Ethics

[IsambardKingdomBrunel]

So payware route creator X, decided to release a route of only 20 miles from A to B and charge £10 for it.

But hold on he remembers that there is a freeware extension of this very route on the DLS, which will take his route from B to C, another 30 miles.

Great i can now charge £25 for it.

Easy enough for him to download the freeware part off the DLS and reference it to his own route. Then remove it before release, retaining the necessary kuid references.

His payware route is then released with a small caveat that some merging and connecting of tracks will be needed to run section B to C.

How is that ethical, honest or respectful of freeware DLS content.

In regards N3V using the DLS content, that is a different argument.

After all they own the DLS and stipulate they have freedom of use.

IKB.

 

[rumour3]

So I gather from this if I supply a list of kuids that I don't have a license for the texture to be used in payware these can be removed from the DLS? Because I am unable to sub license something that I don't have myself. I'll look through my assets and supply a list to the Helpdesk, that way by removing them N3V will avoid any legal liability issues. It also demonstrates that I have brought the matter to your attention in a timely manner so reduces my exposure.

My take on built-ins is provide the asset is also available for free on the DLS I can live with this, to me the game engine is being sold and the asset included.

I see no issue with using the assets in a freeware layout such as Sir Gibby's that also uses payware content. No charge is being made for the layout.

Thanks

Cheerio John

John

Might be worth re-checking the license from the sites you have acquired textures from, before doing anything hasty. I note, for example, that some of your assets credit Mayang's site, and I've just checked their license and found the following:

"Use:

They are free to use for all uses, whether commercial or non-commercial (you may incorporate them into your derived work with no requirement to pay us any licensing fee etc). Your derived work must involve significant modification to the textures. It would be nice if you could credit us."

In the FAQ, it states:

"You can use the textures in your school projects, to make CD sleeves, posters, in movies, in videogames etc - anything where you have added your own artistic effort."

Your assets are derived work and you have credited Mayang, so as far as I can see there is no reason why an asset using their textures wouldn't be able to comply with the DLS license, even if used in a payware context.

Of course, other sites may have more restrictive licensing terms.

It might be worth considering sourcing alternative textures and uploading an update, rather than removing your assets altogether. On line textures are very convenient but I'm sure the community would be prepared to help with photographs etc to replace anything simple such as brick walls or slate roofs.

R3

 

[steamaddict]

I would agree that using someones freeware to make money should not be allowed unless the payware creator gets permission from the freeware creator for each bit of content he or she uses. To put it in perspective, suppose I write a book and copyright it, but decide to distribute it freely to a certain group of people. Now someone comes along and writes their own book using one of my chapters without my permission and then sells their book. That would be a copyright infringement and would be very illegal at least without my giving them permission to use my chapter. Why should this creativity be any different?

 

[Euphod]

First, this was intended as a discussion on ethics and not legalities. These are distinctly different.

Unfortunately legalities have evolved to enforce ethics. If Adam and Eve had been ethical and hadn't flaunted the rules, perhaps we would have no such need of legalities. Imagine, if every single person was self regulating, and adhered to the highest of moral and ethical standards.

 

[leeferr]

Just to make everyone aware. I have deleted the Route category from my site. Although everyone is aware of my stance on the legaility of using freely available content in payware routes, I don't want to dishonor any creator who desires that their content not be used in payware routes and I'm not going to go through the effort of replacing the offending content with my own. The route would then be prohibitively expensive. All that I ask in return is that no one contacts me individually asking for the Ashland Central System route. It will not be available.

Now I'll sit back and enjoy the debate. It has been informative and entertaining at the same time.

Mike

 

[sparky15]

Honor amongst thieves....

Or maybe just some integrity.

The MSTS crowd took a hit from creators leaving over others using their content without permission. Even now there are some over there it seems trawl the library looking for uses of their work without permission. Then there are those who just don't care as long as you credit them.

The question should be is it worth it. If a creator states he doesn't want his content used in payware, don't use it. Not to much to respect someone's wishes. The alternate would be a shrinking creation community or the loss of one of the best things in this hobby, a good balance of freeware to go along with the payware. Legalities should never come into play in a community like this. A little respect and an e-mail goes a long way.

As far as us freeloaders, some of us are just casual users. I've started to get the hang of Blender, but still couldn't reskin a flat car with a gun to my head. Do I wish I had the know how, sure. Not a high priority for me, even lower now that summer is here. The few hours a week I dabble with it are for my enjoyment. Not an excuse, just a fact, it's a pass time when I'm in the mood, both Trainz and Blender.

Some people are fanatics over their content, some don't care and some try and make money. Nothing wrong with any of them. The gimmees might be a pain but look at the age, and other, diversities who use this program. Them aside, I don't think it's to much to show a little respect when using someone else's content and respecting their wishes. Like Dermmy said, if you're looking for a loop hole, probably not a good idea to do it. To much and this could end up like the RW crowd where you have to pay for everything.

Dave.......

 

[RRSignal]

I would put it to you the only people who should have a say on the use of freeware DLS assets in a payware route should only be creators of assets not the free loaders who just sit back and download and download and download.and complain when there is an error in an asset they have scrounged of the DLS for free

Just curious, what's your position on those of us who fix said faulty assets?

 

[domsarto]

Just curious, what's your position on those of us who fix said faulty assets?

I believe I already answered this question on another thread some weeks ago, after you altered config files on a high number of my assets, without having the decency to inform me after I had specifically requested that no one alter any of my assets.

 

[RRSignal]

No, not really, since 1. I made those alterations well before finding out about this and 2. you've been been predicating your fear of the DLS cleanup (and probably spreading same) based on bogus information; and 3. you complained that you were concerned about your textures and meshes being altered, yet noted in the very same post that the required fixes were only in the thumbnail; therefore, no adjustment of meshes or textures was required.

Of course, if knew now what I knew then, I would have left your assets alone; then somebody else would have fixed them but at least I wouldn't have to hear about it. But I would still call you out on your mistruthfulness/misinformation.

It's a shame you're "reality-challenged" but complain to Auran about putting them up to begin with.

 

[domsarto]

Since I will not be on this forum again, let me really say what I think about your attitude and the attitude of others here on this forum. most members who are from the usa automatically take the position that they are correct in all things and then attempt to force their opinions on others, of course this is typical of your fellow country men. (free speech for americans, but not for the rest of us). Whilst the members from australia always take the side of auran/nv3, even though they know that auran/nv3 have erred in there attitude to user's of older versions.

(note: I chose not to use upper case for the above mentioned countries)

Finally before I leave I would request that auran/nv3 please remove all my assets from the dls.


Goodbye.

 

[RRSignal]

I'll call out Americans for spreading misinformation as well. Seems you're becoming increasingly angry at being called out for your unreasonable, untenable position. You were wrong about the nature of the DLS cleanup. Man up and admit it. I'm not sure whether your misinformation was deliberate or accidental, but man up. Or at least, don't be a drama queen raise a big stink about it. Again, I wish I had known in February what I know now, so I would have not repaired your faulty assets and you could direct your anger at someone else.

As far as your ethnic/national bigotry goes, that has no place here, and good riddance.

 

[johnwhelan]

John

Might be worth re-checking the license from the sites you have acquired textures from, before doing anything hasty. I note, for example, that some of your assets credit Mayang's site, and I've just checked their license and found the following:

"Use:

They are free to use for all uses, whether commercial or non-commercial (you may incorporate them into your derived work with no requirement to pay us any licensing fee etc). Your derived work must involve significant modification to the textures. It would be nice if you could credit us."

In the FAQ, it states:

"You can use the textures in your school projects, to make CD sleeves, posters, in movies, in videogames etc - anything where you have added your own artistic effort."

Your assets are derived work and you have credited Mayang, so as far as I can see there is no reason why an asset using their textures wouldn't be able to comply with the DLS license, even if used in a payware context.

Of course, other sites may have more restrictive licensing terms.

It might be worth considering sourcing alternative textures and uploading an update, rather than removing your assets altogether. On line textures are very convenient but I'm sure the community would be prepared to help with photographs etc to replace anything simple such as brick walls or slate roofs.

R3

Some sources are individuals with whom I contacted and requested permission to use a specific texture for freeware and gave an undertaking that there would be no suggestion of payware. They gave permission to use their textures provided it was only used for freeware and no payment for the asset was involved. These are the ones that I am most concerned about. I think there are one or two that model railroad companies have created models based on the same images and that money has been remitted to the photographer as a result. When its all freeware people can be very generous, once you start opening the payware side up they aren't quite so generous.

An example would be 86627:156 there are a number of others. Dropping some 86 foot box cars from the DLS wouldn't be a major problem there are plenty of others these days except they were made specifically at some one's request. I could make them available on TPR etc.

As you mentioned different texture sites have different licensing agreements, free for personal use but fees for commercial use.

To be honest it would be a major effort to go through each asset and identify the source for each and every texture but it could be done. It's also a pain in the neck to check through all sources in new models to make sure they are available for payware.

Cheerio John

 

[Dermmy]

John

Might be worth re-checking the license from the sites you have acquired textures from, before doing anything hasty. I note, for example, that some of your assets credit Mayang's site, and I've just checked their license and found the following:

"Use:

They are free to use for all uses, whether commercial or non-commercial (you may incorporate them into your derived work with no requirement to pay us any licensing fee etc). Your derived work must involve significant modification to the textures. It would be nice if you could credit us."

In the FAQ, it states:

"You can use the textures in your school projects, to make CD sleeves, posters, in movies, in videogames etc - anything where you have added your own artistic effort."

Your assets are derived work and you have credited Mayang, so as far as I can see there is no reason why an asset using their textures wouldn't be able to comply with the DLS license, even if used in a payware context.

Of course, other sites may have more restrictive licensing terms.

It might be worth considering sourcing alternative textures and uploading an update, rather than removing your assets altogether. On line textures are very convenient but I'm sure the community would be prepared to help with photographs etc to replace anything simple such as brick walls or slate roofs.

R3

Now see here's where it gets REALLY tricky! I am currently in the process of creating hi-res ground textures for my Clovis route using (among others) Mayang textures. I read their licence and thought 'Probably not' whereas you read it as 'OK - do it." So I emailed them. Their first response to the request was 'No' - as I thought it would be. After I showed them my license (which prohibits payware use including re-distribution on Payware Disks and/or compilation disks) and convinced them that stripping the modified texture image out of my asset was just too hard for most folks to bother they relented and granted permission.

My content is only available from my site but I could never upload the new texture to the DLS because N3V's EULA would then over-ride my config license. Knowing that my license would be invalidated by the N3V EULA would make any liability mine, not N3Vs.

And before anybody says "Ah don't worry about it, what could they do - they're never gonna sue ya for that" I'd point out once again that this is an ethics thread...

Andy

 

[leeferr]

John
I can understand what your concern is and I respect it. I just don't happen to agree with your line of logic regarding this since the assets are only referenced by the route and not embeddend in it. We'll never agree on that and friends can certainly agree to disagree.

I think the bottom line is that you'll see fewer and fewer quality routes in the end. After all, content is created for the sole purpose to be used in a route and the more routes that the asset is used in, the more exposure that your talent receives. More and more, members are expecting higher quality routes. This is very time consuming and can take months and even years to complete. I'm not sure why that individual should be denied the use of content because he wants a little pay for his time and effort in assembling all of the pieces and parts into the quality route that everyone wants. If I have to go through and read every single config for every asset that I use in a route just to make sure that it's license doesn't prohibit its use in a payware route, then the route is probably not going to get released. If the route gets done at all, it's going to be for my own pleasure. It seems that's the only safe thing to do to keep peace in the family around here.

Issues such as this could bode ill for the future of route creation.

Thanks for listening

Mike

 

[zatovisualworks]

Hi guys,

Just one of my eyes opened from my voluntary breaktime to have a short break-in here on this déjà vu thread...

Some weeks ago, a newbie posted to ask about some legal doubts he had -prior to a little bit näive wish to become a payware route creator-.

He asked about using DLS assets and its legal implications. I simply answered him not to worry at all about legal implications if using DLS assets on payware routes. One of our dear fellow trainzers seemed not to understand what I meant by saying that .

:hehe: Now I hope that this dear fellow trainzer does understand what I meant by re-reading dear N3VRF41L's Chris WW on this same thread...

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showpost.php?p=793165&postcount=4

Maybe that's why the DLS is not as attractive as it used to be... and maybe that's why dear John Whelan was talking about Ethics since the very title of the thread, and not legality.

Sometimes legality might not result in very ethical, or Ethics not very legal.

In this, algebra commutative property does not apply, I'm afraid.

Keep taking care, dear guys,

The going back to break time side of Alberte :wave:

 

[rumour3]

Now see here's where it gets REALLY tricky! I am currently in the process of creating hi-res ground textures for my Clovis route using (among others) Mayang textures. I read their licence and thought 'Probably not' whereas you read it as 'OK - do it." So I emailed them. Their first response to the request was 'No' - as I thought it would be. After I showed them my license (which prohibits payware use including re-distribution on Payware Disks and/or compilation disks) and convinced them that stripping the modified texture image out of my asset was just too hard for most folks to bother they relented and granted permission.

Andy

I would never advocate breaching a license but I read the Mayang terms as being unequivocal- if they were used as part of a derivative work with new artistic input such as a Trainz building asset then this could be released either commercially or non-commercially. I think they may have taken a different view with a ground texture, which they may have initially interpreted as just redistribution of the unmodified texture, which is explicitly not allowed.

R3

 

[johnwhelan]

Now, a different matter I wish to address. This is aimed at John, who is saying he has assured the owner of the 'texture' that it will not be used in a 'sale'/'commercial' release. I would recommend reading the Terms and Conditions of uploading to the DLS, as by uploading to the DLS, you give N3V permission to use that asset in commercial releases (e.g. in an add-on pack, or as built-in content in a 'full' release of Trainz). Hence, technically, you cannot keep this promise at all, as you've already given N3V permission to do exactly this. As you've also noted, we're now hosting/selling some payware ourselves. It's possible this may expand, possibly to include routes, etc...

Now that you have drawn my attention to the matter I have submitted a request for the first thirty three items to be deleted from the DLS as they were inappropriately uploaded since they are without a license being obtained for payware usage for the textures. I suspect there will be several hundred more once I have identified them.

Typically the license contains the wording "The package may not be sold, neither solely nor as a part of a compilation,
without written permission of the author." and it appears this was missed by N3V when the items were submitted to the DLS. I feel they should have been rejected at that point.

I have changed the license on kuid:86627:1481 where I do own copyright on the textures to allow it to be used in payware routes.

Many thanks

Cheerio John

 

[WindWalkr]

Easy enough for him to download the freeware part off the DLS and reference it to his own route. Then remove it before release, retaining the necessary kuid references.

His payware route is then released with a small caveat that some merging and connecting of tracks will be needed to run section B to C.

How is that ethical, honest or respectful of freeware DLS content.

If he sells it as a payware route called "A to C", then it's not only unethical, it's probably fraud, since B-to-C is not included in the sale item.

If he sells it as a payware route called "A to B" but notes in the blurb that it's compatible with the freely available "B to C", then I'd say he's both legal and ethical.

chris

 

[pommie]

Since I will not be on this forum again, let me really say what I think about your attitude and the attitude of others here on this forum. most members who are from the usa automatically take the position that they are correct in all things and then attempt to force their opinions on others, of course this is typical of your fellow country men. (free speech for americans, but not for the rest of us). Whilst the members from australia always take the side of auran/nv3, even though they know that auran/nv3 have erred in there attitude to user's of older versions.

(note: I chose not to use upper case for the above mentioned countries)

Finally before I leave I would request that auran/nv3 please remove all my assets from the dls.


Goodbye.

I take offense at the underlined statement, you need to get down off your high horse and take the blinkers off,
Talk about spitting the dummy then picking up your ball and going home, I do have one remark for you though,

Leave the door open when you leave, that way we can be sure you have gone, because the trolling attitude you have displayed above (and elsewhere) is unwelcome, and oh yeah, bye bye

Cheers David

 

[Muliebuck]

As an Australian, I'm not some blind N3V Fanboy, who just worships the ground the crew walk on, I give credit where credit is due, and speak my mind if i don't like something, or something that worked, gets 'broken'. What I fear most of all, is many talented creators will take their bat and ball, leave for third party websites, so make the art of route creation and such even harder - when one has to remmeber a thousand different websites, which come and go with frightening regularity - and leave us only with 'payware' content....