should there be a post about permissions by authors

fourteen

Active member
I was thinking due to a number of questions that keep coming up if there is a need for post that authors can post what there reskinn, modify etc rights are or not as the case may be. All in one place here in the forums? This might help some of the problems that seam to be happing lately on still being uploaded with out the original authors permission. Any idea's on this? Thanks.
 
Good Afternoon Fourteen
As there are many creators who are not active on the forums, such a thread would cover an exceptionally small number of creators. In some cases, creators also have different permissions on different items (especially if they are using parts, or modifying, other creator's works).

Most, if not all, creators will outline any permissions or restrictions in the license tag of their asset.

If there is nothing in the license tag, then this means that NO permissions have been given, and as such you would need to obtain permission directly from the creator/author before you could release any modified versions of the content.

An empty license tag does NOT mean that the asset is free to do with as you please, it means the creator has not specified any permissions or additional restrictions to their basic ownership of the asset.

Regards
 
Regardless of whether there is a post from the author or if there is permission given in the asset licence tag, the best method is always to PM or email (if an address is supplied) the author personally. This avoids the possibility of a misunderstanding over exactly what the posted or licence permission may mean.

If an author cannot be contacted and there is no posted or licence permission, then of course that means NO PERMISSION. Better to be disappointed by not being able to reskin or modify an asset than to be disappointed by having your work deleted and your reputation trashed.
 
It occurs to me that some older creators who have left the Trainz community (some many years ago) have made a statement to the effect that their creations are in the public domain, and new Trainzers do not know this . Their names should be listed somewhere. If this thread becomes a sticky perhaps their names could be listed here. Just a thought.
 
It occurs to me that some older creators who have left the Trainz community (some many years ago) have made a statement to the effect that their creations are in the public domain, and new Trainzers do not know this . Their names should be listed somewhere. If this thread becomes a sticky perhaps their names could be listed here. Just a thought.

Dave:

One of the biggest concerns I have for the Trainz hobby, having gone through this with the death of Ben Dorsey, is that many content creators have done nothing in the way of providing for disposition of their Trainz content after their death. As many of us content developers are in our 60s or 70s, including me I might add, this is a legitimate concern. Providing for the disposition can be done in a variety of ways (ie; your will, having someone to take care of this stuff when you are gone, posting in the forum in advance, etc).

It was only through a stroke of luck that I happened to try to call Ben just a few days after his death and was able to talk with his family, who did not know me, and get them to agree to allow me to assist them with this regarding Ben's content on the DLS. Ben left no disposition instructions in his will and it looks increasingly likely that because of this all his thousands of meshes will be lost as a result since they are on computer hardware the family planned to sell and they don't know how to deal with the extraction and other technical issues. If I weer closer to his home I would simply go there but unfortunately it is some distance away.

See this link for what I did for me:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ns-License-for-MSGSapper-s-Trainz-DLS-content

BTW there is also a similar one in that same section of the forum covering all of Ben Dorsey's content.

I hope content developers will take the time to address this important issue rather then leaving it to fate/chance. I sure would hate to see someones extensive Trainz content work lost as a result of lack of advance planning.

N3V establishing a mesh repository for those of us who would like to contribute to it, would also be helpful.....

Bob
 
here's an idea that is easy to do to solve this: peeps can put a short and sweet text on their profile but it's only an idea.
[h=4]Basic Information[/h] Age
???
[h=5]About Trainz user[/h] BiographyPermission Granted to reskin my stuff, edited or make change thereof in the event I'm not around.
Location ???
 
BiographyPermission Granted to reskin my stuff, edited or make change thereof in the event I'm not around.

While that is a good start, it will need to be tightened up. I hate to go "all legal" but what exactly does "in the event I'm not around" mean?

"Death" is clearly the most likely and obvious meaning but there are other possibilities - a long stretch in chemo for example. Some-one comes back after a long absence due to illness or what-ever and discovers that their work has been reskinned, modded and uploaded because some people decided that a month or two away or not responding to PMs counts as "not around".

I also seriously doubt that such an "uncertified" statement would have any legal standing.

I know that this is a thorny issue but in today's litigious world one has to tread very carefully. As has been discussed in other threads over the years, it is extremely unlikely that a user who has infringed another users copyright will be sued or taken to court by the original creator. But that may not be the case for a company that owns the web site, such as the DLS.

My legal 2 cents worth.
 
While that is a good start, it will need to be tightened up. I hate to go "all legal" but what exactly does "in the event I'm not around" mean?

"Death" is clearly the most likely and obvious meaning but there are other possibilities - a long stretch in chemo for example. Some-one comes back after a long absence due to illness or what-ever and discovers that their work has been reskinned, modded and uploaded because some people decided that a month or two away or not responding to PMs counts as "not around".

I also seriously doubt that such an "uncertified" statement would have any legal standing.

I know that this is a thorny issue but in today's litigious world one has to tread very carefully. As has been discussed in other threads over the years, it is extremely unlikely that a user who has infringed another users copyright will be sued or taken to court by the original creator. But that may not be the case for a company that owns the web site, such as the DLS.

My legal 2 cents worth.

To each there own judgement I suppose I don't like using the word "Death" so lightly I was trying to sound more monist about it.
 
I also seriously doubt that such an "uncertified" statement would have any legal standing.
A statement concerning the disposition of copyrightable material has legal standing, depending only on the ability to confirm it as genuine. In the case of a password-protected site maintained by an independent third party (eg, N3V's user registration system) then that would likely qualify as meeting reasonable expectations of authenticity.

For those authors ready to place their items into the public domain that would be an excellent solution.

But it can't be conditional. It can't include something like "When I die..." because a will will always take precedence over such a statement (those assets that can have a designated assignee are determined by law, and the list is very limited). It can't include a condition such as 'When I'm no longer around on the forums...." because that can never be adequately confirmed.

Providing an instruction to an executor would be effective in the case of death, if the executor knew what to do.

One possibility is to licence the material to a friend with the right to place the items into the public domain on the occurrence of a certain event. That then places the onus of confirmation of the event on that one person, and others are entitled to rely on that confirmation. Such an agreement is not overridden by a will: the licence agreement is not treated as a service contract but as the transfer of an asset.

The driver for this facility should not be the threat of legal enforcement. The driver should be that those content creators who want to do the right thing should be provided with the evidence that they need to be confident that they have the right to use that material.
 
Dave:

One of the biggest concerns I have for the Trainz hobby, having gone through this with the death of Ben Dorsey, is that many content creators have done nothing in the way of providing for disposition of their Trainz content after their death. As many of us content developers are in our 60s or 70s, including me I might add, this is a legitimate concern. Providing for the disposition can be done in a variety of ways (ie; your will, having someone to take care of this stuff when you are gone, posting in the forum in advance, etc).

It was only through a stroke of luck that I happened to try to call Ben just a few days after his death and was able to talk with his family, who did not know me, and get them to agree to allow me to assist them with this regarding Ben's content on the DLS. Ben left no disposition instructions in his will and it looks increasingly likely that because of this all his thousands of meshes will be lost as a result since they are on computer hardware the family planned to sell and they don't know how to deal with the extraction and other technical issues. If I weer closer to his home I would simply go there but unfortunately it is some distance away.

See this link for what I did for me:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ns-License-for-MSGSapper-s-Trainz-DLS-content

BTW there is also a similar one in that same section of the forum covering all of Ben Dorsey's content.

I hope content developers will take the time to address this important issue rather then leaving it to fate/chance. I sure would hate to see someones extensive Trainz content work lost as a result of lack of advance planning.

N3V establishing a mesh repository for those of us who would like to contribute to it, would also be helpful.....

Bob

just remember, several of us are willing to pay to have the meshes transferred by a technician, i'll put up $500 and blue has offered to chip in too. that should cover the cost to transfer to a card or large USB .
the only proviso i would want is that the meshes would have to be available for registered trainz members to use and not to be used in payware, if that was possible to achieve the offers still there.
i suggest that people talk to their partners or family about their work and what to do if they are struck down suddenly , one could either store on the cloud( google drive gives up to 15gb free ) and provide a downloadable link to a fellow trainz forum member or just put a provision in ones will. .
 
There is a lot of older stuff here on the DLS that I would call lost work, as the author is no long active in the forums or game any longer, also with nothing in the file saying what there policy is. Nothing can be done about that now, However current active people could post in post if one was made about what there policy is. The profile idea is not a bad thing also. Not sure what the best way would be.

Having done some work is 3d modeling in a couple star trek games and a WW2 ship game. I had my rights in a read me file with assest. There was no liscense tab like we have for this game.
 
TBH my wife and I recently popped in the solicitor to update our wills and it didn't even occur to me to make any reference to disposal of digital content that might be lurking on the web.

In any event, all my routes now come with a statement in the readme, that anyone can do what the cuss they like with them (apart from selling for money) which pretty much covers it should I somehow get perished.
 
There is a lot of older stuff here on the DLS that I would call lost work, as the author is no long active in the forums or game any longer, also with nothing in the file saying what there policy is. Nothing can be done about that now, However current active people could post in post if one was made about what there policy is. The profile idea is not a bad thing also. Not sure what the best way would be.

Having done some work is 3d modeling in a couple star trek games and a WW2 ship game. I had my rights in a read me file with assest. There was no liscense tab like we have for this game.

The license tab got removed in TANE, just to make things less obvious.
 
I think we need a serious debate about this and perhaps in the CC forum where it properly belongs. Msgsapper's thread on Creative Commons, I think, is a step in the right direction but I suggest we need a central repository of asset source files. The only person/organisation that can reasonably host this is N3V. This would be in their interest as well.

I'm a member of the CRG and the issue I see coming like a steam train are those assets that don't have LOD. When the absence of LOD finally becomes an error, and it will, then a lot of assets will become unfixable. Without the source, the CRG will find it very difficult to fix those assets without either a tool to create a low poly mesh of the original, or going to the trouble of making a new mesh. As an example, I suggest making a low poly mesh of any of Ben's many bridges would be a nightmare.
 
just remember, several of us are willing to pay to have the meshes transferred by a technician, i'll put up $500 and blue has offered to chip in too. that should cover the cost to transfer to a card or large USB .
the only proviso i would want is that the meshes would have to be available for registered trainz members to use and not to be used in payware, if that was possible to achieve the offers still there.
i suggest that people talk to their partners or family about their work and what to do if they are struck down suddenly , one could either store on the cloud( google drive gives up to 15gb free ) and provide a downloadable link to a fellow trainz forum member or just put a provision in ones will. .

I just want to let you know that I am not ignoring your kind offer, but it looks like Ben's family already have their own plans on what they want to do with his equipment and it doesn't include any of us unfortunately, nor shows any concern for all his content meshes. I just wish Ben had put in his will what he and I agreed to a few years ago, but sadly he didn't. At least I was able to secure agreement on the disposition of his DLS assets.

Bob
 
... I suggest we need a central repository of asset source files. The only person/organisation that can reasonably host this is N3V. This would be in their interest as well.

I think that is probably the best solution so far. Just as with the current DLS, where uploading an asset transfers "right of use" to N3V without the creator losing their copyright, a source code/mesh/etc repository could serve as a "seed bank" for allowing assets to be updated to meet future Trainz asset standards, at the very least. This of course would have to be purely voluntary and there would be some creators who would not want any part of it - just as there are those who refuse to upload anything to the DLS.

The ability to "update to current standards" is already one of the conditions imposed by the DLS and the reason why the CRG can do the excellent work they are doing. But as Paul pointed out, without the original meshes, this becomes an impossible job with some DLS assets.

The more difficult task, legally, would be allowing other developers to take over an original asset and make improvements or changes that were not intended by the original creator. In contrast to posts in this thread, the placement of a clear and verifiable statement of intent by the creator in a will (or a user profile) is no guarantee of the legal right of others to that creators works. I have personal experience of this in the successful legal challenge of my Father's last wishes by another family member. I know we are not talking about items of any real financial value here, but I know for a fact that some family members can get very strange or unrealistic ideas when it comes to disposing of the assets of a loved one.

This is a worthwhile idea but it would require legal advice.
 
...for allowing assets to be updated to meet future Trainz asset standards, at the very least. ...

The CRG can, and does, add meshes but we are not permitted to make improvements. For example, several hundred old boxcars got an extra very low poly mesh, basically an oblong box, and subsequently become LOD compliant. Some might argue that this was an improvement but we didn't see it that way. Many of those boxcars had non functional bogies and very poor textures but those were not changed since it was deemed to be changing the author's intent. It can be a grey area but we discuss this within the CRG forum.

...
...
The more difficult task, legally, would be allowing other developers to take over an original asset and make improvements or changes that were not intended by the original creator. ...
As above, the CRG cannot do this within the current rules and I doubt we would want to do it. I think a better solution would to make a completely new asset that acknowledges the design and effort of the original author. Note that this could not obsolete the original asset since Trainz will not allow that.
 
I am waiting on about 5 reskins questions from different people, that it looks if are no longer active in the game. Noething in the files say if it is okay to reskin or not, sadly. So on to next project I guess.
 
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