To whomever it may concern,

 

Here's the story behind why I cannot upload the GJPD skins anymore:

 

On June 12, 2013, I uploaded the first skin in the form of the Ford Crown Victoria, also uploading a YouTube video up the same day. After I had everything worked out, I sent a message to the GJPD's Official Facebook Page in the following form:

 

 

I continued working on the skins, eventually uploading the Dodge Charger skin on June 18, 2013. On June 20, 2013, a reporter from the GJ Sentinel came across the Ford Crown Victoria Showcase video, which is the same one I sent to the GJPD. He then e-mailed me, inquiring about the cars. I sent him back a little summary about the LCPDFR community and why I made the cars. The following day (June 21), I received the following from the GJPD's Facebook page:

 

 

Shocked at the time, I decided to comply and take down the downloads, pictures, and videos I had uploaded with anything related to the GJPD. Seeing as Facebook is not an official way of communication, I called the individual in charge of the page. I left a voice mail with my number. On June 25, I finally got a call back, but from John Camper, GJPD Chief of Police. We discussed it over, and I found out that the order was not necessarily a legal action, but rather a personal favor request from John Camper himself. Because he doesn't know the LCPDFR community too well and the fact that the downloads were open to the public, he didn't want the GJPD's reputation with the community to be diminished. Of course, I still requested the formal letter to prove of our encounter and just got it in today.

 

 

Because I respect his wishes and would like to be part of the GJPD one day, I am no longer publicly releasing anything about the GJPD including pictures, videos, and downloads. I realize now that contacting the GJPD at the beginning about these cars may have been a mistake, but I still feel they should have been informed one way or another.

 

The reason I am sharing this story is because there were a few members that thought I was making it up (Including GPM's Administrative Team) just to make up an excuse to stop making the skins. But I assure you, if it wasn't for this mishap, I would of gladly made the skins and posted them. But I respect the GJPD's decision, so I cannot do that anymore.

 

The GJ Sentinel is still writing about this story and it should be done by Wednesday.

 

If you have any further questions/concerns about this topic, please post below. However, if this topic goes off course or gets spammed a lot with random posts, I will personally ask for this topic to be closed, so keep it clean out there.

 

Thank you.

 

Sincerely,

MostChameleon

Wow. I am really sad about how this turned out. GJPD is a awesome department! GJPD For Life! 

why did you make 4 topics that are the exact same?

why did you make 4 topics that are the exact same?

 

Probably just a slow internet connection. I don't think it was intentional.

I'm on GJPD's side with this though. It's their name/image at stake and it is very, very easy to change the skins to a fictional PD, different font, different text color and logo and show that off as your own work.

Though now GJPD's done it, I wonder how many other departments do this and we don't hear about it? How many people just take the skins down and say nothing.

I'm glad that you have complied with their requests, it would not be good for our community to be struck with copyright infringement, I hope that others have complied if asked, and I'm sure that Sam/Jay/Modding Team know the actual number of Take Down's they have had to do (if any so far), but it would suck if more Departments start locking out their logos from us, I know lots of people enjoy playing as their local law enforcement department, aspiring to become part of the team.

It was good of them not to overreact and go after you. Respect earned for them. 

I'm glad that you have complied with their requests, it would not be good for our community to be struck with copyright infringement, I hope that others have complied if asked, and I'm sure that Sam/Jay/Modding Team know the actual number of Take Down's they have had to do (if any so far), but it would suck if more Departments start locking out their logos from us, I know lots of people enjoy playing as their local law enforcement department, aspiring to become part of the team.

 

But it's easy to simply modify a logo. I could easily go and dig up screenshots of a contest entry for fictional skins and show the high quality work some people have done with totally fictional stuff, there's some amazingly talented folks out there and I bet if you had a contest to come up with 100% fictional liveries, we'd have some amazingly done ones.

So who wants to start a fictional livery contest?

But it's easy to simply modify a logo. I could easily go and dig up screenshots of a contest entry for fictional skins and show the high quality work some people have done with totally fictional stuff, there's some amazingly talented folks out there and I bet if you had a contest to come up with 100% fictional liveries, we'd have some amazingly done ones.

So who wants to start a fictional livery contest?

 

That would be a great idea to encourage people away from real life departments so that there in theory could never be a case of a department going after people for copyright and like you said it's easy to modify a logo/design if your desperate to roleplay as you department make a liberty city version or do like what film makers do and modify certain things so that they are not 100% the same but just have the same basic idea, but im definitely with you on the fictional design contest!

Please stick to the original topic instead of asking the poster why made multiple posts, report the excessive posts and leave it at that in the future.

 

 

It's not the first time agencies request that a mod of their vehicles are taken down, their graphics, logo and likeness is copyrighted to them

That would be a great idea to encourage people away from real life departments so that there in theory could never be a case of a department going after people for copyright and like you said it's easy to modify a logo/design if your desperate to roleplay as you department make a liberty city version or do like what film makers do and modify certain things so that they are not 100% the same but just have the same basic idea, but im definitely with you on the fictional design contest!

 

I do have an idea but I have zero prizes to give out. However I do have a way how it'd be done.

Everyone who enters submits a skin with a few screenshots (2-3), then after a month or so submissions are closed, the voting begins.

Anyone want to help with this?

 

I could have told you something like that was going to happen soon after posting that on the PD Facebook page.  What'd you think they do/say "good job! Keep up the good work!"?

 

Not only that, you could get the entire LCPD site in deep shit with unwanted attention like that.

 

DrDetroit

Edited June 30, 201312 yr by drdetroit

No as when a takedown is issued the staff do take it down.

And I highly doubt the LCPD care about a PD....given they're a bunch of pixels and lines of code

yea, with a millions of cars that have no rights to use the images from other PD departments as well.  I bet there isn't one car that is authorized by Ford to use it's copyrighted badges either.  So you don't want to post a cool LCPDFR vid with a nice new CVPI on the Ford Facebook page.  

 

Get it?  Good!

 

Common sense isn't so common.

 

DrDetroit

And I highly doubt the LCPD care about a PD....given they're a bunch of pixels and lines of code

 

 

Huh?  LCPDFR don't care about the PD?   Why would they?  

 

The GJPD cares about their cars being on LCPDFR/GTAIV though, don't they.  I think they made that quite clear.

 

DrDetroit

Edited June 30, 201312 yr by drdetroit

Whenever the story from the Sentinel is up, do you mind posting it? I am curious to see how they responded to this.

No Ford will not do a thing, because the car makers (unless it's a special case....see Porsche and the Enduracers rFactor mod, or Ferrari and BATRacer) don't exactly make a habit of slapping down mod teams. Ford frankly do not give a crap whether you use a CVPI, a PD however does.

 

Okay, so going by your logic nobody should post pictures of cars on FB or Photobucket or deviantART or wherever since...ya know, it's copyrighted. However the car makers do not take down those images. There's something called 'fair use'

Obviously, if you go posting images of your brand new Porsche cop car all over the internet and say you're making it to be released, you are going to get a letter from Porsche AG and asked to stop and delete all the work (as Enduracers did and complied). Whereas, post pics or photos of a CVPI, not a whole lot will happen.

 

Why? Because, CVPIs are common, they've been done in a LOT of games/movies/TV shows/books, whereas the luxury car makers...which Ford is not one of, are more aggressive about protecting their brands. For instance: Ferrari barred Jalopnik from covering their cars after Jalopnik published an article questioning Ferrari's ethics, i.e. bringing track prepared race cars and disguising them as road cars. End result? Ferrari blacklisted Jalopnik from writing about their cars.

 

Ford have bigger fish to fry than a Youtuber uploading a video of a game mod using their cars, when they have bigger problems on their hands, whereas Ferrari and Porsche (and to a lesser extent BMW and the whole V.A.G, Volkswagen Group...which is stuff like Bugatti, Porsche, Audi and VW) are some of the most protective of their brands.

 

So if you do a Ford badge you'll get sued? That's like Nike going after someody for modding Niko's shoe textures. Not going to happen a whole lot.

As for the LCPD comment, you put the LCPD site, not LCPDFR, so I was making the point that the actual LCPD is a bunch of pixels and code, so would they really care what another PD thinks?

I could have told you something like that was going to happen soon after posting that on the PD Facebook page.  What'd you think they do/say "good job! Keep up the good work!"?

 

You'd actually be surprised. I remember awhile back my friend made a youtube video on a police department and they found out about it and posted it on their facebook wall sharing it.

We'll always comply with organizations that requests us to remove content they own the rights to, that's the way the world works.

 

 

Ford can ask us to take down any files released on here that contains their logos and likeness if they want to, the same goes for any police department and equipment manufacturer as it is highly unlikely that any of our users has licence agreements with any car or equipment manufacturer.

 

The legality of modding has been discussed before, Sam even summed it up pretty well >here

As far as the sentinel article, I used to live in Grand Junction...When I lived there I did not get the paper, but I did read it online, until about 2 years ago, they made it so you have to a account to read the paper online. 

I'm glad that you have complied with their requests, it would not be good for our community to be struck with copyright infringement, I hope that others have complied if asked, and I'm sure that Sam/Jay/Modding Team know the actual number of Take Down's they have had to do (if any so far), but it would suck if more Departments start locking out their logos from us, I know lots of people enjoy playing as their local law enforcement department, aspiring to become part of the team.

 

Seeing as how it was never a legal request, the PD would probably not go after him or LCPDFR since it would cost them too much money over a relatively silly matter.