Formula 1 skin mods removed from RaceDepartment after Copyright claim

That forum reminds me of some other...

 

Kunos have paid for real licenses so they will be fine.

 

I am not defending FOM but you can't say this isn't close copy of.....

Reiza really pushed the limits of what is allowed.

 

I hope youre right and it wont be an issue for KS because of what kind of mods getting released to their game.

 

That has nothing to do with Kunos though. It'll only be an issue for the modders and the websites hosting the mods. We've seen on this forum that ripped content get's taken down pretty quickly. At worst Kunos may have to close threads featuring skins with brands and logos.

 

That'd still be bloody retarded to be honest, but I don't see it as an issue. As Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park "Uhh... nature, uhh... finds a way", so the mods won't suddenly vanish and will pretty much just move to different hosting sites. The FOM can't literally police the entire internet from mods.

 

I still can't wrap my head around how they can be so short-sighted with the livery mods though. It's free advertisement for F1 and the companies on the liveries and the modders make no money off of it. It makes no sense for them to crack down on those, they don't gain anything but angry fans.

 

The companies probably have all sorts of regulations with how they want their logos to be shown and who they associate their brands with. A modder might put two competing brands on the same car, shock/horror!

It could even be the case that there's a 3rd party handling all this kind of stuff and they jump on anything that breaks the client company's code of conduct because that's what they're paid to do and they have nothing better for doing.

 

Companies rather react because they have licensed the series/cars to another game.

Complaining about it is like beating a dead horse, it won't change anything about it. They have the right to do so and that will not stop anyone from watching F1. Only bad races and stupidly high prices will.

Again if the mod keeps it low profile, it does not appear on their radar. Not because they are unaware, but because chasing the guys is not worth it.

 

Auto moblista has been taken off steam over copyright

 

A free broadcast is only mandatory for Olympics and certain football matches.

 

Thank you Majuh.

 

I've never really understood the double standard people seem to have with copyrights. Stealing someones work is bad (conversion without permission), but if you just steal their design it's fine (scratch made, but without the copyright owners permission)? Both are copyright infringement and thus illegal, yet modders seem to think the latter as being legal, I guess because it's less morally wrong?

It doesn't matter if it's a free mod, or a paid one, or free advertising, done from scratch or ripped from somewhere, it's still copyright infringement if you're distributing a copyrighted design without permission. Some companies don't care about free mods, but just because they don't bother to take action doesn't make it legal.

FOM is also known for being rather prissy about taking down their stuff, F1 videos drop out of youtube like flies, so I'm rather surprised it took them this long to crack down on mods. Might have been waiting for some critical mass where it became worth the effort... No point in shooting down mods one by one when you can just nuke them all every two years.
Kinda sucks, but it's their right so not much we can do..

Wow... Just.. Wow.
Yeah, that's a "RB"... even if you're not a fool in a hurry*. Did they have the rest of the teams too? I've seen a "Ferrari" and a "Mercedes" at least on youtube, were Reiza actually stupid enough to replicate the entire grids likeness without permission? I always just assumed them to be modded skins for a "Reiza-001" or whatever generic formula that was already in the game.

I don't think even the unlicensed F1 games of old were that brazen with their livery replicas, even though we were racing against "Mike Shoemaker" and "Jack Willnew" etc

*ffs the forum is being annoying, just google if you care, since the wiki link has a "bad" M-word in it. -_- x)

 

None of the mods removed on RaceDepartment were worth going after, none of them were offered for money and removal didn't follow a specific pattern as not all F1 liveries were removed.

I made this thread because of the implications this behaviour has for modding in general, not to complain about the specific removal of some mods. If this sentiment spreads among legal parties even fully scratch made replicas of cars, tracks and liveries are threatened and you could forget modding of this kind before long. I'm not a lawyer, I can't add anything to the topic on that front - however even as rightful owner of the intellectual property or lawyer I wouldn't go this route. It'd cost me money to get the mods taken down and my side gains nothing from it.

Edit: I see where this is going. You can close the thread.

 

If we can keep the discussion out of wannabee-lawyer-stuff why close the thread?

I agree that the skins should have been below the horizon, but AC F1 mods are advertised a lot on facebook pages and so on. So they decide to move and then they have removed what comes into the fishing net. They left other skins for no real reason. They are just scaring people off from using the F1 brands, trademarks and so on.

At the end of the day, it is no big deal. People had the same reaction after Porsche asked for the removal of a Carrera Cup mod. A few years later we know that it merely resulted in Enduracers, URD and others being careful with naming and trademarks. A precaution that many F1 modders did not take.

 

It is not quite so simple as that.! Where is the line? Artists take photos, painting, sculptures, music etc. copy's of other works and some are a variation of such. In today's computer world 3d models and the skinning of such models, this is all creativity that just so happens can be amazingly accurate. I am not condoning selling and making a profit. Its all about the money ...money!!.... But where does it leave the creative folks who do it for the love of it , that is why I made my earlier post

 

When it comes to art copyrights make little sense. No song has ever been all that original, it's all inspired by something else. If we keep going down the road we're going some record company will own every sound and they'll ask for money whenever you make a fart.

Every film is basically the same story told over and over again with slightly different variables.

I've been on both sides of the argument, I've been to the high court in London protecting a copyright and most people would lose their minds listening to a court of solicitors talking about copyright. At one stage the judge was talking about a set of traffic lights in a field that can't be used by a car. If a person or company spends months or years creating something there should be some protection so their work isn't for nothing. But at the same time there needs to be some sort of cut off. Companies can't expect the art they create to be popular but no one be allowed to talk about it outside of official protocols. They can't spend billions pushing their products in your face then throw a fit if those people end up using that product in a way they don't like.

I think in a hundred years time we'll look at copyright as a ridiculous mess, but until then we're stuck with it.

 

Worst that can happen is F1 mods not being allowed on the forum or big sites like RD.
Everything else, including the F138 that is coming (any minute now... hopefully lol) is legally licensed.

Reiza flown too close to the sun, Pcars fake F1 is doing just fine.

With that said FOM's has the wrong idea about the F1 license (and the internet), it shouldn't be a quick cash grab, it should be a way to bring new fans, something they desperately need, F1 games died when they went exclusive, now they are outsold by GT, Forza, Pcars and probably AC as well.

A world with competing F1 games from Kunos, Reiza, S3, SMS and Codemasters (even they would produce better games if there was competiton) would be much better.

 

Not to mention that Codemaster's F1 games went downhill with the recent few entries. Seeing that Dirt Rally ended up so well there's hope they're doing something about it - though one part of me thinks F1 kind of deserved it.

 

In a constructors press conference at the Australian Grand Prix this year, one journalist asked what advice the teams would give to Haas the new team in F1. Christin Horner the Redbull boss told them to get a good lawyer, I finally understand why, Atomobilista page is down on steam, that would also probably be a good advice to them.