That's good news for one! I'm glad.

 

Should've probably read it all. It was just too much though.

There's no way for us to know if we're looking at the same 3d model in zmodeler as there's shown in the gallery image, we can't download the car and install it in the game, we'd rely on everyone being honest about the issue and that's not likely to be the case if it is a ripped model.

In theory, my Charger model could be considered "stolen" by another user if he converted the same model to a police version, our models would look nearly identical in the gallery and the same would be the case if we compared images of their wireframes because we based our work on the same model.

In theory, it would not be considered stolen. Nobody was ever talking about converted models - scratch-made parts and vehicle had been the issue all the time. Every model is different, even though they might be based on the same thing. Just compare Kevin's and RGXLegend's Caprice front bumpers. They're the only PPV bumper models I've seen so far, based on the same original car, they are both very accurate, yet have obvious differences.

 

The gallery is a bit more troublesome, partly for the reasons I talked about earlier in this post and in my earlier post. Any restrictions that would combat the problem would also place restrictions that aren't reasonable on the 99.9999% of users that aren't involved in modding or who are showing off mods that aren't ripped or used without permission. As you said, it's only a few people who do rip so the way we deal with the issue should reflect that.

I'm not saying that we're ignoring it, but the way we deal with it should not punish the vast majority of users that aren't ripping and stealing.

Alright, so we have a large start post by Sam stating how the situation changes and that we should simply report images. Yet, staff won't do anything because they aren't experienced enough to see whether two models are the same. I'm actually wondering what we were arguing about? You want us to stop commenting and rather report images, yet you won't deal with any reports?

 

This whole deal reminds me of these people who complained that some Arma 2 modders stole some GTA IV car mods which were originally from Driver San Francisco. You can guess a shitstorm followed. The thing is, they didn't even own them to begin with.

Just because you don't own something, it's not like you didn't do anything. You still spend time on converting and editing. But still, models made by external authors were never the issue, we were talking about scratch-made work. Dodgeboy modeled his Interceptor, Kevin modeled his Caprice bumpers, EVI modeled his hubcaps.

 

If something is wrong just report it for crying out loud.

Obviously going to help, since according to Nicolai's new rules draft, there's still nothing going to happen.

 

I'd wish to be back onboard to support our dev team, other staff and to hand out justice when necessary.

I wish you wouldn't, since I don't like staff insulting people as an "egoistic bunch of immature fools".

Olanov is not staff, he's a tester and a former moderator.

 

I'm not saying that we won't address the issue, but the solution has to be proportionate to the issue. The issue isn't as big as it's made out to be, the accusations were made on images uploaded by a handful of people.

What I'm also saying is that we're not going to implement anything we know can't be enforced, we'll be back here if we do because we, yet again, refuse to take action.

You're saying that people are free to break the rules if they disagree with them or disagree with how we deal with the issues we have. Where does that stop then, can a user do the same on your images? Can users abuse each other if they see topic bumping or someone uploaded ten images within 30 minutes to the gallery? Where's that line drawn of when it's acceptable to break the rules?

Apparently it's okay for users to accuse other users and us of doing wrong, but it's not acceptable to do the same thing to them.

 

 

 

The solution should reflect the scale of the issue, the solution shouldn't impact everyone else that aren't doing anything wrong.

 

One very simple way to prevent the issue would be to prohibit any car mods (or any mod) that aren't released on LCPDFR.com or shown in a WIP thread. Then we could back up the theft claims in the images because it concerns material that's actually hosted on the site.

 

We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The "modders" will leave (despite you statement that they had left already) if we don't make drastic changes, but the same drastic changes are just as likely to cause the same number, or even more users to leave the site because they're now being mistreated.

Olanov is not staff, he's a tester and a former moderator.

That's what I'm talking about, while these offends are not appropriate for a normal member, they'd be definitly unappropriate for a staff member.

 

I'm not saying that we won't address the issue, but the solution has to be proportionate to the issue. The issue isn't as big as it's made out to be, the accusations were made on images uploaded by a handful of people.

What I'm also saying is that we're not going to implement anything we know can't be enforced, we'll be back here if we do because we, yet again, refuse to take action.

Yet you don't have a solution so far. That'll only give the feeling of you not doing anything again.

 

You're saying that people are free to break the rules if they disagree with them or disagree with how we deal with the issues we have. Where does that stop then, can a user do the same on your images? Can users abuse each other if they see topic bumping or someone uploaded ten images within 30 minutes to the gallery? Where's that line drawn of when it's acceptable to break the rules?

Apparently it's okay for users to accuse other users and us of doing wrong, but it's not acceptable to do the same thing to them.

I've never said it's alright to break rules. The rule that public accusations are forbidden although is only written down publicly for a short amount of time, instead we should report images. Then we're just doing that whole problem again, people are reporting those images and nothing happens. They comment it is stolen, they get punishments. You see why this is considered censorship and protecting rippers?

 

The solution should reflect the scale of the issue, the solution shouldn't impact everyone else that aren't doing anything wrong.

A person not doing anything wrong won't have access to these specific models. If somebody is really posting a different model suddenly, he can simply prove it by showing its poly.

 

One very simple way to prevent the issue would be to prohibit any car mods (or any mod) that aren't released on LCPDFR.com or shown in a WIP thread. Then we could back up the theft claims in the images because it concerns material that's actually hosted on the site.

Showcasing mods with links to other pages is already forbidden anyways.

I don't see why that's simple though, since it'll course many work for staff and it's affecting "normal users that do nothing wrong" even more than a rule against ripped models.

 

We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The "modders" will leave (despite you statement that they had left already) if we don't make drastic changes, but the same drastic changes are just as likely to cause the same number, or even more users to leave the site because they're now being mistreated.

I actually don't see why anybody would have an issue with that. If there's really once a confusion of two models, a user can simply prove it is his by showing the poly.

Just because you don't own something, it's not like you didn't do anything. You still spend time on converting and editing. But still, models made by external authors were never the issue, we were talking about scratch-made work. Dodgeboy modeled his Interceptor, Kevin modeled his Caprice bumpers, EVI modeled his hubcaps.

 

I'm aware, I'm just saying it's about as silly. The fact that people use it as an excuse to be able to attack others.

 

 

I wish you wouldn't, since I don't like staff insulting people as an "egoistic bunch of immature fools".

 

Okay. Doesn't change the fact they lose self control and act like such people.

I'm aware, I'm just saying it's about as silly. The fact that people use it as an excuse to be able to attack others.

They don't use it as an excuse to attack. They're not even attacking, they're blaming others, because they'd like to be able to control their work.

Okay. Doesn't change the fact they lose self control and act like such people.

What are you supposed to do if staff doesn't help you? I was never supporting the accustions that happend in the last week, they were obviously unjustified. We had obvious cases of theft in the past though without anybody insulting anybody, yet those comments were removed.

They don't use it as an excuse to attack. They're not even attacking, they're blaming others, because they'd like to be able to control their work.

 

Blaming others? You mean attacking? Because that's what it seems to be. That doesn't even reach the goal of controlling their work. If they want to control their work, maybe they should express their feelings about it more openly, without attacking anybody and so forth (I don't any cases of this as of right now plsdontkillme). Try to get more people to support that idea and come up with some different means. There's always ways, lot's of them What has happened is not the way to deal with it.

 

 

What are you supposed to do if staff doesn't help you? I was never supporting the accustions that happend in the last week, they were obviously unjustified. We had obvious cases of theft in the past though without anybody insulting anybody, yet those comments were removed.

 

I know you're not supposed to attack them like that. You lose your temper and you lose your control over the situation, maybe escealate it against you. I don't know about those other cases you're talking about, so if you want to shed some light on that, you're more than welcome to do so.

 

 

 

Blaming others? You mean attacking? Because that's what it seems to be. That doesn't even reach the goal of controlling their work. If they want to control their work, maybe they should express their feelings about it more openly, without attacking anybody and so forth (I don't any cases of this as of right now plsdontkillme). Try to get more people to support that idea and come up with some different means. There's always ways, lot's of them What has happened is not the way to deal with it.

I actually always thought people knew what time, effort and experience it takes to create parts or even whole vehicles from scratch. I've mentioned it before, since almost everybody is able to put some unlocked lightbar on an unlocked model, there's no respect for modders anymore. Even though actually modeling parts is far from putting them together.

I said it before, we're creating these mods in our freetime and release them publicly without wanting anything back, often not even vehicles we're using ourselfs and only did because we've seen the interest. If people steal your work, getting the recognition for it, you're getting annoyed.

 

I know you're not supposed to attack them like that. You lose your temper and you lose your control over the situation, maybe escealate it against you. I don't know about those other cases you're talking about, so if you want to shed some light on that, you're more than welcome to do so.

As I said in an earlier post, the whole situation escalated after quite some time. The one specific user, that had it account deleted now, was posting pictures of Dodgeboy's Ford Taurus some months ago. Since there were permission issues on my own website as well, we knew Dodgeboy didn't grant permission for him to convert or use it. Since he didn't recieve the model from Gatekeeper, who handed them out before, it was obviously ripped, so people commented on that picture saying exactly this. If I remember correctly, at that time staff didn't interfere. The person continued posting more pictures showing that model, ignoring all comments. I've been told by at least two other guys that they did report the picture. The comments were getting harsher in the end and were removed, later warnings were issued as well. Since people have been told they shouldn't attack that user, some went back to a more polite way: Telling them he's going great showing other people's work. These comments were removed. The amount of pictures posted by that person increased in these few days, so people did more comments and recieved more warnings, some even temporary bans. One other person asked about credits in the same discussion, resulting in his comment being removed as well. For him and many others, it looked like arbitrariness and since the author of the pictures was simply continuing, it looked like staff was protecting rippers. Hate on the rippers increased, hate on staff increased, resulting in the loss of respect against them mentioned by Nicolai.

I cannot give you specific examples, since all of the pictures mentioned above have been taken down since. I already mentioned which parts I definitly recognized though.

I actually always thought people knew what time, effort and experience it takes to create parts or even whole vehicles from scratch. I've mentioned it before, since almost everybody is able to put some unlocked lightbar on an unlocked model, there's no respect for modders anymore. Even though actually modeling parts is far from putting them together.

I said it before, we're creating these mods in our freetime and release them publicly without wanting anything back, often not even vehicles we're using ourselfs and only did because we've seen the interest. If people steal your work, getting the recognition for it, you're getting annoyed.

 

 

I can understand that but it still doesn't justify attacking people.

 

 

 

 

As I said in an earlier post, the whole situation escalated after quite some time. The one specific user, that had it account deleted now, was posting pictures of Dodgeboy's Ford Taurus some months ago. Since there were permission issues on my own website as well, we knew Dodgeboy didn't grant permission for him to convert or use it. Since he didn't recieve the model from Gatekeeper, who handed them out before, it was obviously ripped, so people commented on that picture saying exactly this. If I remember correctly, at that time staff didn't interfere. The person continued posting more pictures showing that model, ignoring all comments. I've been told by at least two other guys that they did report the picture. The comments were getting harsher in the end and were removed, later warnings were issued as well. Since people have been told they shouldn't attack that user, some went back to a more polite way: Telling them he's going great showing other people's work. These comments were removed. The amount of pictures posted by that person increased in these few days, so people did more comments and recieved more warnings, some even temporary bans. One other person asked about credits in the same discussion, resulting in his comment being removed as well. For him and many others, it looked like arbitrariness and since the author of the pictures was simply continuing, it looked like staff was protecting rippers. Hate on the rippers increased, hate on staff increased, resulting in the loss of respect against them mentioned by Nicolai.

I cannot give you specific examples, since all of the pictures mentioned above have been taken down since. I already mentioned which parts I definitly recognized though.

 

 

That sounds bad, though, with lack of proof I can't really comment on that too much.

Edited January 24, 201412 yr by Olanov

What if we create some kind of comission, with members from both the community team and some modders, that checks if mods and stuff are ripped/stolen or not? That way, you'll get to know and understand eachother and eachother's "jobs" a bit more, and you'll solve the issue with who made a model(parts) too.

That sounds bad, though, with lack of proof I can't really comment on that too much.

Many people posting in this thread have no knowledge of anything that happend before this thread all. I've already said that in the first post I've made in this topic.

I can understand that but it still doesn't justify attacking people.

Where do you see any attacks on users? I'm not talking about the PMs which were directed at staff members after the whole situation escalated. Almost all accusations that happend before the growth of this situation were justified, IMO. I know EVI is the only one who modeled Caprice hubcaps so far and I expect him to be able to recognize them if somebody else is posting a picture. I expect Kevin to differentiate TraumaPak's and his own bumper, especially because there're details that can be easily seen. Even Sam agreed on that.

To be honest, the staff on this website works in a very non-de-escalating way. There're often as much accusations and insults on both sides, just take the comments on the picture linked in the first post.

And seeing comments like "Ignore who steals your models, I don't care as long as more of them are released, no matter who does" just makes me go very angry. I've mentioned my opinion about these type of people before. I'm also sick of those people saying "It's not your work either, you're just copying reallife parts". Yes, we do, because that's what people want. Just don't forget that mods and therefore modders made this website grow.

Almost all accusations that happend before the growth of this situation were justified, IMO.

 

Depends on the nature of them really.

Just to clarify about the user, he requested to have his profile removed so we deactivated it. Take that as you will, maybe he was tired of getting accused or maybe he knew that he couldn't get away with it any more. Take that as a small victory if you will.

 

I also think it's worth noting that the user in question posted more images as the amount of accusations increased, there was a noticeable drop after a couple of images didn't generate any attacks. That's partly why we said to ignore the images because a part of the whole situation, including ripping and uploading mods with ripped models is only done so they can get attention, it doesn't seem to matter if it's good or bad as long as they get attention. Telling you guys to ignore it wasn't meant as a permanent solution, but it would calm everything down so we had more time to work on the underlying issues.

 

 

Back to the rules.I want to be as honest as I possibly can, that's why I said that we can't apply certain changes because we know what we can and can't enforce, we can't say that ripping is not allowed because we can't verify that, but we can verify permission issues. Which includes ripping.  We can clarify exactly what constitutes "permission" in the rules if it isn't clear enough on that particular issue.

 

 

I do agree that those of us that has spent a lot of time on our models can notice suptle differences or similarities, I made a minor adjustments the wheels on my Charger last night and it loosk completely different now, but most users wouldn't notice, even I would struggle to notice small changes like that on a model I didn't have much, if any experience with.

It's a bit like your own home, you'd notice immediately if your house or flat was burgled, even if they didn't break windows or thrash the place. You'd notice that the rug was 2 cm more to the right or that you didn't leave the kitchen door open wide, that the potted plant in the window was turned the other way.

A police officer wouldn't, he doesn't know the place as well as you do, he has to dust for finger-prints before he can confirm that something isn't right.

 

The unfortunate thing about the gallery is that we can't do our version of dusting for fingerprints, we'd rely on the "burglar" to dust his own prints for us (show us the model he used in the image). We'd be back here, arguing over the same thing if we did go after rippers inthe gallery because they showed us a different model that they had permission for, you'd be arguing that it's a compleley different model we saw, that we're clueless and that we're covering for him. That's why I'm saying that a "straight-up" rule against ripping in the gallery can't work.

 

That's not to say that we won't do anything about the gallery, but the problem concening ripped models and theft was limited to very few people, less people posted images that caused accusations than number of people that accused. That changes the problem in our view, or at least the most important problem, the biggest problem (due to the number of people involved) is the accusations, we can deal with the secondary problem (images showing ripped mods or ripping/stealing mods in general) if we can deal with the biggest issue first. It's a bit like asking a police officer to hold down a suspect that's resisting arrest and ask him to search another suspect at the same time, he'll fail to do one or both things.

 

Again, we can work on finding solutions to all the problems, but the solutions has to reflect the scale and severity of the individual issues, we can't send a JDAM at some dirt if we only need to dig five times with a shovel.

Sounds like a plan!

What are you supposed to do if staff doesn't help you? I was never supporting the accustions that happend in the last week, they were obviously unjustified. We had obvious cases of theft in the past though without anybody insulting anybody, yet those comments were removed.

Just thought I should leave this here, this would be regarding the comments being removed without any insults being in play towards the user who posted a ripped model to the gallery.

I thought the gallery existed to share cool screenshots we can create from using the mod and other peoples mods.

 

Edit: Also backseat moderating is only going to make everything worse, just get a lot of people to report it if it becomes and issue, duh.

Edited January 24, 201412 yr by Rogue

Just thought I should leave this here, this would be regarding the comments being removed without any insults being in play towards the user who posted a ripped model to the gallery.

 

May I ask the community team how many reports the image has?

Why do you expect people to report everything immediatly? Shouldn't Kevin and EVI be allowed to ask for credits themselves instead of immediatly reporting the picture? Since the comments and the picture are gone, they obviously noticed it anyways.

Why do you expect people to report everything immediatly? Shouldn't Kevin and EVI be allowed to ask for credits themselves instead of immediatly reporting the picture? Since the comments and the picture are gone, they obviously noticed it anyways.

 

How about PMing the user asking them to add credit, then if they don't, report it? Instead of publicly accusing them (which they may not even notice since there is no notification for picture comments by default) then insulting G17 Media.  I can understand wanting to settle it before bringing the staff in, but there are better ways of accomplishing this.

Isn't it pointless?

 

Humanity grows on itslef shoulders: everything everytime everywhere, creativity is based on someone else work. It has always been this way, that's the human nature. And I'm not talking about GTA modding; art, architecture, poetry, etcetc - every human artifact: there's always a background. (just an example: Frank Gehry buildings. It seems they're innovative, new, "never seen before". It's not like that: Gehry's work stands on decades of experimental studies about formal deconstruction made by many & many & many architects...)

 

I've read many times this expression: "made from scratch". For real? Maybe I'm wrong, but... Aren't these models based on drawings made by other designers? Isn't it, to be honest, a rip of someone else work?

 

I am, of course, deeply grateful to all these modders around here that share their beautiful works with the community: I'll never thank you all enough.

 

But, simpy I don't get the point of arguing about "copyrights". Even if it's awfully annoying not being credited for your own work, is it worth to get "angry" like this? I understand that, in this case, the reward is personal satisfaction. But it's always better to remain "one level above". And as many of you maybe know: frequently happens to not being properly credited for your own drawings in more important real work situations. It happens! And best solution is, in my opinion (and experience), to don't mind it at all =)

 

 

With love, respect and admiration for you all

Nikopol