69 replies to this topic

[WhoGuru]

Well what do you know! After a couple rounds of emails where they tried to convince me that the use of resources in my mods meant they were allowed to upload whatever they wanted....they've agreed to take them down and have. Score one for the good guys!

Now if only they'll do the same for all the other mod authors who's work they've wrongly uploaded.

[Cliffworms]

Congrats!

Now I'm patiently waiting for their response for mine.

[DarkRider]

By now they must be wondering where this parade of complaints has come from

[Arthmoor]

Well this, and the thread at BGS, aren't the first place this site has been mentioned. The "mooders only" forum on Nexus has a thread that's been running for a couple of weeks now.

I should get them to pull the ULs now assuming that's even possible since the Council didn't actually MAKE them

[Edouard]

The FBI? Interpol? State Department? NATO? I think that would be taking things WAY too far. The FBI won't even pay attention to you unless the crime you're reporting is worth more than $10,000 or so. Making an international incident out of all this isn't going anywhere at all, regardless of our status with Romania.

Folks are complaining they have no protection. You only get protection if you ask for it.

Yes, as I said, federal agencies—especially the FBI—have limits on pursuing cases. Most of these have been set by the US Attorney's office (each is different.) I miss-spoke when I said the Assistant US Attorney General's office in Atlanta. Assistant attorneys general are in Washington, D.C. It's the US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, in Atlanta. That does not mean, however, that they will not open a case. These people are anal about things like that, and files and complaints are kept and cross-referenced.

As for the state department, most of them sit around all day with their thumb up their butt looking for something to do.

These are the things your congressman lives for. They all have a staff to write letters to federal agencies for constituents. Call him up and rag on his staff.

[DarkRider]

Folks are complaining they have no protection. You only get protection if you ask for it.

We have no protection because legally Bethsoft owns all mods and we don't have a legal standing to enforce our copyright on their property. No legal agency would act on behalf of modders.

Well this, and the thread at BGS, aren't the first place this site has been mentioned. The "modders only" forum on Nexus has a thread that's been running for a couple of weeks now.

Too bad many of us have no access to that forum, would have been nice to know in a public venue a couple weeks ago.

[Arthmoor]

Folks are complaining they have no protection. You only get protection if you ask for it.

Indeed, but come on. Not trying to be a jerk about this, but, priorities. The FBI and the US Attorney's Office have FAR better things to be doing with our tax dollars than pursuing claims from modders who may not even HAVE a claim.

These are the things your congressman lives for. They all have a staff to write letters to federal agencies for constituents. Call him up and rag on his staff.

I think my congressman has far more important matters to be taking up than worrying about whether my mod for a video game has been stolen or not.

Besides, it appears Softpedia.com is willing to comply with a simple request from the author. So there's no need to create diplomatic issues over it

Too bad many of us have no access to that forum, would have been nice to know in a public venue a couple weeks ago.

Yeah, and in hindsight I suppose I could have raised the issue here or at BGS but the thread died down with not much coming of it. Not a lot of folks at the time had their stuff ripped and uploaded. When WhoGuru raised the alarm, it was clear the issue had gotten far bigger than before. Another Strategy Informer in the making.

[ub3rman123]

Huh. I'm trying to figure out now if it's worth trying to get them to pull my mods down. I might just list them as a mirror instead.

[Edouard]

We have no protection because legally Bethsoft owns all mods and we don't have a legal standing to enforce our copyright on their property. No legal agency would act on behalf of modders.

Actually, yes.

Mods are a 'derivative work' under the law. Since Beth gives permission—tacit or otherwise—as long as the mod only works with TES. They would not, for example, allow you to use TES resources in a mod for another game (or even another platform.

Because of this, your work is yours and you have a right to protect it

@Arthmoor

You are being pragmatic. However, Constituent Services is the largest part of what a congressman does. They send their staff out regularly, and often come themselves (remember Congressman Giffords?) A senator is a different story, since they represent a whole state, getting their attention is more difficult—except in states with low population like: Wyoming, Vermont, North & South Dakota, Alaska, Delaware and Montana which have so few people they rate only only one congressman.

Some might even find it a refreshing change from Medicare, Social Security and Veteran's complaints. Believe me, most of them have less to do than they would like you to believe. All his is what makes it so disturbing to me when some congressmen deign to speak "for the American People." They represent under 700,000 people and are elected by far less.

John Boehner, for example was elected by just over 140 thousand votes. When he says "The American people" want this, or "The American people" want that—he doesn't care what the 'American people' want, just the 66% of the 30% of the people in his district who voted.

[Arthmoor]

Just because I wanted to see for myself what the result would be, I called Congressman Miller's office and informed them of the situation. Their advice was what I fully expected going in - I should contact an attorney and file a civil suit. I explained that the offending party is in another country but they said the matter was entirely for the courts to handle and that it wasn't something the House had jurisdiction over.

Maybe they're just politely giving me the brush off, I suspect that they really wanted to just flat out tell me they had better things to do than try to stir up the State Dept. over a minor copyright issue.

[Khettienna]

We have no protection because legally Bethsoft owns all mods and we don't have a legal standing to enforce our copyright on their property. No legal agency would act on behalf of modders.

But not true in cases where made-from-scratch assets are packaged in the download, when the creator has stated that those assets may not be redistributed without express permission. That does leave some hope. And to add to Edouard's point, just because Bethesda automagically owns our CS work and assets derived from theirs does not give other parties the legal right to do as they wish.

Huh. I'm trying to figure out now if it's worth trying to get them to pull my mods down. I might just list them as a mirror instead.

That depends, do you like old versions of your stuff floating around in a venue where you don't get to choose how your "product" is presented or maintained? That's my primary concern in these situations, personally.

[Edouard]

Just because I wanted to see for myself what the result would be, I called Congressman Miller's office and informed them of the situation. Their advice was what I fully expected going in - I should contact an attorney and file a civil suit. I explained that the offending party is in another country but they said the matter was entirely for the courts to handle and that it wasn't something the House had jurisdiction over.

Maybe they're just politely giving me the brush off, I suspect that they really wanted to just flat out tell me they had better things to do than try to stir up the State Dept. over a minor copyright issue.

Yes, they were giving you the brush off. Out of curiosity, was it Brad, Candice, Gerry, George or Jeff Miller? If it was Jeff he has a full plate, but he also has more staff than the others. He's chairman of the Veteran's Affairs Committee. Talk about complaints, whew! He's also on Armed Services and Intelligence; both busy committees.

Here is part of the official statement of the US Copyright office (Links omitted:)

If you believe that a criminal infringement of copyright has occurred, you may contact the Intellectual Property (IP) Program of the Financial Institution Fraud Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Two main FBI divisions investigate intellectual property crimes:

Cyber Division
-investigates intellectual property crimes involving all digital and electronic works (including Internet, CDs, DVDs, etc) www.fbi.gov/ipr
Financial Institution Fraud Unit
-all other intellectual property crimes

There are three ways a complaint made be filed:

Complainants may contact their local FBI field office, and the complaint will be properly referred.
A complaint may be filed online at the Internet Crime Complaint Center www.ic3.gov and, again, it will be properly routed.
Suspected criminal activity of any nature may be reported online at https://tips.fbi.gov and will be routed accordingly.

The Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice is the federal entity that prosecutes intellectual property crimes. Parts III and VI of the Department of Justice primer provide further information on the prima facie elements of criminal copyright violations, both misdemeanor and felony, and the factors considered in determining when to charge. However, all criminal complaints should be directed only to the FBI.

Further, there are industry-specific organizations that monitor and prosecute copyright violations. Lists of copyright industry organizations and authors organizations are readily available on numerous sites on the Internet.

Finally, online service providers must comply with certain conditions if they wish to take advantage of certain limitations of liability when a user publishes infringing content on their systems. One of these obligations is the designation of an agent for notification of claimed infringement. To qualify for certain limitations on liability, online service providers must, among other things, provide contact information to the Copyright Office and through the service provider's publicly accessible website on “designated agents” who will receive notices of alleged infringement. The Copyright Office website includes a directory of agents for notification that lists “designated agents” for online service providers recorded with the Copyright Office. For general information on this provision of the law, see section 512. Also, see a summary of this provision of the law.

[DarkRider]

But not true in cases where made-from-scratch assets are packaged in the download, when the creator has stated that those assets may not be redistributed without express permission.

That's a different situation and not something I was commenting on.

I think this thread is getting off topic and rolling quickly toward our no politics rules so let's redirect and stay on topic kids or the thread gets the lock

[Arthmoor]

[color="#98FB98"] Yes, they were giving you the brush off. Out of curiosity, was it Brad, Candice, Gerry, George or Jeff Miller? If it was Jeff he has a full plate, but he also has more staff than the others. He's chairman of the Veteran's Affairs Committee. Talk about complaints, whew! He's also on Armed Services and Intelligence; both busy committees.

Candice, she was nice enough about the whole thing but definitely thought it best to pursue via a civil attorney.

The rest of what you're getting at with the FBI involves criminal complaints and that almost never happens unless you're dealing with something like a Chinese counterfeiting ring. Besides, as I mentioned, the damages threshold hasn't been met yet. The FBI isn't going to touch it.

The good news is, I contacted APY over at PES/IGN and he commented in the BGS thread that IGN may be interested in pursuing a DMCA complaint through their legal department. If that's the case, I've gained an enormous amount of respect for PES/IGN just for even considering the possibility.

[WhoGuru]

The good news is, I contacted APY over at PES/IGN and he commented in the BGS thread that IGN may be interested in pursuing a DMCA complaint through their legal department. If that's the case, I've gained an enormous amount of respect for PES/IGN just for even considering the possibility.

You and me both. I hope they do and give Softpedia something to worry about in future when they consider uploading the work of others without their permission.

[morerunes]

Not cool. Period.

[Kiteflyer61]

Hey everybody.

It's been a long time since I dropped in, but this thread caught my eye.

These idiots did the same thing to me a couple of months ago. It took more than two weeks to get any results, but I finally got them to remove a couple of my mods that they were hosting.

Now it seems I'm going to have to go back and make sure they haven't gotten sneaky and grabbed a few of my others. They sent me e-mails announcing that they had posted them for the first two. I'm hoping they didn't stop sending the e-mails so that I wouldn't know.

As far as where they're getting them from, I'm pretty sure they are getting at least some of them from Filefront. One of the mods they grabbed was an older version that wasn't available on PES anymore. The only places to get that version are filefront and TESNexus (which has all three versions of my mod).

I can understand trying to build up a website, but is it so hard to ask first? Had they asked *before* they put the files up, I would have said sure, go ahead. Since they didn't, I'll flood them with removal requests until every file I've even been a part of is removed from their site.




KF

[Edouard]

Candice, she was nice enough about the whole thing but definitely thought it best to pursue via a civil attorney.

The rest of what you're getting at with the FBI involves criminal complaints and that almost never happens unless you're dealing with something like a Chinese counterfeiting ring. Besides, as I mentioned, the damages threshold hasn't been met yet. The FBI isn't going to touch it.

The good news is, I contacted APY over at PES/IGN and he commented in the BGS thread that IGN may be interested in pursuing a DMCA complaint through their legal department. If that's the case, I've gained an enormous amount of respect for PES/IGN just for even considering the possibility.

That is good news. I'll try to keep it within the limits set by DarkRider. I'm actually not making any political judgements here.

If one person stole one copyrighted work, that's most likely a civil matter. What we have here is a group of people taking thousands of works from hundreds of authors. That is most likely criminal. While the loss is negligible (although put a price on one's reputation) the gain could be considerable.

What a lot of folks don't realize is that a large part of federal enforcement actions are civil, not criminal.

[ub3rman123]

A new site is making the rounds doing this, GMod.com. You can read the Nexus thread about it here.

The gist of it: They upload some popular mods without permission or anything, then take the credits etc. out of the ReadMe, then put up a little notice that says "We're looking for the author (They aren't). Click here to claim your account if you are!" Then according to some users, to claim your account you have to pay them money. Ugh.

You can also read a thread on a different forum which features the CEO of the company trying to claim he got permission for everything.

Edited by ub3rman123, 06 July 2011 - 01:37 AM.

[Arthmoor]

Something like that where the site claims they're going to make people pay to download stuff needs to be reported to Bethesda since that's illegal and they WILL act on something like that.

OH! THESE GUYS. I thought the site name sounded familiar. This "gmod.com" place went around on Nexus not long ago spamming PMs to people about their new site that was going up. I reported them for spamming and hadn't heard much out of them since. Seems they decided they're going to go ahead with their theft ring after all.

Edited by Arthmoor, 04 July 2011 - 09:39 PM.