A Question Regarding Acceptable Mod Content and Copyright

[ToroMontana]

Hi, I'm a modder for Fallout 4 and I'm planning to release a parody mod soon. What this mod does is that it replaces every single file of player dialog in the game, giving your player character the voice of someone who sounds like a Terminator Arnold (or Terminator Cameron if female). Some of it is pre-recorded, some of it is just deepfaked as there is a high volume of lines. I have permission from both voice actors to do this as well as permission to create deepfakes.

 

I'm also planning to provide support for as much mod content as possible because new player dialog added by mods isn't immediately affected by this. For the player to always talk like this, both vanilla and mod dialog needs to be replaced with new lines.

 

The question is if this sort of content requires permission from all modders involved (many of which appear to no longer be active at all). A few things to note here:

 

1. The mod will not redistribute any audio files from other mods. The audio files I'm distributing are made from scratch using a program called xVASynth, they are not even altered versions of the original file.

 

So the only thing the files have in common is they share the same path. If the original file has a path like "PiperCaitCurieDialogueOverhaul.esp\PlayerVoiceMale01\00002e74_1.wav" then my file will have same path and the same name, but it will be a completely different file that overrides the original file.

 

2. The mod will not redistribute any plugins from other mods in either their original or altered form.

 

3. I've gone over the rules and one in particular states that: "User-submitted content that is predominantly intended to interact with existing user-submitted content is subject to the approval of all parties involved and may be removed at the request of the author of the original content."

 

The kind of content I'm making does interact with user-submitted content, but not predominantly, interaction with third party mods being just a small part of the entire project.

 

4. As far as the spoken dialog being the same, a lot of player lines are very common sentences like "Works for me. I'll pay you when I have it. Good luck."

 

My conclusion is that this either does not fall under copyright at all or that it falls under fair use due to it being a small portion of the entire thing, not being a viable market replacement and most importantly being a parody of the content (both of the vanilla content and the modded user-submitted content) which has strong fair use protection.

 

However, I'd like an official Nexus Mods take on this as well before going forward with anything related to this. If this becomes an issue, I'll just keep a portion of the work private. I have been in touch with many modders and they don't have an issue, but some modders cannot be contacted at all.