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Anyone who hasn’t seen this day coming has clearly not been paying attention.

This is why it always amused me when some mod group took something from another mod and used it without permission. Teeth were gnashed. Fists were thumped… When the entire mod scene is based on IP infringement and content being duplicated without permission.

It’s sad that it’s come to this, but to be honest I’m surprised it’s taken this long.

I have to agree with UncleChuckle.

The whole “mod wars” and permissions issues have always been a joke because content creators were trying to copyright IP content in which they had no legal permission to produce in the first place.

Saw this coming for some time, I’m just surprised it happened to somebody as small as butch. I’d have expected CTDP to be one of the first hit along with other larger groups.

Needless to say I’m going to assume this is just the start.

Sorrow, I’m out of words really. I guess It had to happen sooner or later in ones disadvantage. Nevertheless its a pleasure having these mods, my only concern is, will it affect other projects on development?

By other, I intent to say separate from Butch’s personal, but for those in collaboration.

Modding teams can move their “bases” to countries where they will not have these problems…

Where’s the edit button when you need it? I did sound a bit selfish there, but with no intention. The issue I’m facing is that, Butch has cars(and some WIP’s to my knowledge along the way in collaboration with GTLW). If this will affect other developers it will come to a bigger blow to the community as already stated. I might be dramatising but the way I see it, has a domino effect.

Some have suggested its a hoax. The thread at NoGrip was removed for some reason – very fishy. As said above, Butch isn’t a high profile modder and has been modding for many years. Why him? Why now? Something doesn’t seem right to me. There are people selling 3D models on the net and no action has been taken.

The only place where this kind of legal actions should start is Simraceway.com… They’re trying to make money with copyrighted materials with no authorizations.

Personnaly, i think when the contents are free, there’s no way to make a legal actions.
Everybody has the right to draw, photography or make 3d model of everything if there’s no commercial use with it.
It’s the smaller right of each citizen in all democraties.
This kind of legal action may only be intimidation from trademarks.
But who in our community will take the risk to brave them and their lawyers?

I think the real problem behind this is only the fact it’s free.
If it’s free for us, that’s not making money for them, and we could’nt buy, or less buy, their commercial video games and contents.

The thread was binned at Nogrip by one of our moderators, because a member that had an axe to grind with Butch started a flame war with his gloating. Very ugly.

I’m in touch with Butch, I’ve explained the situation and have offered to restore the thread if he wants it done.

Personally I am very disappointed with this situation because I’ve been involved with Butch since the early days, when nobody was interested in his first attempts with the TR4 for GTL.

A sad time for all Simracers and modders.

Let’s hope skinners don’t receive the same treatment for releasing replica’s of genuine liveries.

sunalp2: The thread was binned at Nogrip by one of our moderators, because a member that had an axe to grind with Butch started a flame war with his gloating. Very ugly.I’m in touch with Butch, I’ve explained the situation and have offered to restore the thread if he wants it done.Personally I am very disappointed with this situation because I’ve been involved with Butch since the early days, when nobody was interested in his first attempts with the TR4 for GTL.A sad time for all Simracers and modders.Let’s hope skinners don’t receive the same treatment for releasing replica’s of genuine liveries.

As a skinner i fear this wil someday hit me

Something is weird here…. In comparison to the commercial 3d models, paintings and artwork , a simple mod should look like peanuts.. why would a company send a lawyer to a person where there is not even a single chance of getting something out of it, while they let entire hordes of art stores,Photo databases , and Celphone wallpaper packs make money out of their products ???
In this way , filming your own car , and putting it on youtube , would make it an infringement. sites like Deviantart would be closed immediate.

further more, if they would target the mod scene, there are way easier ways , of getting it shut down. I can understand a brand like Ferrari want to have its logo´s removed. I got in trouble ones , using a Coca Cola logo….
but in a non commercial environment, its really unlikely. Drawing a Porsche or a Ferrari would be just as illegal … hmmm hard to understand.
I wonder where the problem originates…

Further more, it would not solve a single thing.. in time , mod teams would just go underground, incognito , making the entire issue uncontrollable. With sites like Simraceway .. No Grip … GTR4U .. and so on .. its hard to believe they would target just one simple person running a little site, having made a model of a car.
I just hope this is not a hoax , or an act of jellousy, cause that would mean we as a community would stop to exist.

Question… is there someone professional in this community who can shed some light on what one could , or could not do? What is the proper response when one does receive a mail like that ? How can you find out if its really a genuine complaint made by the real manufacturer ? there must be some person with a background in law, and a passion for simming out there ? It would be nice to have some sort of response plan.

sunalp2: P>Let’s hope skinners don’t receive the same treatment for releasing replica’s of genuine liveries.

It happened to me. I received a cease and desist order from Tommy Bahama’s law firm in 2001 for using their logo in a Trans-Am mod for SCGT.

Anyone that uses a trademarked logo without a license is at risk of receiving a cease and desist order from the trademark owner.

The Tommy Bahama law firm accused me of infringement and unfair competition in violation of the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1114(1) and 1125(a).

Racing game developers have got wise to this. For years they paid for licenses to use authentic adverts around tracks. Now through IGA they get the companies to pay them for adverts around tracks.

If ISI and Simbin are anything to go by, you can sail pretty close to the wind. ISI released a number of real tracks for rFactor without using their real name and Simbin’s unlicensed Mercedes in STCC is 95% the real thing.

When iRacing got involved with the GTP mod for NR2003 I believe all they did to make it “legal” was remove the real names of the cars.

Sad to see a modder/team without commercial interest being forced to close their site for legal reasons.

Despite I personally don’t like the kind of approach he has regarding modding and how he behave due that, this is not good news.

Regards

I think the proper reaction would be to remove only cars from that brand and that’s it. Imagine mods of major racing-series being released, and always one brand missing? Not a good way to make your brand popular among racing-enthusiasts!
So (as everyone else) I am also puzzled as to what the legal and more importantly the rational reasons are behind something like this.
Maybe it really is that the brand wants to make money out of anything. Understandably to a certain degree, but causing modders to stop their artistic and free work like this is a smack in the face of any fan of that brand.

Does anyone know which brand caused this shutdown? I hope it’s not Aston Martin .

That’s very sad to hear – here’s hoping that this is not the “beginning of the end”.

The beginning of the end ? Hardly. 2 modders/teams from everyone out there is a drop in the ocean.
In my view, they can’t stop everyone and they won’t stop everyone.
If it starts to get heavy, modding will probably just slip underground.

Let’s not start hyping this up as modders armageddon. That’s kinda overdramatic.

Also I don’t think the fact that modders make no money is the issue either.
I think the issue is it could harm sales of commercial products. Maybe not so much in the 2 cases we’ve had recently but lets say FSOne F1 2009 mod comes out and its just amazing.
The fact that it is there and for free could potentially harm sales of Codemasters F1 2009. People will think “Why would I bother with that when I have FSOne 2009 for free ? Even if there is dynamic weather and animated pitstops. I don’t need that.”
You have to think like the companies would think. Or how you would think if you owned one of these companies.
In Butch’s case I can see nothing on his site that threatens any other commercial product, save for GTL itself and sales of that underrated sim are hardly going to pick up any more. In fact one way to make sales resurge again is to have mods for it. How ironic.
If it was a case of letting some mod group infringe their copyright in turn for sales I wonder which they would go for. I’d say the copyright. The extra sales revenue, by the time it reaches them, wouldn’t even buy them new pencils.

I wonder why Butch (who I admit to never having heard of) was a target and not a larger mod group who may have more exposure on the net.

Simraceway I doubt would be touched. They themselves havent made any mods and are not directly infringing the copyrights of anyone except the artwork of mod teams who are already infringing copyrights themselves it seems.

I don’t think a photo or some such thing threatens any commercial products and as such doesn’t get bothered.
If I do for a day out at Jerez for testing and photograph Massa on track in the Ferrari, am I not allowed to post that on, say, Facebook ? How is it different to showing to to my friends physically other than the audience might be a bit bigger ?

Anyway I’m drifting off a little here.

So yeah, sad to see this nonsense happen to something as small and unthreatening as Butch’s work but I doubt, at this point, that its the start of something huge.
It’s not like all the law firms from all these companies are getting together suddenly and targeting modders.

Any more like this and someone should maybe think of starting to dig a tunnel though :)

I think Modding will never get shot down ;)

I also wondered “why Butch?”, especially since he only did classic cars which usually are not part of modern games anyway …
Maybe he was an easy target. I predict that if a big modding-group is attacked (NFS Bolide is mainly a one man project as far as I know, and you could get his cars only from his site) the response would not just be “ok, bye”, but rather big discussions all over the net. It would hurt the brand more than they could gain. Which is really what puzzles me the most: “You can’t be a fan or appreciate our brand, unless we allow you to and/or you pay for it”?
No thanks, there’s plenty of other manufacturers that actually want to have a fanbase …

Further proof that there’s too many god-damned lawyers in the world.

This is just a guess, but I reckon it’s a Swedish brand of car.

Hi guys,… its real simple.. Ferrari can;t go after game makers like GTL or ISI (rFactor) because the original content was licensed. Now Modders come to the fore front and begin making BRAND named mods to the actual games.. Now the mod group does this for free, however being a respective buyer of a race sim, i want the best bang for my buck.. hmmmm what sim carries what i want. oh look here;s one that has a Ferrari in it.. I will buy that sim and get the free mod.. you see its a vicious circle.. Thats why they want us to shut our sites down.. well I say we stand up guys.. We don;t need to call our cars in our mods by the actual names… i mean whats to stop us from naming a red formula style car Ferarros……..

f1lover: We don;t need to call our cars in our mods by the actual names… i mean whats to stop us from naming a red formula style car Ferarros……..

and people still wonder why China is growing so fast lol!! My friend bought a new phone it was exactly the same as a Motorola model totally identical but the brand name was Motobola lol!!! They have one car identical to Toyota’s Corolla but the name is Cololla lol! I guess we can learn a lot from China!

heh, ok here are some suggestions for F1 2009 sponsor/team names changes

Ferhairy / Veryhairy
McLaryngitis
WMB Scuba
Mercenadies / Brown
White Cow
Vacca Bianca
Forth Innings
Reno
Toymotor
WellIAms

Royal W**k of Scotchland
Johnnie W**ker
DING (ING)
Schu-birth
Eatahead (ethiad)
Parasolic
Orca Cola (made in Whales…er.. Wales)

Plus I can’t wait for some great mods of Wally, Nazcart, Chump Cars, Le Womens and maybe even British Whoring Cars (women drivers only though due to copyright).

Thankfully tracks are ok so far because I don’t fancy racing at Spank FrankiesChops.

F1Racer: heh, ok here are some suggestions for F1 2009 sponsor/team names changesFerhairy / VeryhairyMcLaryngitisWMB ScubaMercenadies / BrownWhite CowVacca BiancaForth InningsRenoToymotorWellIAmsRoyal W**k of ScotchlandJohnnie W**kerDING (ING)Schu-birthEatahead (ethiad)ParasolicOrca Cola (made in Whales…er.. Wales)Plus I can’t wait for some great mods of Wally, Nazcart, Chump Cars, Le Womens and maybe even British Whoring Cars (women drivers only though due to copyright).Thankfully tracks are ok so far because I don’t fancy racing at Spank FrankiesChops.

BRILLIANT!!!!!!

“Question… is there someone professional in this community who can shed some light on what one could , or could not do?”

No there’s no one professional in the sim community :D

But, often all you need, if anything at all, is a disclaimer. You must have seen thousands of websites / adverts and so on with stuff like “Doom 3 and doom are trademarks of Id software. Doommods dot com is in no way affiliated with ID software” – this is more or less all that’s required to show you aren’t passing off.

I doubt the if Butch had a disclaimer, no-one would have bothered him.

Its sad that Butch have to close his website,his cars are verry well done in GT Legends,why think manufactures like that?And Butch cars are only old and classics.Why they not see it like free puplicity?

I think its worth clarifying a few things.

1) Butch says he decided to close his site, no one forced him to.
2) Butch says he’s already removed the manufacturer concerned from his site. Ferrari and Porsche are still there.

If the manufacturer concerned is Bizzarrini, this might partly explain why someone making mods for a four year old game (which is no commercial threat to any manufacturer) was “targetted” – I would think he is the only modder producing a Bizzarrini. Also if it is Bizzarrini then I don’t think its the end of the world as modders know it.

Bullshit. I’m sick of people folding under the paper thin threats of these ridiculous lawyers. THESE GUYS HAVE NOTHING! If you make zero revenue and you’re not hurting the brand in any way, there is no legal course they can take. They can threaten you with legal action, but in almost all cases that action will never materialize, and even when it does, they usually have ridiculous claims that aren’t provable or even arguable. Does ANYONE stand up for themselves anymore? If I had a site, and a I got a letter from a brand like Ford, Ferrari.. whoever, telling me to take my free content down, I’d tell them to lick my dirty starfish while they wash my balls.

I say they change the lettering for the release, and then we can just make our own skins afterward with the real names. These bastards are just bitter that we can simulate their product just as good if not better than big name juggernauts. Maybe if they got off their ass and gave us a real simulation, we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves.

Wondering if all mods future and past could be in danger, if the future will be fantasy name then a mod to mod names?
And all these issues ara going to affect rF2 which is, I still guess, based on mods?

I think the reason the bigger sites that you listed are getting those letters but are simply ignoring them. At some point the lawyers in all companies just go out and write letters. Just go look at thepiratebay’s collection of letters.

Solution.

If any of you recall back.. back.. WAY back to 1997 Game of the year “Interstate76″ by activision. All the cars in that game were named a bit funny..

the blatant Camaro was a Cavera.. Mack truck was Moth truck.. Lincoln was a Jefferson.. etc

Why couldn’t mod makers just adopt that system. I’d get a kick out of it and just imagine as a lawyer trying to say that a Ferris… is really a Ferrari..

The majority of modders are a clever bunch but they are as thick as two short planks when it comes to copyrite issues. UncleChuckle in this first reply summed them up pretty good and although it’s been a source of amusement for him reading the read me’s I’ve long argued that the stupidity of their copyrite claims has always been a bad thing for the community as it’s put off many a would be modder getting involved in the first place let alone releasing stuff without permission or even hosting it with credits to the originator. (Even this month i’ve read of a modder who posted on the only scgt forum still alive he was worried about the permission issues to releasing some cars for SCGT which he converted years back and was unable to contact the original author even then)

RG, I remember well the Tommy Bahama “incident” as i was into SCGT back then hacking the exe’s and such and as every time you opened one up you come across the “copywrite of ISI” quote in the first line so i looked into the legalities of our “hobby” and spoke to a couple of solicitors I knew too.

The reality is if your making lets say a model Ferrari for a sim if you dont use their trademark logos and name then there is absolutely nothing they can do about it but send a threatening solicitors letter as strong as a wet teabag in law. Anyone whose ever played GPL knows one of the cars i forget which one now you need to edit to get it’s proper name showing up as Papyrus never managed to get permission.
If however your name your model car / skin or track with it’s correct name then the possible solicitors letter does carry some weight, not a lot but some, as they can take it to court if they were daft enough to and a judge could rule it be removed from it’s hosting site. Although normally a solicitors letter to the hosting site is enough for it to be removed. (As was the case when i put a gran turismo forum I’d been banned from up for sale on ebay lol) In such a case damages could be awarded by the court if the claimant can both prove ownership and lost income, the latter being almost impossible.

If the material youve made is distributed free and you make no money from it then the worst that could happen is its removed from it’s host. A Judge cannot award damages unless you have financially gained from it although the costs of the court hearing could go against you.

So the solution is simple… Ditch your stupid copyrite claims to your work, let everyone under the sun host them and if any solicitors letter comes your way for hosting then theres no real problem, dump it if its infringement of trademarks/copyrite, tell the solicitor to whistle if its not and get someone else to host it if it’s not already.

Oh and if anyones got Bolides files please send em my way I cant get the Astons to work in GPL.

Wity_@hotmail.com