Warning to users downloading content by Bort85 - Please Read

[oknotsen]

2. The DLS needs a built in check when accepting modified content from a third party that permission has been given. That might be in the form of an automated email to the original creator with a link to click and confirm their acceptance, or a manual flag to the file librarian to do the same. Either way, the re-owned content goes nowhere until that step has been taken.

No offence, but this is far easier said then done.
How do you expect software to be able to see the difference between modified content and a new asset?
How would it recognize the original creator?
These are pretty hard to program checks, if possible at all. That is going to be really expensive to be made, if possible at all. As a result, the game becomes to expensive to be made and N3V will go belly up. Next to this, you add extra work to those people who gave premission for reskins, etc, which demotivates them to ever do that again. And all that to prevent a few illegal items from ending up on the DLS?

3. It is not acceptable for N3V to sit on their hands and wait for the original creator to contact them. If an alert has been raised they need to at least start making enquiries and block/remove the affected content until the bona-fides are validated. The original creator might be on holiday or away from the PC for a few days but that should not entail waiting for the creator to return.

Any idea how much extra manpower this validation is going to demand and how open it is for abuse?
Nobody can know if an item is on the DLS illegally, except the original creator. If everyone can demand N3V to do a validation for every item they think is illegal (or just because they dont like the item and pretend it to be illegal), it will require extra people to be hired by N3V to do so who then need to go contact the original author (if they even have a clue who it is and dont have to spend a lot of time figuring that out). Guess who needs to pay for those pople in the long run?

Don't get me wrong. I am just as much against this illegal uploading as most of you, but I dont see a cheap and easy solution except for us pointing the original creator to the possible illegal item and have him/her contact N3V, which is the system already in place.
So... Did someone contact AJS already?

 

[Vern]

Sorry Oknotson, just because something is difficult does not mean it should not be attempted. I'm no programmer but if an asset by a certain name exists under one users id and it appears as a fresh upload by someone else, then a simple database check would see that, being enough to trigger a manual check. Yes it might mean more work and more cost but, 1. I've paid for the game, 2. I've paid FCT for DLS access (okay not strictly necessary for uploading but I am supporting N3V) and 3. I am possibly generating more sales of the sim and FCT's by uploading a route people want, which will certainly cease if someone else claims it as their work. (Along with possible legal action against the individual and N3V for allowing it).

I certainly don't think it is unreasonable to expect a suspect item to be flagged before it goes on the DLS, with all the attendant problems once people start downloading and using it. Any programmer worth their salt should be able to automate that process. Or are you saying it is quite in order for an unscrupulous or anarchic user to clone someone else's content - which may have taken months to create - and pass it off as their own without any pre-checks in place. That in theory is what the current Trainz software and DLS arrangements allow and it isn't right.

Anyhow I've had my say, time to move on but the whole situation strikes me as incredibly complacent when it comes to protecting the freeware creator, at source.

 

[shaneturner12]

This has left me in an awkward situation. I'm beginning to wish I hadn't created this thread, but I do want to help in the fight.

Shane

 

[sniper297]

My suggestion for next time would be to contact the suspected victim first to make sure a crime has actually been committed before hollering stop thief. An asphalt texture that looks like someone else's asphalt texture might seem suspicious, but if two people create something that's supposed to look like asphalt, they would logically be very much alike because asphalt looks like asphalt. "AJS Groundplane Mesh Library" would certainly seem like probable cause, but it's not concrete evidence - contact whoever created the original, if HE looks at it and does a comparison and declares (1) it's his and (2) he did not give permission, that would be enough to contact the helpdesk about it.

At Vern, I'm not a programmer but I know enough about programming to tell you it's impossible - if a program could be designed to do a file compare that skipped the KUID number and red flagged anything that was the same as another asset except for the KUID number, it would have to compare each new asset against several hundred thousand existing assets, would throttle uploads back to one or two per day, and generate 100 times as many false positives as the unknown dependency check while missing a bunch that were actually pirated because of minor changes. Having humans do it would take even longer, just thinking about the magnitude of the task brings visions of bailing out the Atlantic with a teacup.

 

[RRSignal]

Hi Vern,

Forgive me if it seems like I'm piling on you about this, but I can affirm what Jim and oknotson said. A bigger issue, however, is even if it were possible, do we really want to throttle creativity in this game? That's one of the best things about Trainz.

About the only measure I can think of that can be used to reduce the incidence of this is to eliminate the clone asset function. Even so, that is easily evaded by simply opening an asset for edit, changing what you want, then re-importing it. In a way, cloning an asset is better because it preserves everything but kuid and author name, allowing others to easily identify pirated content.

Moving a tree 10m and calling it yours is a far harder issue to fix. At what level of work must a route be modified to be considered theirs? What if a person moves two trees 10m, or 1 tree 20m. Is that enough? I think you can see what I'm getting at.

Unfortunately, it seems the most feasible solution is to actually do a little work and police the DLS and third-party websites ourselves.

(Well, at least until we can invent computers that can think and make judgments themselves. But I think the human race will be in BIG trouble if that ever happens! )

 

[StorkNest]

Hi all,

Can I offer a few suggestions:

1. If you are the copyright owner, and your content has been uploaded to the DLS without your permission, then please contact our helpdesk to have the issue resolved.

2. If you are not the copyright owner, but believe that the content is uploaded illegally, please contact the copyright owner with your concerns. We are generally not able to take any action without a specific claim from the copyright owner.

3. Please avoid making accusations about other users, groups, or communities, or N3V. It's not very friendly, and it may open you up to legal liability if your accusations prove to be incorrect.

kind regards,

chris

Not accusing, Chris, but I saw a recent post of Pofig where he claimed users uploaded cloned and possibly modified content of his to DLS, he did as you said and nothing changed.

Let me see if I have this right:

Asphalt1,<kuid:703319:100345> by bort85 looks exactly like Asphalt1,<kuid2:151900:500100:1> by blue_sky_interactive (which is built-in).

As long as blue_sky_interactive doesn't complain about it then it is a fair upload?

So then I can just wait a bit for the dust to clear then upload my own clone of the asset?

Not that I plan on doing anything like that, what's mine is mine and what isn't isn't.

Problem with ground textures is that some user get images from the public domain that anyone can use so you have 2 or more people uploading the same ground texture. I have seen this going back to TRS2004 if not earlier, this is why all mine are my own creation or pictures and my license in them allows anyone to do what they wish with them.

 

[Vern]

RRSignal - I can perhaps see where you and others are coming from, but as a content creator whose work has been plagiarised (one of my Railworks routes from UKTS re-appeared on TS.com under someone else claiming ownership and I had to fight Nels to get it taken down) and redistributed for profit (my MSTS routes turning up on Ebay, not much I could do there) it is a matter I do feel very strongly about. Luckily I don't think any of my Trainz work has fallen victim to this and hopefully it never will, plus probably easier to spot a route that has been plagiarised as opposed to a tree or ground texture.

However I can assure you that failure to control copyright theft is a far more effective throttle on creativity than a few extra steps to check the bona-fides of uploaded content. I am already re-evaluating exactly how much more I want to do in a sim which appears to offer little protection and no reward to the freeware producer, it being bad enough that N3V can take ownership of your stuff on the DLS before the matter under discussion.

 

[sniper297]

Vern, you're saying "a few extra steps", if each file comparison only took 5 seconds for the bot to process, with over 200,000 assets to compare against it would take an average of 4.6 hours to process one asset. Again, even if it were possible to program something that actually worked with a 90% success rate it's still trying to bail out the ocean with a teacup. It's something like a car that goes 100,000 miles on a gallon of gas, very desirable but ain't gonna happen.

 

[Vern]

As I said Jim, I'm not a programmer - only the N3V programmer would know what sort of checksums would be needed for the cross referencing required.

Another example of uncontrolled updating was the other week where a yellow-brown grass texture was obsoleted and replaced by a dark green leaf one, totally changing the character of route(s) that use it. Slightly different to the matter under discussion and presumably part of the ongoing content "updates" but an example of where even well intentioned free for all with regard to file access ends up.

Let's turn this on its head and maybe suggest when a user uploads content, there is an option of it being locked - i.e. it cannot be altered or any changes on another users computer does not change the original KUID. There is a precedent for this outside the rail sim industry, for example a text field in a controlled document would be noted as created or "owned" by the original author. Someone comes along after you've gone off duty and corrects a spelling mistake - their name is noted in the "Edited By" section but the original ownership cannot be altered.

 

[WindWalkr]

I would expect N3V to take action if they have been alerted that a route I created had been cloned and uploaded under someone else's username with no permission from myself.

If you notified us of that, we certainly would. However, the flip side is this: if one of our users sends us a message to indicate that YOU have illegally uploaded some content, should we take your content down? Which user should we trust? In some cases, this kind of thing appears clearcut. In some cases, appearances can be deceiving. We don't want to get involved in these kinds of arguments, so unless someone comes forward who can directly claim ownership of the content involved, we're much less likely to act on any accusations.

I have seen it myself when Trainz creates a new version of route on doing a small change, the owner becomes you which should not be the case.

The mistake here is that you are assuming that the user who created a specific asset has ownership over all the components that comprise the asset. This is obviously an incorrect assumption, though I can certainly see how you would make the assumption in the absence of any conflicting information. It's no different from me taking a physical book, removing the cover flap, and replacing it with my own flap that indicates that I wrote the book.

chris

 

[WindWalkr]

Not accusing, Chris, but I saw a recent post of Pofig where he claimed users uploaded cloned and possibly modified content of his to DLS, he did as you said and nothing changed.

I'm not aware of the case that you're referring to, so I can't say whether this is a mistake on our part, or a mistake on someone else's part. If you'd like to give me additional information (eg. dates of contact, copies of email, or that sort of thing) so that I can track down exactly what was said to helpdesk, I may be able to find out what's going on there. If it's private information, feel free to forward it to <trainzdev@auran.com> directly.

chris

 

[Pendolino]

"AJS Groundplane Mesh Library" would certainly seem like probable cause, but it's not concrete evidence

I agree... in fact I said it could have happened by chance: after all, there are only 17,576 possible 3-letter acronyms. The probability that two authors independently select the same acronym is 1 in 308,915,776... .

This is the config file of the "Sottopasso singolo", <kuid:703319:100263>, published by Bort85 on the DLS. Note how all the strings are in Italian.

> Sottopasso singolo means "Single underpass" in English"
> The license reads "Ogni modifica o uso diverso da Trainz deve essere concordato con l'autore", i.e. "Any modification or use other than Trainz must be agreed with the author".
> The "author" tag reads "Jango" (yes, the author of our U.S. routes)
> The "organisation" tag reads "Trainzitalia" (and there is no Bort85 among our users)

This is the config file of the current version of "Sottopasso singolo", <kuid2:703319:100263:2>. Note that some text strings have been removed; the remaining ones, however, are still in Italian, and are the same I pointed out above.

This is the config file of the original "Sottopasso singolo", <kuid2:57230:28026:1>. This asset has never been published outside the Trainzitalia website, and its TRS2004 version is available there as freeware.

These are the files contained in the folder of the "Sottopasso singolo", <kuid2:703319:100263:2>. I'm still wondering why a Russian author should name his files in Italian...

These are the files contained in the folder of the original "Sottopasso singolo", <kuid2:57230:28026:1>. They are exactly the same files above and - by the way - the poly count of the "sottopassosing.IM" file is exactly the same.

I asked Jango about this clone and I assured me that he never heard about a Bort85, nor he ever authorised anyone to upload a copy of his content to the DLS.

Is this evidence enough to prove that - at least in this case - Bort85 cloned an object made by another author?

I understand Chris would like to have a direct report from the author, but unfortunately Jango is not very fluent with English, so he I reported his case here. Should you need a few lines from him to remove the object, we'll provide them soon.

Regards

 

[WindWalkr]

I understand Chris would like to have a direct report from the author, but unfortunately Jango is not very fluent with English, so he I reported his case here. Should you need a few lines from him to remove the object, we'll provide them soon.

If you are in direct contact with the copyright owner, then please ask him for a statement (does not need to be in English) and then forward that to our helpdesk (NOT here on the forums) with an English cover note.

kind regards,

chris

 

[Pendolino]

Many thanks, Chris!

I'll tell Jango about your request tomorrow (now it's 1.42 AM here in Italy ).

Regards

 

[drchoi21]

Hey is my content cloned by any chance?

 

[Vern]

If you notified us of that, we certainly would. However, the flip side is this: if one of our users sends us a message to indicate that YOU have illegally uploaded some content, should we take your content down? Which user should we trust? In some cases, this kind of thing appears clearcut. In some cases, appearances can be deceiving. We don't want to get involved in these kinds of arguments, so unless someone comes forward who can directly claim ownership of the content involved, we're much less likely to act on any accusations.

The mistake here is that you are assuming that the user who created a specific asset has ownership over all the components that comprise the asset. This is obviously an incorrect assumption, though I can certainly see how you would make the assumption in the absence of any conflicting information. It's no different from me taking a physical book, removing the cover flap, and replacing it with my own flap that indicates that I wrote the book.

chris

Just a couple of views on this...
As the software provider and host of the DLS, it is your duty to get involved when copyright theft is at stake. If the accusation is later proven to be false, then action can be taken against the person making it. In my case, I wouldn't dream of taking someone elses work, changing it around a bit and uploading without their permission. I'm sure 99.9% of Trainz users have the same degree of integrity, what we need to protect against is the anarchic few (plus maybe the occasional user uninformed or ignorant of copyright law) who have no qualms about claiming someone elses work as their own.

Re Para 2. So far as a route is concerned, that is the top of the content tree. By making a small change which renders the ownership to you, the preparation, research and long hours spent creating and testing the thing by the rightful original owner is wiped away. I have several routes where Surveyor has forced me into a "Save As" while creating a scenario, even though no physical change was made, but with the result that in cmp the author of the cloned route is shown as me. That isn't right, IMHO.

 

[shaneturner12]

I've got to agree with Vern regarding Save As. I believe this is a fault on the layers system, which can have a tendency of working on the route layer not the session layer.

Shane

EDIT: I also have a feeling that the cloning facility in Content Manager may be contributing to this issue as well, as it is too easy for a user to clone someone else's asset and call it their own (since all they need to do is change a few details in the config).

 

[sniper297]

Disagree. N3V is a game developer, not a law enforcement agency, not equipped to do investigations nor should they have any obligation to try. Proper procedure is when you think your assets have been pirated, check it out and provide proof along with the complaint. If it's someone else's work you think is being pirated contact him, if he confirms it's pirated then it's up to him to contact the help desk. N3V's only obligation is to remove the pirated asset once it's proven to be pirated, if they had to chase down every rumor of piracy they wouldn't have time to do anything else.

An aside here, AFAIK none of my work has ever been stolen, apparently it's not good enough for software thieves. But if I was that worried about what happened to my creations after uploading I would never upload, once you put anything on the internet anything could happen to it.

 

[jjanmarine3]

I just don't understand the logic behind stealing and pirating internally amongst us trainzers, after all, there is enough for everyone ?

 

[shaneturner12]

To be honest, neither do I. Most of the time though, the pirating/stealing is done by those who have never posted on these forums.

Shane

P.S. I'd like to apologise to anyone I may have upset by creating this thread - it seemed a good idea at the time.