Contents illegally uploaded to the DLS - N3V Please take action!

ish6

Since 2001
Hi Auran / N3V ---

I have been reading recent posts of people illegally cloning items, etc, and uploading those items to the DLS -- This has happend to Zatovisualworks a while back, and it seems that it is happening now more and more frequence each day! As One who have created over thousands of contents, I felt obligated to start such a thread! If such a thread already exist, then please forgive me; But if not, I do hope Aurans / N3V read and take suggestions, and take immediately action to fix this issue!

On a more personnel level -- I am not getting rich, no one is asking me to do these contents, and perhaps no one will ever download what I have done -- perhpas it is not the best in people's eyes, etc but at the end of the day, the content, that specific item, took time and effect, etc and it is dear to me, etc and that contents should be respected, and I hope Auran / N3V understands that! I am sure those who have been ripped off feel the same for their own contents!!!

Thanks for reading!
Ish
 
I strongly support this proposal, as I've been very vocal myself on the subject, even as far as getting one of the offending users banned from uploading to the Download Station.

The problem I see is N3V have a policy that the copyright owner has to contact them via the Helpdesk before they will take action, which I see as a retrospective approach that leaves them open to potential lawsuits.

I've seen evidence of at least 3 users today doing it, and have advised at least one user to contact Helpdesk.

N3V, if you do read this thread, now is the time to take proactive action, as waiting for copyright owners to contact you may not happen, as they may decide to sue instead.

Shane

Shane
 
I take Sniper297's Frisco 1522 and use that to update locomotives that were reskins of TheCowboy's Frisco 1522 that was faulty. I always ask for permission to upload my version of a model before uploading it to the Download Station.
 
They already stated that the only thing they can do is remove the assets - but ONLY when THE ORIGINAL CONTENT CREATOR submits a helpdesk ticket with the KUID numbers of his original and the suspected clone, along with whatever evidence he has that the clone is actually his original work.

If I tell N3V somebody stole your work, or you tell N3V somebody stole my work, they can't do anything at all. When you see something you suspect is stolen and it's not your own, the only thing you can do is inform the original creator and let him take it from there.
 
That's where the problem is. The original content creator may only upload to third-party sites (like TrainzUp) and may not speak English. In addition to this, it's difficult to find someone who can communicate with them.

I have a feeling that N3V need to change their policies, as they are making it hard for rightful creators to report cloned items, especially since some of the affected users are Russian as well.

Shane
 
That's where the problem is. The original content creator may only upload to third-party sites (like TrainzUp) and may not speak English. In addition to this, it's difficult to find someone who can communicate with them.

I have a feeling that N3V need to change their policies, as they are making it hard for rightful creators to report cloned items, especially since some of the affected users are Russian as well.

Shane

I think one difficulty is the less content there is available on the DLS the less successful N3V appear so I don't think they will be changing their policies anytime soon. I suspect if Multi Player could be run using none DLS content there would be less incentive to do this sort of thing.

The current situation where content is uploaded then removed doesn't do any one any good it means the DLS is unreliable and strangely enough reliability is the thing most end users put above anything else.

Perhaps the answer is to restrict unrestricted uploads to the DLS to any one who has more than 20 existing uploads. If you have less than this you get restricted to one per week / month.

Cheerio John
 
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Indeed, as N3V are unwittingly creating more problems in the process (in the form of missing dependencies and community anger). If N3V are to survive, they seriously need to look at their priorities and get them right. There are enough non-cloned items on the Download Station that removing all the offending items would not dent the amount by much.

Shane
 
"they are making it hard for rightful creators to report cloned items"

I look across the street and see a stranger climbing into a car parked in the driveway, he starts it up and drives off. I call the cops, they catch the guy. Now the cops have to find the owner of the car and find out if the owner gave him permission to drive it - they can't arrest, charge, convict, and sentence the guy simply because I think he stole the car, they need confirmation of that from the owner of the car.

This is the same thing, if you don't know the original creator how do you know the uploader doesn't have permission? If you're not the original creator how can N3V take your word for it that it's stolen? If they changed the policy the way you're suggesting, the result would be a rash of accusations by people who don't like each other that the other one is uploading a third party's content without permission just to be a troll. Any policy other than the one they're following now would be a violation of due process and rules of evidence in any civilized country and lead to nothing but chaos.
 
I see where you are coming from, but I still have concerns over the process. The core of all this though is Multiplayer - one of N3V's not-thought-through things. If N3V did something about that, then it would reduce the problem which is growing daily, and it's nearly always by Russian users. Doesn't that say something?

Shane
 
I look across the street and see a stranger climbing into a car parked in the driveway, he starts it up and drives off. I call the cops, they catch the guy. Now the cops have to find the owner of the car and find out if the owner gave him permission to drive it - they can't arrest, charge, convict, and sentence the guy simply because I think he stole the car, they need confirmation of that from the owner of the car.

Nothing to object... but what we are seeing here is a stranger climbing into a car and driving away... then we see him coming back, climbing into another car and driving away, and then another, and another one, until all the cars in the street are gone.

May I suspect that not every car owner has given him permission?
 
OK how about this?

Modify the Black or White pages to include a Report Cloned Item button, opens report form to which you add the original kuid of cloned item, report sent to original creator and N3V to a nominated mail box specifically for this that is given a high priority. Original creator needs to respond, say by clicking a link that permission was given or not, before any action is taken other than maybe keeping an eye on the alleged cloner. If Permission not given N3V remove item and warn, ban, execute or whatever the offender, trouble is it could be open to abuse unless thought through carefully.
 
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"May I suspect that not every car owner has given him permission?"

Sounds like probable cause to me, but you still need to verify with the owners before you actually have evidence that a crime has been committed.

"Modify the Black or White pages to include a Report Cloned Item button, opens report form to which you add the kuid of cloned item, report sent to original creator and N3V to a nominated mail box specifically for this that is given a high priority. Original creator needs to respond, say by clicking a link that permission was given or not, before any action is taken other than maybe keeping an eye on the alleged cloner. If Permission not given N3V remove item and warn, ban, execute or whatever the offender, trouble is it could be open to abuse unless thought through carefully."

If something like that could be programmed it would probably streamline the process of finding and alerting the original creator, but it couldn't be anonymous - the person reporting would need to be logged to prevent abuse and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect. You just KNOW if we had something like that there would be a dozen 10 year olds playing whack-a-mole with new uploads every day.
 
If something like that could be programmed it would probably streamline the process of finding and alerting the original creator, but it couldn't be anonymous - the person reporting would need to be logged to prevent abuse and "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" effect. You just KNOW if we had something like that there would be a dozen 10 year olds playing whack-a-mole with new uploads every day.

Thus my comment about abuse, suppose you could make it only visible to Adults or perhaps Content Creators who have uploaded something, or appoint some DLS moderator(s) who only get the button? Second opinion probably isn't a bad idea, PM the DLS mod who checks, deals with time wasters or hits report button if required.
 
Hmm, when reading all these threads about cloned objects uploaded to the DLS, I think maybe there's a software solution that would be more direct to act upon.

What if each original created asset gets a non accessable encrypted kuidnumber as well the same as the one in the config.txt. Whenever an asset is cloned the original kuid stays encripted in the *.cdp easy to check when or if the clone is uploaded to the DLS.
Of course there are some restrictions that come with this idea. Each new asset created would have to be made initially with the CMP File / New... command to generate the encrypted kuid. Assets build from scratch would have an empty space where the encrypted number would be when imported by the CMP. Those would and should be rejected if uploaded to the DLS as well.

Obviously this sceme could be hacked, but that's a lot more work then just cloning an asset and upload it for multyplayer purposes.

Greetings from nighttime Amsterdam,

Jan
 
Hi All
We have stated MANY MANY times. If you believe an item has been uploaded without permission, please report it to the original creator. We cannot take action unless contacted by the original author, except in extreme cases (e.g. where multiple creators report the uploader, we may take the action of removing all of their uploads).

Where it's an N3V/Auran created item, then report it directly to the helpdesk.

At this stage, we do not see any viable method of preventing this without making the Download Station even more difficult to upload too. It would be extremely easy to get around any automated checks, and who's to say if they did have permission or not? We cannot check EVERY UPLOAD manually to ensure it's not someone else's content.

We did manually approve items, however there was no way to know that the items were 'original' or 'cloned', or if permission was obtained for this. To do this could mean delaying the upload days, weeks, months, or indefinitely till we could confirm with the original author (if known!). If the item is not known to the person approving items, then it would end up on the DLS anyway, defeating the whole exercise. In this case, the items from 3rd party websites would still generally get through, as we have no way of easily locating and comparing them...

As to automated systems, again this only works for items that are on the DLS, and would be relatively easy to fool if you really wanted to upload the content. And again, this makes it much harder for those who have permission, since it could wait weeks, or months, or forever before any 'confirmation' of permission was provided by the original author.

Any reporting system would be open to abuse, and would really not be viable to be direct to the author. Could you imagine receiving 50 emails per day because someone decided to report a whole heap of items that might have been uploaded without permission? Any age restriction would not be of any use as this can be circumvented on registration, and a 'post count' limit would not be viable as there are many who have higher post counts that would abuse the system. This would also lead to a lot more 'spam'/'waffle' posts on the forums, so that people can access such a system.

Right now, the only viable method we see is to have the original author contact us, for us to look into it. And yes, it may take a little time for us to investigate and take action if required.

Regards
 
Thankyou for your response Zec. My main concern at the moment is that there are quite a few Russian users who are abusing the system, and that the affected content creators are mostly Russian as well, which makes things difficult for non-Russian speakers to contact the creator(s) concerned.

Shane
 
Pofig's trees seem to be a major target. I assume N3V either has or has access to a commercial license for speedtree, could some sort of arrangement be made with pofig so that his trees were run through the N3V commercial license and placed on the DLS?

Cheerio John
 
Hmm, when reading all these threads about cloned objects uploaded to the DLS, I think maybe there's a software solution that would be more direct to act upon.

What if each original created asset gets a non accessable encrypted kuidnumber as well the same as the one in the config.txt. Whenever an asset is cloned the original kuid stays encripted in the *.cdp easy to check when or if the clone is uploaded to the DLS.
Of course there are some restrictions that come with this idea. Each new asset created would have to be made initially with the CMP File / New... command to generate the encrypted kuid. Assets build from scratch would have an empty space where the encrypted number would be when imported by the CMP. Those would and should be rejected if uploaded to the DLS as well.

Obviously this sceme could be hacked, but that's a lot more work then just cloning an asset and upload it for multyplayer purposes.

Greetings from nighttime Amsterdam,

Jan

This is a great idea from Jan!!!

Instead of folks jumping through hoops to get their notice into the helpdesk why not jsut prevent other folks from cloning and uploading illegally contents --- at least Jan idea can be that first step!!

Ish
 
Jan,

This is the most logic I've heard on this subject in quite some time. :)

This is a great idea
 
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