It looks like this has turned into a **** fight...... if your not a solicitor or some1 who works in this field please do not post here. maybe should have thought more about my 1st post so this didn't happen. it was never about paid mods. it was about right and wrong so there was no confusion on my behalf. Tim if you think its getting out of control you can close down the thread at any time.
Could you elaborate on that, just a little? I don't believe that is true. The essence of copyright is that it prohibits others from copying your work (in this case, the thing being modelled) without express permission. I agree it starts to get murky when you consider the purpose of the model being made. There are fair use clauses within copyright, and the whole area of "derived works" which I mentioned earlier. I get what you're saying here. I think there's a bit of difference though. Many of the models you find on sites such as TurboSquid are quite generic. As such they aren't subject to copyright. Those that aren't are released as editorial content which provides limited use. The person buying them has to secure all the licenses and permissions before using them in any other way. That's my whole point in all this. Copyright can be a very deep and treacherous river to swim in. One I don't think most modders want to jump into. It's not as simple as making something and slapping a copyright symbol on it. There's also the whole other side, involving protecting your copyright. Most people forget that your copyRIGHT is just that, a right. One that you get to keep only so long as you can prove it and defend it against infringement. In my opinion, the entire community would be better off if modders released their work copy free and simply asked anyone who uses it as the basis of their own work to provide credit where it's due.
+1 Having your original loadscreen, ingame banner-adds from partners/sponsors etc. not to mention the EULA removed - only to be replaced with a "credit" in a .txt which disappers or isn't even read is NOT cool... I hope that ISI will support file encryption for rf2 soon, as it fights off the majority of the problem. It's clear to me that it basicly comes down to "I don't think/believe/accept/respect.." As a modder this mentality really puts me off.
Eww. This topic gets on my nerves and I feel has held back sim racing. I won't comment on the content ripped from other games, but content made by modders should be kept open and free. By keeping modded content open, the modding community can learn from one another for the benefit of all in sim racing. Whether it be a new tire design or a track, if someone uses a previously made asset and adds their own flavor to make it better the quality of mods increases. Don't get me wrong though, modders of this type should always give credit where credit is due. We should all be in this together and learning together. I don't understand what all the fighting is about, all I see is egos fighting.
I agree with you. This actually works well in Bob's Track Builder community where modders build asset-packages for anyone to use in their projects. Sure there are ripped, commercial content in the mix too, but also lots of scratch made. I don't see any reason why custom content for rF2 should not be modders public domain, unless particular modder has other plans for the stuff. One thing that keeps modders for doing this is actually the fact that there can be ways of selling the stuff somewhere else, so the concept of public domain does not really work in that case.
I think its pretty simple really, if ISI don't want stuff not created by the modder themselves posted here, then don't post it here. I,m quite sure you will find somewhere that does allow it to be posted, in one language or another. This topic has been chewed over a million times and still gets the same people commenting on what's right and what's wrong. If they don't want it here , don't put it here. Whether its morally good ,bad or indifferent.
totally agree, we had this discussion not 6 months ago on this forum, it was also on here when the forums first opened, it was one of the first threads I read when joining upto iRacing years ago. Same old horse manure different day! If ever there was a thread for Tim to lock before it got out of control it was this one!
RSC was great, wont comment on that point though. this thread will go the way of the Steam argument on the RD AC forums, just round and round and round and round in circles before everyone falls over and forgets what the hell they're talking about.
I'm not a modder and have not any plans to be one in then future. But I follow the discussions and try to understand what's wrong or false. In the past there was a couple of examples (in this forum) where someone say this content is not yours because ..... Now I begin to understand why we have this small amount of released mods. Most modders with expirence and released mods in for example rF are waiting for better support with the tires or something else and the newbies are not able to manage all the challenges with owner rights technical stuff and so on. If the only choice for the future is to all from scratch as newbie to take no risk ... Bad forecast for future ^-^ Hopefully I missed something and I'm wrong.
This. I think the majority of the modders would be happy to allow their work to be converted to other platforms. It's the converting without asking for permission which bothers me because it takes absolutely no effort to ask.
Unless you have direct access to the source material (i.e without having to reverse engineer a packaged mod), I'm not sure you can distinguish between a free game and a mod. Indeed, with rF2 in particular, the lite installer still needs to be licensed, but comes with no cars or tracks. Essentially you pay for the physics and graphics engines and ISI provide free DLC in terms of their content. I'm not sure how that differs from 3rd party modders (except that they are 3rd parties).
Oddly the same thing I said, but because I mentioned paid mods of course you're not willing to accept anything written.