Reason for ZephyrWarrior's PA mod Review

[yoohohyong]

well.. Crud... I really liked this mod. It had so much depth...

Edited January 14, 2016 by yoohohyong

[tomomi1922]

How does the original author prove the texture is his? Show them the PSD file?

[Battousai124]

@VarekRaith,

Yes of course he defended himself, have you ever had such a case? That you adamantly thought you did something and actually fought because of your own solid belief? That's what happened with Zeph, however he checked again and found that he just renamed the wrong textures and packaged them into a fixed file and announced that openly and freely on his mod's page.

How was he shown that the textures weren't his, huh??? I know i don't have the knowledge to distinguish the textures ZEPH posted on his mod's page but they actually (to ME!) were only slightly different, almost undistinguishable.

He also didn't outsource s#*!, he looked at the textures of invock (Minutemen Paintjob) and thought they were cool and worked off of those to create textures that were inspired by him.

And don't tell me they were original, invock states on his modpage that he took the vanilla textures and just changed them, if you ask me, invock should be locked up since he actually committed copyright infringement when he took the Bethesda textures.

and if zeph brought this upon himself and should be banned as you say, then EVERY modder who took vanilla textures and changed them, should be banned as well and since we're already at it, EVERY modder in general concerning Fallout 4 should be banned, including me, since Bethesda hasn't released the official mod tools yet AND disabled modding, doesn't matter if this was by accident or not.

And how much can you make something Unique if you have to keep to specific factors (Minutemen, blue or grey to keep with the color the minutemen identify with, Decal, and of course the Armorparts' shape)???

 

Apparently you only wanted to jump onto the Hate-Wagon against Zeph but have NOTHING to contribute.

 

@tomomi

Somehow i think that or a screenshot are the only way to actually tell something like this. Zeph posted a comparison of two sets of textures on his site right before all of this was over (or so i thought) the differences were actually were distinct but hidden, so that someone actually had to look for them and point them out. I saw them but I looked for them, so Invock actually wanted to put him down, worsin as well but what Zephs mod and what Worsins mod do are different, Zephs overhauls the PA modding system but Worsins only slaps new paint on the parts, good ones i give him that but not really fitting for the world but that's not the point. Worsin even says that scratches on his textures are vanilla ones and zephs are as well, but he used that argument to make Zeph look bad and paint him as a thief.

[jcdenton2012]

How does the original author prove the texture is his? Show them the PSD file?

 

 

Well... honestly... you really can't. Hear me out! Hear me out! Essentially we are talking about dds textures, and much of that content is heavily generic so unless they were converted from artwork which requires a permission to use, you really can't prove fault. Stuff stolen from... Devientart for example is easier to trace and prove stolen due to its originality, than something involving a generic blue texture. The only real way to prove that your content is original is pretty much to document the hell out of something starting with when you created the original dds, before supplementing the dds texture with rust, or dents, or whatever else is needed to make it original. Nobody owns the color blue, but it's what you do with the color blue which defines if your content was stolen. This having been said, you can't just copy and paste other peoples textures without their permissions.

 

Now then, where is the line drawn, so to speak. No matter how you approach creating a custom dds texture, odds are that you will be using someone else's work. It doesn't matter if you are starting with 'paint' colors or a dds texture found on google images. Stolen starts when you use something which requires someone else's permission to use. There is artwork out there which can be used as a base for your dds textures without written consent. Most merely require that you credit the original mod author.

[Battousai124]

@jc

but what if the one you "stole" from doesn't have permission him/herself ?

[jcdenton2012]

@jc

but what if the one you "stole" from doesn't have permission him/herself ?

No permission given = banned, no excuses.

 

This having been said... if something was ripped from the games data archives (meshes, textures, etc), and re-skinned for that same game, then you have a grey area. This has to do with the redistribution clause of the games MLA. A lot of modders out their claim free use for content being re-imported back to the game, arguing that you already own the games original content, thus they aren't redistributing the games content for other uses. This is... technically illegal, yet a commonly accepted work-around for many modders. But god... I really don't want to get bogged down in this stuff, it's depressing.

[Battousai124]

yeah as you said, it IS illegal but jumping onto this and not even accepting the "perpetrator's" heartfelt apology, in case of Zeph he openly posted that he made a mistake and immediately took down the concerned textures. Also according to him and I believe him, he did not just take invocks textures and changed them, he looked at them and recreated his own from the vanilla textures in the game. But he worked well into the night and just renamed the wrong set, which he remedied as soon as he knew that he made the mistake.

I'd say give leniency since the modding community is spread across the globe, i.e. me, i am in germany, zeph may be in the USA thats at least a 6 hour difference, from Zeph to invock it may be the same or even longer difference and now imagine that it could be earlier for Zeph (10am for invock, 4am for Zeph i.e.) OR the other way around (9pm for invock, 3am for Zeph; both examples with a 6 hour difference) nobody can expect that everyone is sitting at their computer 24/7.

 

I think nobody should be penalized simply for defending himself, which everybody does to his best knowledge, also in Law, the accuser has to prove his validity (at least in Germany), not the accused.

[jcdenton2012]

For me, a key point is that HE took it down. Not an Admin. Knowing that you made a mistake and then pulling the file in question before an Admin is aware of the issue and decides to take action is a sign that you actually give a crap about your work. The fact that he defended himself against allegations, then when in error owned up to his faults instead of fighting to the death while being wrong is a sign maturity. I actually give props to Zeph if that's how it went down since most people would have stuck to being wrong and never admitted fault.

 

This having been said... I keep getting the impression that Invock is being a little bit unreasonable if this is how things actually went down. I say this because I honestly didn't read the initial message board to know the extend of the feuding so the best I can do from my perspective is judge on second hand evidence.

 

And this brings me to my last thought. When a file is under review for suspected infringement these things tend to take hours if not 1-2 days to resolve. This is taking considerably longer, and I suspect that it's because Zeph is actually putting forward quite a bit of evidence to support his claims.

[Battousai124]

Yes, he did. I not only saw the message he posted on his mod but I downloaded the update that was in question, twice, since he took it down and re-uploaded the right one. Invock is unreasonable and claims that zeph blocked him on his modpage which zeph denied and makes no sense since he displayed a high level of maturity during the entire episode, invock however slandered all over zeph on his own modpage and Worsin joined right in there.

 

Well the quantity of added paintjobs in the mod, the admins may be taking their time and checking every single texture and contacting their respective authors to find out if he got permission. Which he stated on his modpage, where necessary if my memory serves me right.

[saby4891]

Is it acceptable to ask anyone with the updated mod to send me a DL. I was almost 80% done with the DL when "an unexpected error" occured. I'd very much like to continue my game as I relied and that mod in my save file.