Illegal mods, steer clear of them. Simracing604, we stand with you too.

[Austin Ogonoski]

Heads up that if you work for any of these devs who may have had their work ripped and sold (I'm sure there are fellow Forza, Codies, S397, EA staff amomg these parts), give your legal dept a shout.

 

[fumi]

I think we've come this far and we have to stand up for ourselves. I don't want to see any more of the mod culture destroyed.

 

[Cristian Luis]

(Nothing. I have misunderstood),

 

[Durge Driven]

I see a pretty clear difference here. This a free mod which is inspired by gp3 and is completely scratch built using none of the original parts - essentially a cover song sung by tribute band in a pub with no entry fee.

Mod team rip content from other games and other modding teams and upload as their own and charge people for it. - essentially reuploading someone else’s song, passing it off as their own and charging people to buy it.

95% would agree with your analogy no doubt

Along with the majority of studios I think any new Kunos or Motorsport Games sim won't have modding either which will leave us who ?

 

[Jivesauce]

95% would agree with your analogy no doubt

Along with the majority of studios I think any new Kunos or Motorsport Games sim won't have modding either which will leave us who ?

I'm still confused about what your issue is with that mod you linked though. You don't agree with the other poster's analogy then?

I'm a 3D artist, are you saying if I created my own model of a real car, or a car from another game, and had someone create physics for it, all our own work, you would think it was wrong for it to be released as a free mod?

 

[Shovas]

So if I go to the ********************* web site, specifically, what is example content that was stolen? I would be interested in seeing the original mod and what the content looks like on the ********************* web site.

In the photography world, if a photo is manipulated enough, it is considered unique. Has ********************* manipulated the original content significantly?

I would think the argument would be that's an artistic work, where fair use applies, where mods are a technical work (like programming code), with many interlocking, modular components, so fair use wouldn't apply. Also copyright law would apply.

But I am not a lawyer.

 

[Case_]

I see a pretty clear difference here. This a free mod which is inspired by gp3 and is completely scratch built using none of the original parts - essentially a cover song sung by tribute band in a pub with no entry fee.

I'm sorry to tell you, but a cover song by a tribute band played in a pub with no entry fee is still infringing on the rights of the copyright owner, unless the band was given explicit permission by the copyright owner.

It doesn't matter if you make money off something that is infringing on copyrights or not. At all. It might mean the copyright holder might be a bit more lenient about it if they want to be extra nice, but they have no obligation to.

Reminds me of those disclaimers people sometimes put on videos, song covers and other things on YT (and other sites), claiming that "no copyright infringement intended, all rights still belong to (whoever owns them)". I guess they think it makes it OK for the thing to exist and they're safe from copyright infringement, but actually no, they're not at all. If anything, that disclaimer translates to "I hereby state I'm fully aware I'm infringing on someone's copyright here and shouldn't be doing this".

 

[Bobby Pennington]

Welcome to "cancel culture" where wrong is right and can strike back disgracefully. Simracing604 is a positive, respectful guy and it's good too see so many supporting him.

I'm not sure how we can organize as a community too combat disrespectful mod groups other than too keep everyone informed on our sim forum's.

Thanks to RD for making and taking a stand for the good guys.

 

[Cristian Luis]

There is a post on CMT's (Constrictor Modding Team) Facebook page supporting the cause. I will not post the link since the Facebook pages are not welcome here because of rules.

 

[Cristian Luis]

95% would agree with your analogy no doubt

Along with the majority of studios I think any new Kunos or Motorsport Games sim won't have modding either which will leave us who ?

Probably with the titles of the 2000's or AC as latest. I personally feel great on that side. Modding in GPL and F1C (specially F1C) since 2007, still in the same boats.

With 16 GB RAM, a GTX 1080, and a lot of space in HDD, I could play any modern sim-racing title and have all of them on my PC, but I am honestly happy with the classics.

Hopefully in future installments modding is taken into account.

 

[CobraCat]

Has there not been a coordinated effort to report Sim Dream's illegal activities to their web host, which apparently is godaddy. As well as alerting the companies that own the IP of the content being sold by Sim Dream.

 

[Crivitz Chris]

Hopefully something is able to be done about "Team". This "team" is the reason why the original F1 Classics site closed its doors. This team has been doing this for years and they have not been able to be shut down and people still buy their content. A few modders have quite modding as their content was taken from rF1, F1C etc converted to AC then the "team" claims it as their own, and strikes down the hard work of the original modders.

So if I go to the ********************* web site, specifically, what is example content that was stolen? I would be interested in seeing the original mod and what the content looks like on the ********************* web site.

The CART 1995 mod is 100% the iDT rF1 mod. We did get it taken down for a bit, but then they put it back up. The "team" is from a country that it is difficult to file a cease and desist. Their Endurance mods is 100% Forza (Lola-Mazda LMP2) and Enduracers rF1-rF2 mod.

As much as I love the modding community in games, it is situations like this is why developers are moving away from removing modding from their games. And I 100% don't blame them from it.

 

[space.jazz]

The way I see it, there are two main issues here. The modding issue and the stealing of other people work, which is bad in and on itself.
But what is really bad in this case is using the copyright strike as a weapon for dissent and criticism.
I am a musician and this happens all the time in the music scene on YT. In some cases they are just bands (or their managers to be precise) like Queen and others that simply go around striking channels that often use bits of their songs for educational purposes. Rick Beato, a great music educator on YT even has a policy that he doesn't care if the bands make money out of his videos, as long as he can use snippets of the songs for education.
Yet, even then, bands that should feel lucky to be reintroduced to new audiences, often ruin music education channels to the point where some videos have absolute silence where the song should be.


But much worse than that is the use of a copyright strike to squelch dissent. What has worked in the past were Twitter and FB campaigns, videos and in general negative notoriety along the lines of the Streisand Effect.

See, YT cannot actually use humans to police copyright, so all that one has to do is report a video and YT first action is to dock a strike.

Unfortunately, last time I checked, meritless strikes didn't get punished, but there was talk of making it more dangerous to use strikes as a weapon.

Then there is the old "downvote them to death". These guys have a YT channel. They will delete negative comments, but not the downvotes. I checked and already most of their videos have a 2:1 ration of downvotes. Already people are downvoting them.

If any modders have had their work stolen by them, they could return the favor and copyright strike every video of theirs showing their mod. be prepared to have evidence of your copyright.

There are some Legal YT channels that have covered this issue. If anyone has the time, it would be a good idea to watch those videos and maybe help out 604 with links and connections. I think "Legal Eagle" covered this issue, but I am sure others have too.

Of course, negative reviews on their videos will stay up long enough to affect some of their buyers, so it may not be a bad idea to leave some comments and downvote until it starts hurting. Republishing the video would also be a headache for those guys.

Great post, mate! Thumbs-up.

 

[NobbyRacing2015]

and the best thing YouTube is protecting this kind of behavior , this would be the same as if I would download pirated movies and re-sell them for my own gain ... but that of course is against the law ... so in other words YouTube is measuring with to sets of rules ... and you are unable to take Sim Dream Developments YouTube channel down ...

 

[Kingkoenig]

I'm sorry to tell you, but a cover song by a tribute band played in a pub with no entry fee is still infringing on the rights of the copyright owner, unless the band was given explicit permission by the copyright owner.

It doesn't matter if you make money off something that is infringing on copyrights or not. At all. It might mean the copyright holder might be a bit more lenient about it if they want to be extra nice, but they have no obligation to.

Reminds me of those disclaimers people sometimes put on videos, song covers and other things on YT (and other sites), claiming that "no copyright infringement intended, all rights still belong to (whoever owns them)". I guess they think it makes it OK for the thing to exist and they're safe from copyright infringement, but actually no, they're not at all. If anything, that disclaimer translates to "I hereby state I'm fully aware I'm infringing on someone's copyright here and shouldn't be doing this".

True, but in the case of YouTube video, it's often not worth the trouble for whoever owns the copyright to sue. The best thing you can hope for is to have the video removed, which will probably get you a lot of negative publicity.

There is a guy in Quebec that has produced a few videos in which he plays jaw-dropping covers of Yes, Rush, Genesis, etc. The Yes video was so good that the band, rather than send his lawyers after him, praised him. That's a better attitude.

 

[Mr Deap]

It's more or less the same as claiming AC is arcade. You get bombarded with BS.

 

[Kingkoenig]

Hopefully something is able to be done about "Team". This "team" is the reason why the original F1 Classics site closed its doors. This team has been doing this for years and they have not been able to be shut down and people still buy their content. A few modders have quite modding as their content was taken from rF1, F1C etc converted to AC then the "team" claims it as their own, and strikes down the hard work of the original modders.



The CART 1995 mod is 100% the iDT rF1 mod. We did get it taken down for a bit, but then they put it back up. The "team" is from a country that it is difficult to file a cease and desist. Their Endurance mods is 100% Forza (Lola-Mazda LMP2) and Enduracers rF1-rF2 mod.

As much as I love the modding community in games, it is situations like this is why developers are moving away from removing modding from their games. And I 100% don't blame them from it.

That's sad. However, with DLC becoming a major source of revenue, it makes sense for a developper to remove modding. At least Reiza lets people design custom skins for AMS2 and most of these skins are better than the official ones.

 

[Zombie Boy]

Sim Dream are the worst of the worst. They shut an entire forum down a year or so ago, after stealing mods from there and selling them. They then claimed that those original mods were theirs and had the forum shut down.
More recently, they were caught ripping and selling cars from iRacing. It was Jimmy Broadbent that reported that to the iRacing devs, who were starting to take action when those cars *mysteriously* vanished from the Sim Dream website.
They have a long history of launching copyright strikes against YouTube videos that show mods that they have ripped off (scorched earth, to hide any proof that they stole that content) and of stealing mods and then launching copyright claims against the original modder to have the original version of the mods removed from the public eye.
And now this... Mike had no Sim Dream content on display in his video (in fact, he was showing AMS2 content, if I remember rightly), and Sim Dream have basically destroyed his channel because he voiced an opinion.

The thing is, if they continue to do this, there won't be any more mods for them to steal, and if they continue to remove sim racing videos from YouTube, they will be taking a huge step towards killing off this hobby that so many people enjoy, as people won't be getting exposed to it.
Essentially, in the long run, they are shooting themselves in both feet.

 

[Durge Driven]

I'm still confused about what your issue is with that mod you linked though. You don't agree with the other poster's analogy then?

The car shape is "unique" and copyrighted to Geoff so it's not like copying any real car

Frankly I don't like how the whole modding culture evolved into self governing entity
At a well known site members debated their own time limitations on mods being public
Even international knitting clubs have their official organizations, membership and charters

 

[AndreasFSC]

They stole my models from my super touring mod for Race 07 and the GTR2 version from FRM team. They even used my skins that were not based on any real livery, so no doubt where they stole the contents. On their site they say "we hope you will have as much fun racing these cars as we had making them"...

I reported their youtube videos containing this mod and got them removed. Their channel was also taken down, but they just moved to a new one, but without uploading those reported videos.