Pofig content - N3V are tempting me

What do we know about pofig's (tree) content?

(1) Pofig's license allows redistribution of his assets.

(2) N3V will not remove items from the Download Station unless the original creator requests it.

(3) Pofig has left the Trainz community and will not request removal of his assets uploaded to the DLS under other usernames.

OK so, technically, I could upload all of his trees under my KUID to the DLS to be used and enjoyed by the community (well, those with TS10 and TS12)? And, because pofig would never ask for them to be removed, they would stay there in perpetuity and no action would be taken against me?

This is an interesting moral dilemma - a bit like finding a £50 note in the street and wondering whether to pocket it or take it to a police station.

What would people do?

Paul

Knowing the content isn't his and that he's breaking the contract, it should be removed. I see the author is uploading content from other creators now as well, I don't know if he has permission or not.

You absolutely can not alter anyone else's content using your kuid, without explicit permission from the creator, if you do not receive such explicit permission, or the creator does not respond, or has left the community ... You can not alter and upload it under your name ... ever

cascaderailroad said:

You absolutely can not alter anyone else's content using your kuid, without explicit permission from the creator, if you do not receive such explicit permission, or the creator does not respond, or has left the community ... You can not alter and upload it under your name ... ever

Click to expand...

However N3V will only accept a take down notice from the original content creator so in practical terms so what. I think profig has used the term pirates and N3V in the same sentence but I can't recall exactly what he said.

I would agree with you that you shouldn't.

Profig's trees etc only work up to TS12 and are available on JATWS.org and kuid finder has lots of pointers to them. Once the world switches to TANE then the problem goes away. Trouble is at the moment TANE is a bit short of Wow its so much better than TS12 factor and more into how much do I need to spend to run it. Still I'm sure life will be better in May when the real TANE ships.

Cheerio John

@OP
I've made similar suggestions in the past and never gotten anywhere with it..... Honestly, I think its great that we have the creators that we do (And have had, and my hats off to them). But when one leaves and says straight up "Im gone, but I can't be bothered to do anything about my 3rd party hosted material", why shouldn't we upload it? Or author's that have been confirmed inactive for half a decade or more? Is it really going to take someone cloning their work polygon for polygon, to get around this issue? How far do we take this?

Theres a % (Something like 40% I think?) that the Patent Office uses to determine individuality as far as Patents go.... But this is the N3V DLS, and though as a matter of respect I strongly agree we shouldn't just out and out plagiarize other peoples work, we're already have different versions of the same basic assets being made up. How long until we reach a point where the 3 polygons (Or branches, or Bolts, or Spikes, or Spots on the wall) you did differently make a difference? Further, though I agree N3V should reserve the right to be able to pull content off the DLS, and I am glad that they will do so at the behest of Author's, I can't forsee a court case ever appearing out of this.

As Far as Pofig's trees..... Yea, IDK. Personally I'd wait until after the release of T:ANE and a resolution to its Arboreal issues before I made a decision like that. Supposedly the release is right around the corner, and even if you uploaded the trees tomorrow, T:ANE might just ruin them forever making the effort and attempted contribution moot in the first place. Definitely hold on to them (As everyone else thats ever downloaded them is going to be doing), and push comes to shove maybe the next TPR for TS 10/12 Assets will host them?

Falcus

Paulsw2 said:

What do we know about pofig's (tree) content?

(1) Pofig's license allows redistribution of his assets.

(2) N3V will not remove items from the Download Station unless the original creator requests it.

(3) Pofig has left the Trainz community and will not request removal of his assets uploaded to the DLS under other usernames.

OK so, technically, I could upload all of his trees under my KUID to the DLS to be used and enjoyed by the community (well, those with TS10 and TS12)? And, because pofig would never ask for them to be removed, they would stay there in perpetuity and no action would be taken against me?

This is an interesting moral dilemma - a bit like finding a £50 note in the street and wondering whether to pocket it or take it to a police station.

What would people do?

Paul

Click to expand...

I'd keep well out of it!

1. This need clarifying once and for all, for the benefit of those who cannot bother to read licenses properly. Legally you can't upload his trees to the DLS as they could be used commercially. Yes I know thats extremely unlikely now as T:ANE can't use them anyway however N3V is still a commercial enterprise.
Pofigs licence if you look it up, link available from the license button on his assets in CM, is Creative Commons none of which permit commercial use, that's the problem with people uploading them to the DLS there is no restriction in people distributing them by other means but must conform to the original license.

Copy of license here http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

They won't be of any use in T:ANE anyway it's physically impossible to use v5 trees with a v6 engine and there is no easy fix, IDV have no backwards compatibility as they revise the algorithms with every new version so the original source is required to be modified and recompiled, got that from IDV creators of SpeedTree.
Unless pofig changes the license which fairly obviously won't happen they can't legally go on the DLS. Failure by N3V to take any action for blatantly obvious clones of pofigs assets doesn't make it open house on breaking license conditions. Pretty sure nearly all of them are now available from various sites now for those who haven't got them, I have hundreds of the things!

2. Not a lot we can do about that, it's up to pofig. As I understand it he thinks that reporting them all the first couple of times was sufficient. However if someone is daft enough to state that they are going to upload pofigs trees on N3V's forum I'm pretty sure they would get jumped on from a great height! As happened to someone who announced they could supply no longer available Payware. He doesn't need to create a list for proof, just link to the post of intent ;o)

3. Not left but still active, just not creating any trees, last seen April 4th 2015 and he does very occasionally put up screenshots, more likely he will be found on Russian Trainz sites. He never was a prolific poster on here.

Seriously, I think T:ANE is likely to reduce the requirement for his trees, afraid it's time to move on and hope for some decent stuff from those creators who have SpeedTree 6 Licences, think we have at least 3 possibly 4.

To add, I'll say this now, if anything ever happens to me I'm quite happy for people to distribute modify or fix my stuff with the one restriction, NO FACES ON LOCOMOTIVES.

Hi All
As noted previously, content can only be removed at the request of the creator.

As we noted previously, this is to prevent us removing content that may be uploaded without permission; without first gaining confirmation. Only 2 people can know if permission was given, the creator and the uploader. This is the same as any other copyright infringement, only the copyright holder can request that infringing works be removed. We have, in past, had issues of creators (including Pofig) actually reporting legitimate uploads as having been illegal uploads of their content. These were often objects that were made to look the same, with the same naming convention, but were actually newly built assets to act as legitimate 'replacements' on the DLS. This is just one of the reasons why we require the original creator/copyright holder, to contact us; and to specify exactly which assets they need us to look at/remove.

As a note, Australia does not have the '20% must be changed' laws; our copyright laws are a little less clear when it comes to modification of work...

As a note, if you did intentionally upload another authors work, and it was then reported (even at a later date), it's likely that your account would also be banned from all access to the Download Station...

Regards