone speak Russian or any of the other languages from that neck of the woods? Maybe explaining to these people in their own language might just have an impact, I don't think Google Translate is anyway near clear enough to get anything other than a confusing message across.

 

[shaneturner12]

You may be able to get Termin or Pofig to help with that - Pofig seems to be keen on getting things sorted.

Shane

 

[sniper297]

Not really talking about speedtrees, that was just one example.

297 GP9P N&W 500 maroon,<kuid:522774:100959>
297 GP9P N&W 512 maroon,<kuid:522774:100185>
297 GP9P N&W 620 maroon,<kuid:522774:100961>
297 GP9P N&W 640 black,<kuid:522774:100958>
297 GP9P N&W 781 black,<kuid:522774:100960>

Did anyone look at those to see if they might match previous content by somebody else? Do the people who routinely drive SD70s or BR Class 105 or CHN DF11 locos even look at GP9s? Having one person checking all the different uploads from all over the world and comparing to assets on the DLS then comparing to assets from hundreds of 3rd party websites in 50 different languages would take how long per asset? If you think the upload processing is slow now, just try something like that and there would be a 10 year backlog. Your idealistic enthusiasm for the cause is wonderful, but there's no practical solution. Growing up in the ghetto one of the first lessons I learned was that locks only serve to keep honest people honest, they don't actually prevent theft no matter how expensive and difficult the lock is.

 

[WindWalkr]

Chris, are you basically saying that what is put in the license part of a config.txt is worthless?

It certainly does not override the DLS EULA. It may or may not be binding in other cases. If this is important to you and you are in doubt, seek professional legal advice.

If so, I can forsee a lot of requests being made for content being removed from the Download Station.

We don't generally accept requests which boil down to "i gave you permission but now i've changed my mind." We're under no legal obligation to honour such a request and that kind of thing would likely cause serious problems for the robustness of the DLS. We already have enough problems with out-of-date content or missing dependencies, we certainly don't want to make any moves which would make this worse.

I think it would be a good idea for a user to agree to the creator's license before the download can commence though.

We had such a system at some point in the distant past, but there are any number of problems with it. In reality, it's not feasible for end users to review tens of thousands of customised license agreements. Since they were not written by lawyers, such license text often didn't say what the creator meant it to say, contained glaring problems or loopholes, or was clearly contradicted by the DLS EULA.


Let's face it- the DLS is intended as a simple mechanism for the free distribution of content within the Trainz community. This doesn't grant people a license to rip off your content, but neither do we intend for creators to place arbitrary restrictions on how DLS content is used.

kind regards,

chris

 

[shaneturner12]

At least we know what's caused this mess - Multiplayer.

N3V probably need to look into ways of tightening Multiplayer to reduce this cloning issue. Perhaps just using built-in content.

Shane

 

[WindWalkr]

My point is, we can continue going back and forth on these points, but it seems to me that Auran is a bit busy trying to defend their position, instead of saying, "we'll see what we can do in the future so illegal clone items are stop before reaching the DLS" ...

That's because I don't see our position as unreasonable. There are problems with our approach, just like there are problems with any alternative approach. What we have has worked well for us over the last ten years, and I'm not in a hurry to change it.

And all Auran will do removed the illegal contents, and that's it!?

You expect us to maybe send some guys over to their house with baseball bats? I think you may be confused about our role in this business.

chris

 

[WindWalkr]

My thoughts are let bring this back to what it actually is, it is not hundreds of people cloning assets all over the place, we have a tiny minority that are causing the problem, get them stopped and there may not be anything other than the occasional one off again. You don't need a sledge hammer to crack a nut, for all we know N3V are taking this seriously.

Anything that can be done to stop it happening at the outset needs to be simple, effective, not involve extra manpower or cost and not detract from actually using and creating for Trainz especially new possibly talented creators whom we need. Need to be careful what we wish for or we could end up with something worse than the problem and a lot of extremely fed up Trainzers.

This exactly.

chris

 

[shaneturner12]

Hi Chris,

Thankyou for your response.

My main concern is that quite a few users, including me, are unhappy with how things are being handled, and the fact that a minority of 'creators' are effectively ignoring a content creator's wishes by uploading said clones to the Download Station even if the creator's license clearly states that the assets cannot be redistributed (for example with payware assets, which is the one type of asset that is most likely to cause issues for all parties involved).

I realise there is no quick fix to this issue, but it's one that could boil over and potentially result in more and more content creators deciding to stop creating assets for the simulator in fear that their content will be cloned. That will harm both the community and possibly N3V in the long run, as the Download Station would then have less new assets every day.

Shane

 

[ish6]

What we have has worked well for us over the last ten years, and I'm not in a hurry to change it.



[/COLOR]
You expect us to maybe send some guys over to their house with baseball bats? I think you may be confused about our role in this business.

chris

10 years in the computer world is like 10 billion years, as technology changes everday, and if Auran have not realized that yet then I do see days where there were only 3 people working at Auran HQ once agaon, and almost gone out of business -- yes, you guys showed up in a business magazine years back about your financial issues!

Like the US, who always waits for something to happened to react, Auran is taken the same approach -- when that day comes when a super hacker cracks trainz core codes and upload that mateiral for folks to download, maybe someone gets up from their chair and do something!

I expect??? Me??? I think I made the point clear that this thread was to fine solutions, but it seems that you are defending your position more then discussing the problematic matter!

(This is just my personnal opinion, generally speaking, some times folks speak with feelings instead of using their heads, and that's when the message gets lost!)


Signing out -- enough say on this issue from my side of the world!


Thanks for reading!

Ish

 

[bekaember]

10 years in the computer world is like 10 billion years, as technology changes, and if Auran have not realized that yet then I do see days where there were only 3 people working at Auran HQ, and almost gone out of business -- yes, you guys show up in a business magazine years back about your financial issues!

Like the US, who always waits for something to happened to react, Auran is taken the same approach -- when that day comes when a super hacker cracks trainz core codes and upload that mateiral for folks to download, maybe someone gets up from thier chair and do something!

I expect??? Me??? I think I made the point clear that this thread was to fine solutions, but it seems that you are defending your position more then discussing the matter!

(This is just my personnal opinion, generally speaking, some times folks speak with feelings instead of using their heads, and that's when the message gets lost!)


Signaling out -- enough say on this issue from my side of the world!


Thanks for reading!

Ish

Hi Ish,

Krisz