lord9 - again

[JCitron]

If Lord9 had updated and uploaded content and gave credit to the original authors, I'm sure we wouldn't have too many complaints. I think what irks us about this situation more than anything is he has uploaded other people's content under his own username by simply altering the KUID. In many cases he didn't even change the original name and in other cases put in some odd thumbnail image that has nothing to do with the original content.

This has been the pattern in general with these guys that started a year or so ago, and sadly N3V doesn't see this. Their justification makes sense for a one-off situation, but this is not a one-off situation. This is a blatant workaround of the system which most content creators and users here wouldn't even consider doing. What irks us too is this is so obvious that it smacks us in the head, but we hear from those, supposedly in the know, that we are to carry on and pay no attention.

The fact that there is no attribution or credit given to the original authors, amounts to pure plagiarism. In the real world people caught doing this are stripped of their college accreditation, dismissed from their occupation, face heavy fines, and are sometimes jailed.

John

 

[Lataxe]

The fact that there is no attribution or credit given to the original authors, amounts to pure plagiarism. In the real world people caught doing this are stripped of their college accreditation, dismissed from their occupation, face heavy fines, and are sometimes jailed.

John

Mr C,

Lord9 updates make no attempt to hide the original creator. For example, the cloned Pofig items state "BMO bushes and trees" in the thumbnail and the description below says "speedTree, made by Pofig, repaint by Urman_Diesel." with Pofig's url referenced. How is that plagiarism?

Plagiarism in academe is a serious offense because it not only surreptitiously copies an originator's work but gains the plagiarist an enormous benefit such as a degree. What enormous benefit has Lord9 gained? Not that he's plagiarising anyway, since he makes no pretence the uploaded items were made by himself - he merely appears in the AuthorID column of the DLS because uploading under his own kuid identity is the only way he can upload at all.

And what advantage does he gain; and at what expense to Pofig? His motive appears only to be able to use multiplayer with routes containing Pofig trees. He doesn't appear to be seeking either fortune or fame. In fact, he has only infamy, awarded by an annoyed Pofig and various witch hunting fellows.

It doesn't help to solve whatever this issue really is by pretending it's much, much worse (a crime, plagiarism, etcetera) than it is. Leave the hyperbole to politicians and snake oil salesmen.

Just off now to put some salve on me head where I've been banging it on a brick wall made of mind-bricks cemented with absolute certainty.

Lataxe

 

[BuilderBob]

N3V approved placement of the clones in the Russian localization. Invaluable help.

and they have stated repeatedly that they will remove that material if the owner of the copyright provides information to confirm that their copyright has been infringed. But the owner has to provide that advice, and I don't think it's unreasonable that they ask for that to be done in a formal process, so there is a proper record.

 

[BuilderBob]

He has also made multiple reports of such piracy in the past. Correct me if I'm wrong but right now N3V is refusing and dismissing Pofig's request to take down this pirated content based on a trivial technicality?

Perhaps that's a reasonable gripe, but it is very easily fixed - resend the requests to the correct place. Then, perhaps, press N3V for features such as a special ticket category, a public listing of outstanding requests, a new forum category for alerting contributors to suspected infringements, or any other ideas that might enable to community to assist in policing this. But without the copyright owner lodging a formal complaint nothing can be done.

The reason why they leave isn't of importance right now, it is that considering the nature of the Trainz content-base and who makes them, we should be putting in the effort to attract and retain content creators.

Does this incident and those similar sound like an attractive proposition to would-be content creators? Would this incident encourage existing content creators to continue creating for Trainz and offering them at no cost to the rest of us? (The answer is no.)

Nicholas

That's a valid comment, but my point was the managing infringing material is a shared responsibility - the copyright owner needs to alert N3V to the problem, and N3V needs to respond by taking down the infringing material. If N3V has specific rules (and I think there is good reason for those rules) then the copyright owner needs to follow the process.

Whether there are ways to protect the material so that such a process isn't necessary is another can of worms, particularly relevant to Trainz where such a large proportion of the material is freeware with copyright retained. But that's a discussion for another place.

 

[JCitron]

Mr C,

Lord9 updates make no attempt to hide the original creator. For example, the cloned Pofig items state "BMO bushes and trees" in the thumbnail and the description below says "speedTree, made by Pofig, repaint by Urman_Diesel." with Pofig's url referenced. How is that plagiarism?

Plagiarism in academe is a serious offense because it not only surreptitiously copies an originator's work but gains the plagiarist an enormous benefit such as a degree. What enormous benefit has Lord9 gained? Not that he's plagiarising anyway, since he makes no pretence the uploaded items were made by himself - he merely appears in the AuthorID column of the DLS because uploading under his own kuid identity is the only way he can upload at all.

And what advantage does he gain; and at what expense to Pofig? His motive appears only to be able to use multiplayer with routes containing Pofig trees. He doesn't appear to be seeking either fortune or fame. In fact, he has only infamy, awarded by an annoyed Pofig and various witch hunting fellows.

It doesn't help to solve whatever this issue really is by pretending it's much, much worse (a crime, plagiarism, etcetera) than it is. Leave the hyperbole to politicians and snake oil salesmen.

Just off now to put some salve on me head where I've been banging it on a brick wall made of mind-bricks cemented with absolute certainty.

Lataxe

True...

But.... in the sense of using his own ID to uploads other's works is plagiarism in the technical sense since his ID = his name and in most cases he did not make an attempt to attribute. He copied and posted. Period. So yeah, this might be a hyperbole or a stretch of the terminology, but very true.

The fact remains that no one has done anything yet and this issue has been escalating it seems from last year some time if not before that - time goes by too fast sometimes to keep track. If anything, I would put a block on his content upload, this would go for anyone for that matter, until the investigation proves otherwise. Granted, this might be construed as guilty until proven innocent, but in cases like this which are pretty obvious there is no other way to do it. Once the uploader shows that his/her stuff is distributed freely and with permission, then so be it, he/she can processed as before.

John

 

[ZecMurphy]

Ignoring the fact that all outstanding tickets should have been resolved prior to shutting down the old Helpdesk, this is still the dumbest justification I have seen so far with regards to N3V's takedown policy

The tickets were submitted to the old helpdesk months after we switched over to the new helpdesk (you can't actually access the old helpdesk website anymore either). I know they're there, but I can no longer do anything with them (I can't reply to them at all, and I can't view them at the moment - note, even if I could reply to the old helpdesk no one could receive/read the response).

We've pointed this out to Pofig a few days after he told us that his tickets were 'deleted' (no, they were sent to the old helpdesk after the closure of the old helpdesk; again we don't monitor/use/etc this old helpdesk; it was simply kept so I could transfer the pre-defined replies a few weeks after we moved to the new helpdesk). So far, we've not had a full list of the pirated content sent to us that we actually have access too now (without that list, we have no way of knowing what is his content). I've provided the correct location to him about 5 times now, and still no further information.

Regards

 

[ZecMurphy]

N3V approved placement of the clones in the Russian localization. Invaluable help.

Just in response to this one. We have been investigating this, and we have unravelled this situation. We are now contacting the Russian publisher requesting that the cloned versions of Pofig's assets be removed from their TS 12 release. It should be noted that this pack was created by the publisher, as an 'addition' included with their TS12 release.

Regards

 

[Pofig]

:hehe: Two years of sales. This makes no sense. And it will not change anything.

 

[railroaddaddy42]

so is repairing content from dls cleanup illegal?

 

[JCitron]

so is repairing content from dls cleanup illegal?

No it is not illegal to repair content, however, perhaps this content pack is. You might want to send in a helpdesk ticket regarding this by using the button located at the top of the forums.

John

 

[clam1952]

so is repairing content from dls cleanup illegal?

If it's on the list to be repaired then no it isn't, so the item you fixed from the list in your post earlier is fine.

 

[cascaderailroad]

so is repairing content from dls cleanup illegal?

Repairing assets should be left to the experienced Trainzers, only !

If everyone and their brother "cleaned up" assets, and changed them, (so they would work in multiplayer), it would break them for everyone else ... an inexperienced person, could do irreparable harm the the DLS, by meddling around, and changing things, on a whim.

 

[railroaddaddy42]

Were you experienced the first day you got a version of trainz.Hard to be born with experience!sorry if Im trying to learn how I will just leave stuff alone.Thanks for the confidence help.

Bob Moyer

 

[Zeldaboy14]

I've learned what works and what does not work with fixing content. I've done it for about a year now, and once you get a hang at fixing content, it's easy.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Fixing assets (for your own use) may be easy (for your own PC use) ... but some people would not like it very much, and it would be a huge disservice to the original asset creator, if Zeldaboy14, or Cascaderailroad started in on self initiated, mass revamping project, mission, altering dozens of working DLS assets, and uploading them to the DLS, as broken assets, ruining them for others.

You see ... just because you use trainzbuild 3.7 multiplayer ... and you decide to take it on your own initiative, to change the trainz-build of all 2.9 assets to be trainz-build 3.7, so that they work on your own PC ... that is wrong ... and breaks the asset for all other lower trainz-build users

 

[RRSignal]

You see ... just because you use trainzbuild 3.7 multiplayer ... and you decide to take it on your own initiative, to change the trainz-build of all 2.9 assets to be trainz-build 3.7, so that they work on your own PC ... that is wrong ... and breaks the asset for all other lower trainz-build users

^^^THIS.

I'm not sure it's always intentional - I seem to recall older versions of AssetX defaulting to TS2010 even for TS2009 fixes - but setting the TrainzBuild too high is definitely an issue, and breaks assets for many if not more than it helps.