Copyright theft of route by user nikolink

My Penybryn route <kuid:879914:100043> Penybryn Railway (NG24) has been cloned without permission by user nikolink, please do not download the illegal version or the multiplayer session that has been made. This has been reported to N3V who hopefully will deal with this thief.

Sorry to there that. I once reported some of my content that was taken from my site before, and to N3Vs credit, they moved pretty quickly to remedy it. It might take a day or two, so give it a little time .

Sorry to hear about that Malc, hope it gets sorted. The perils of the lack of rights protection if you upload to the DLS, which we have become used to I guess now.

Maybe it's again time to push N3V into revisiting freeware authors having the same rights and tools to protect their work as they afford to built in or DLC content?

Presumably one of our illustrious Russian users - amazes me when you scroll through some of the Russian etc. objects how many times they seem to have been cloned and re-uploaded by different people.

Hi Clam1952,

Just curious to thinking that your original layout made for TANE was not multiplayer functional, and that the user created a route and session in TANE SP2/SP3 in order to play multiplayer.
Any licence agreement attached to the route?
Still you have the option of ordering the removal a clone from the DLS.
Suppose it is OK for a Trainz member to create sessions for this particular route and place online?
I know that in the old TS12 routes, sessions and dependencies can also be flagged and inhibited from being modified or cloned in the asset config file before upload to DLS.

Not got a problem with sessions, have got a problem with Copyright theft of the route with no permission or credit given. the clone has added some invisible stations with hovering passengers and over size for NG coaling tower and water crane, not impressed, other than that it seems to be identical.

Licence is irrelevant you do not take someone else's work and claim it as your own modified or not. There are far too many cloned routes being uploaded as it is.

Co-incidentally someone has just uploaded a session for my Ffestiniog route, not got a problem with that but it doesn't do anything, there are no locos consists or anything.

Note: as I have said previously I have no objection to anyone reskinning my assets so long as credit is given, however a route is not an asset!

Looking at the route config the details are the same as the original but has two extra kuids in the kuid table. As it was 4.5 build I was wondering if it had anything to do with all assets needed a name and duplicate assets not able to use the same name twice like station name boards.

stagecoach said:

Looking at the route config the details are the same as the original but has two extra kuids in the kuid table. As it was 4.5 build I was wondering if it had anything to do with all assets needed a name and duplicate assets not able to use the same name twice like station name boards.

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Think those are probably the giant coaling stage and water crane. The station name boards were assets I made not re-namable ones. Seems to have deleted a couple of walls, not sure why!

clam1952 said:

My Penybryn route <kuid:879914:100043> Penybryn Railway (NG24) has been cloned without permission by user nikolink, please do not download the illegal version or the multiplayer session that has been made. This has been reported to N3V who hopefully will deal with this thief.

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Just an observation here, I viewed your description of your route asset and you do not make any mention of a copyright notice or useage rights/permission. To me it just wide open. So to call it theft might me a little much. They are not reselling for monetary gain. They just appear to be trying to make a multiplayer version so their friends can play together. The way they did it is not suggested, and as you say, and may violate you personally. But I would say for the casual users out there,(not like you and I the experts, that you include a copyright notice and/or usage instructions in your description so that those casual users would be given instructions on your wishes or terms for such things.

When I upload to Trainz DLC I include this in the description of my files;

Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding support issues or distribution questions on our website CDETrainz.com using the Contact Us page, or on the Trainz User Forums you can PM user Christopher824. More information available at https://cdetrainz.com

Copyright (C) 2011-2019, Christopher J Donini, All Rights Reserved.

If there is nothing in the license portion of the config file, that does not mean that you can do as you please with the item. Quite the opposite. That means enjoy the content in your own realm and that's about it, as I understand.

There is a section on this kind of thing in the Content Creation forum. Read it here.

crazytrain said:

If there is nothing in the license portion of the config file, that does not mean that you can do as you please with the item. Quite the opposite. That means enjoy the content in your own realm and that's about it, as I understand.

There is a section on this kind of thing in the Content Creation forum. Read it here.

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Thank you!

It's commonly accepted that no licence does not give you permission to clone or reskin stuff. The slight modifications he/she has made are totally out of character for the route which was never intended to be multiplayer and it's quite clear in the DLS Upload agreement that you must not infringe any copyright.

Looks like the damage has been done as there are 41 downloads. N3V need to react a bit quicker in these cases.

clam1952 said:

It's commonly accepted that no licence does not give you permission to clone or reskin stuff.

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That is not so. No permission is needed to clone or reskin stuff. Perhaps you meant "It's commonly accepted that no licence does not give you permission to redistribute stuff you have cloned or reskinned.". That is certainly the legal (and correct) position, but the frequent discussion in the forums (and, of course, the issue that prompted this thread) makes it clear that it is not 'commonly accepted'. Hence the importance of a clear statement in the description of the asset.

Strewth getting a bit picky aren't we, pretty clear what I meant.

Read Windwalkrs post that was linked previously it is pretty clear that no licence does not mean you can do what you like and distribute it https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?87125-DLS-uploads-and-copyright&p=962550#post962550

clam1952 said:

Thank you!

It's commonly accepted that no licence does not give you permission to clone or reskin stuff. The slight modifications he/she has made are totally out of character for the route which was never intended to be multiplayer and it's quite clear in the DLS Upload agreement that you must not infringe any copyright.

Looks like the damage has been done as there are 41 downloads. N3V need to react a bit quicker in these cases.

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The post referenced by crazytrain is a lot of speculation. Even in the UK here is an example;

https://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/protect/
There are four simple steps you can take that can help ensure your work is safe.
1)Ensure your work is properly marked. A correctly worded notice will deter infringement, as it states that the work is protected under law. ...
2)Register your work. ...
3)Keep or register supporting evidence. ...
4)Agreement between co-authors.


Here is a real world example; I graffitti a random bridge in downtown wherever. It is my intellectual creation. I fail to add a (c) to the picture. Later a kid comes by and takes a picture of my graffitti, and then sells it to the Times newspaper and makes a bundle of loot. Can I collect for copyright infringement? No, I would never win this in any copyright case.

Your assumption that 'It's commonly accepted' would never hold up. But just adding a simple 'Copyright' notice to your description would make you the winner in almost every case. Back again to it's just my suggestion that you be more descriptive in your descriptions.

Christopher824 said:

But just adding a simple 'Copyright' notice to your description would make you the winner in almost every case.

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I would think there has never ever been a successful case heard, and been actually prosecuted by an actual Court of Law, involving a Trainz asset or route

cascaderailroad said:

I would think there has never ever been a successful case heard, and been actually prosecuted by an actual Court of Law, involving a Trainz asset or route

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You are probably most likely 100% correct, but with my example of the bridge and the graffitti, who do you think won the case.... Neither the graffiti artist, nor the person who took the pictures, it was the owner of the bridge, (which would be N3V in this case...)

Christopher824 said:

But just adding a simple 'Copyright' notice to your description would make you the winner in almost every case. Back again to it's just my suggestion that you be more descriptive in your descriptions.

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I do now anyway, this route was uploaded before the last time I got "cloned" when I started adding a licence. This makes the third "attack" All multiplayer related as well.

Supporting evidence would be I have the original route and the DEM it was made from...... Assets? I have 3000 plus meshes safely stored so very easy to prove they are mine.

Oh, this is fun! Story time.

Lets say the owner of the bridge actually gave permission to the graffiti artist to create the 'mural' in the first place and said artist agreed to let others modify said mural as long as credit was given to original artist.....

Artist A adds a highlight to the eye of the tiger (by Fishy 123) in the mural and then signs it Brutus248. (Fishy123 didn't sign it, btw) Photographer take a picture of the eye of the tiger and gives credit to Brutus248 in their report to the Hippity Hop Art News.

Fishy123 then contacts the village people about taking Brutus248's siggy off the eye of the tiger.

To Be Continued....

clam1952 said:

Read Windwalkrs post that was linked previously it is pretty clear that no licence does not mean you can do what you like and distribute it

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That post is also wrong: "Neither the original creator, nor N3V, are granting you the right to modify the content." No grant of a right is required in order to modify it.

If you look at the discussion it becomes clear that conflating modification and distribution is partly the cause of the problem. Most copyright protection has focused on preventing modification. Therefore people come to think that if they can modify it then they can distribute it. Trainz assets are only useful if they are modifiable. So it is important to be clear that it is the distribution, not the modification, that needs the owner's approval.

crazytrain said:

Oh, this is fun! Story time.

Lets say the owner of the bridge actually gave permission to the graffiti artist to create the 'mural' in the first place and said artist agreed to let others modify said mural as long as credit was given to original artist.....

Artist A adds a highlight to the eye of the tiger (by Fishy 123) in the mural and then signs it Brutus248. (Fishy123 didn't sign it, btw) Photographer take a picture of the eye of the tiger and gives credit to Brutus248 in their report to the Hippity Hop Art News.

Fishy123 then contacts the village people about taking Brutus248's siggy off the eye of the tiger.

To Be Continued....

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If the owner of the bridge gave permission, it ruins the whole story, then we are off onto a whole different topic.

What is more intriguing is the fact that copyright law is not the same in every country, and N3V is in Australia, and I am in the USA, and clam1952 is in the UK. So who's laws do we abide by? For me it must be the N3V location. so here is what the Aussies laws state, pay attention to the last sentence;

Fair dealing
The main exceptions to copyright infringement in Australia come under the general heading fair dealing. Fair dealing is comparable to the United States' fair use; it is a use of a work specifically recognised as not being a copyright violation. In order to be a fair dealing under Australian law a use must fall within a range of specific purposes. These purposes vary by type of work, but the possibilities are:

review or criticism
research or study
news-reporting
judicial proceedings or professional legal advice
parody or satire (added by the Copyright Amendment Act 2006)
In order for a certain use to be a fair dealing, it must fall within one of these purposes and must also be 'fair'. What is fair will depend on all the circumstances, including the nature of the work, the nature of the use and the effect of the use on any commercial market for the work.

Fair dealing is not the same as fair use. This has, for example, been interpreted by US courts to allow for reasonable personal use of works, e.g. media-shifting, which would not necessarily be permitted under Australia's fair dealing laws. Australian copyright law does, however, have a number of additional specific exceptions which permit uses which may fall outside of both fair dealing and fair use. For example, a number of exceptions exist which permit specific uses of computer software.

So, the village people know that Fishy123 was the original creator of the eye of the tiger and since they own the bridge, they remove Brutus248's signature, along with the highly popular highlight to the cateye. Kinda seems the masses that read Hippity Hop Art News grew fond of it.

After a while, Fishy123 and Brutus248 came in contact with each other and collaborated on a masterpiece that was painted on another bridge. Also featured in the mag, it went on to solidify both of them in the bridge painting hall of fame.

Awww. Aren't happy endings nice.