Guy selling ripped copyrighted models on the asset store

Automobiles are a special case though because licensing is heavily enforced by the vehicle manufacturers. Almost nobody has the right to use real-life cars in a media product. You can sell models and images of their likeness but you can't use them in any public-facing commercial capacity (editorial use is allowed, like car reviews or magazine articles). If you happen to see one used, it was a license violation (rare) or a paid placement.

Forza is famous for going to the trouble and expense of working with the car companies to license their cars. GTA is famous for not doing that and going out of their way to make sure they didn't infringe. In the case of Rock Star, they couldn't get the licenses because manufacturers didn't want to be associated with such a controversial game. There's another good licensing explanation here.

If you want to use a non-infringing car, you usually have to make it yourself or find someone who knows what changes need to be made to avoid licensing issues. Referencing GTA cars is a good start since they already did the work.

 

What's the end goal? To make sure nothing slips by, or to make it fairly easy for people to buy and sell assets and create games?

Personally, if I made a game and found that someone ripped a model and put it in a different game, unless it was the main character or something I really wouldn't care. I'd probably like it actually. If I'm honest with myself, they haven't really taken anything substantial from me.

If the game was a direct and effective competitor, and ripped off enough artwork for someone playing both games to notice without being prompted, I might do something about it.

The thing is, the perspective that you have about physical resources doesn't work for stuff on the internet. The concept of owning digital work is halfway between owning an idea (i.e. a patent, the very concept of which I find very disturbing, though in some cases it's probably necessary for ideas that are complex and took a lot of time to develop) and ownership of a physical resource. It's not a total abstraction, but it's infinitely reproducible. Someone stealing it does not have the same impact on you as someone stealing your phone.

I think of the internet as a different world with different rules - perhaps a more liberal one. No one is forcing you to go there, but if you do it just won't help to get hung up on all the rules and mindsets you have brought in from the real world.

To be clear, if Unity are presented with clear evidence of copyright infringement, I think they should take that stuff down. But they have no 'responsibility' to trawl the internet looking for copyright infringement. That's primarily the 'responsibility' (if they care) of the copyright owner. That's why (I think) a history of enforcing copyright is taken into account with infringement cases, because it's not absolutely clear where anybody considers the moral line to exist when the effect of infringement does not necessarily have a direct negative impact.

 

It's impossible for it to be perfect, I agree. But it can clearly be better than it currently is.

When I'm doing stuff with my game (or with anything business related) one of the questions I'm constantly asking is "what risks does this have?" Right now, with almost any art on the Asset Store, one of the risks that comes up is "potential copyright violation" because I do not personally know that the artist in question started from 100% original concepts.

A part of all risk mitigation is a follow up question: "how likely is the risk to occur?" In the past my answer would have (perhaps naively) been "reasonably unlikely". Since then a couple of things have happened, including when someone pointed out that the darn Batmobile was up there - an iconic vehicle from a high-profile IP, and the name didn't hide that fact - bumping my answer up to "moderately likely". "Moderate" because I expect that this is still a minority of assets, but I also expect that if I keep buying and using stuff I'd trip over it eventually.

In all honesty, I do not expect Unity's store people to be able to recognise every person, place and object from every IP on the planet. Clearly that's not possible. But I do expect them to broadly be paying attention and, yes, since they've got a community of people who will recognise stuff I do expect them to take advantage of that. Because...

... it has to be a bit of both. I don't envy Unity having to deal with the issue but the reality of the matter is that, morality debates aside, an increased risk likelihood will ultimately undermine the value of assets on their store.

There is zero value in making it easy for me to buy and use assets if I'm unwilling to do that because it's a minefield of copyright violations. For both buyers and sellers this is a genuine concern that needs to be addressed (and, I would hope, is getting attention behind the scenes).

They do have a "Report asset" button, I would hope that this is precisely one of the things that's used for. I can understand if that is the case and Unity would prefer to keep it quiet, for reasons already mentioned in this thread.

 

That's fine and a lot of people feel that way. However, in North America at least, if you don't defend a trademark it can become invalidated. It's the reason why some companies sue broke individuals. If they don't fight it, they risk losing their rights to it. It's the reason I don't trademark my properties because I can't afford to defend them.

The comparison to physical theft gives a lot of piracy advocates an excuse to do it because they don't see the harm, but piracy and digital copying is not theft-- it's counterfeiting. It doesn't reduce a creators existing supply of income, it reduces their future income.

Since we cannot see a future that didn't happen, it leads to a lot of "we will never know" scenarios, but the evidence for piracy affecting income (Windows XP in China) and knockoffs diluting brands (unauthorized Simpsons merchandise) is well known.

 

In fact, I just went and clicked that button, and it sounds like this is pretty much exactly what it's for.

Here's what appears:



They are specifically asking for details about "violations", and they specifically say that "you should not expect an update".

 

I think the method Youtube uses could work well here. It's up to the rights holders to issue a DMCA notice and Google provides an easy method to do that. Companies then use ML to find violating videos and automatically issue takedowns.

I think it's the responsibility of Unity to provide a means to report assets (beyond a simple report button) and let rights holders worry about whether it's important or not.

 

The context of YouTube is very different to Unity, though. If I watch something on YT that happens to violate copyright I am at no risk as a result, just the creator. On the Asset Store, if I unknowingly buy a violating asset and put it in my game then I am personally at risk as a direct result of that.

Considering that risk, restricting who is able to report things is terrible. To reduce the risk it needs to be as easy as possible for anyone to flag anything for investigation.

Which it is, per my last post. I would assume that it takes a while for things to reach the front of the queue, which is probably why in threads like this it looks like nothing is happening. It's entirely possible that action is being taken on this right now. Unity can't just pull it down as soon as they see the report, because what if it is indeed legitimate? Maybe that other game also purchased the character? I would guess there's a bunch of potentially time consuming steps they need to go through first.

 

Well there's what the laws and consequences are now, and what they should ideally be. Like you say, there are strong (possible) negative consequences for you if you accidentally use a ripped model. That changes everything down the pipeline in terms of responsibility.

There's a big difference between piracy of a game itself, and whether it's worth checking every model on the asset store to see if it's ripped. Does every sale of a ripped model reduce by one your sales of the game it came from? Not even close, it might not have an effect at all. Does that mean it's okay to rip all the models in a game and make a new game from it, or just pirate the game itself? Of course not, that's not the same situation.

This is not about whether it's wrong or not to rip any number of models from a game - of course it is - but what the effects of some attempt to reduce it are going to be. It would be nice to live in a world that's black and white, but in reality it's grey and runs on a heady mix of morality and practicality.

 

I probably should have said "morality and legal debates aside". The point I'm trying to make is that whether or not there are moral and/or legal issues at play here, there is absolutely the commercial issue of percieved value of goods on the store. That alone should be enough for the store to care about filtering out any dodgy products.

 

Thats true, but I would estimate that the tipping point would not be at the point of a few cases. If Unity took down stuff that people pointed out with clear evidence, that's probably enough to take care of reputation. But the costs of preemptively trying to stop ripped models getting onto the store would be insane.

 

That's a question that can be open to interpretation, so the courts are clear on the definition:

Failure to Prosecute Impairs the Strength of a Mark:
A trademark signifies a connection in the mind of consumers between a particular mark and the products or service of a particular company. From this perspective, the allowed use of the mark by competitors would serve to lessen this connection in the minds of consumers. This approach has been followed by federal courts in the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 11th Circuits, and also the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board.

Damage can and does occur from usage of a trademark that is not a sellable product by itself. You can disagree about whether it's true or whether it should be that way, but the law says it is that way.

As far as I'm concerned, we should do everything we can to reduce the unauthorized usage of protected IP. I really don't care whether it's practical to police it or not. It's a part of being in the reseller business, and the pricing should reflect the cost of those efforts.

 

Sure, but what is the cost of policing it? There are a lot of optimizations in the world that would be good but aren't practical or sufficiently isolated from negative effects.

Everything? If I went and ripped a single model from a random indie game on steam to sell on the asset store, what would be the cost of a system that would be able to detect it, if it was even possible?

My perspective is, if you're doing business online, find a business model that takes into account the practicality of dealing with the problems you might have, and if it's not possible to come up with one that works, don't bother. I'm sure Unity took into account (and are keeping an eye on) the net effect of policing the asset store vs reputation damage, and it's quite likely that (especially at the beginning) it wouldn't have been feasible to create it without letting more or less shady stuff slip by.

 

"Everything we can" means we should do whatever is within our abilities. Creating a system that could detect 3d models doesn't sound like something we can do, so that shouldn't be a consideration. Hiring 100 people to carefully review asset submissions is something we can do and if it proves effective, that's what should be done.

This is what Apple faced when they decided to manually review all app store submissions and they concluded they could do it and still keep the app store profitable enough to justify the cost. They also have a standard procedure in place for IP owners to report offending apps. Some bad things still get through but it's manageable.

This is why I suggested the Youtube model. It may not address issues like game dev protection but it does offer a simple way for rights holders to pull offending assets down, and it would benefit all of us to have those assets quickly removed.

 

Well going back to your previous comment, I definitely agree that there should be the ability to report assets (with the ability to provide evidence of copyright etc) and I can certainly imagine Unity would benefit from acting on at least some of these cases.

What I can't see being effective is a system to preemptively stop ripped models from getting on the store. It's not clear at all to me that hiring 100 people for asset submission checking would be a profitable move, even with all things considered. Where would you even begin to start looking for copyright infringement? Half the time I can't even find a game that I saw a picture of even when I know which genre, style and platform it was on.

 

Is every car show cased in a movie really licensed? I mean, lets say the there is a part in the movie taking place at a scrap yard. We maybe talk thousand individual models that needs to be licensed for that

 

That's a good question and I believe Unity can answer it, if they choose to. If you submit a game with copyright material in it to either Google or Apple today, chances are good that it will be flagged. They use a combination of ML and human review to catch a good amount. Unity is large enough to afford investing in these same processes.

Yes, every car is licensed or obscured to avoid licensing. I used to work in television and we had to regularly remove logos and other identifying features from vehicles that were in shots. To make things easier, we had agreements with all the major manufacturers that just removing logos was sufficient, but I think that's because we were a larger company than they were and had more public influence. Ironically, sometimes they would pay us to put their vehicles in the show.

Their intention is to control where, when and how their product is shown. Public perception is a big part of their business and they want to control that process, end to end.

 

Licensing in movies (at least big budget movies) is rigorous. They might not license every model in a scrap yard, but they will have people go through and scrub identifying information (logos, emblems) etc.

This kind of thing is also done for clothes people wear, etc. Logos are scrubbed everywhere unless its really low budget.

 

A lot of the argument thus far has focused on whos responsibility it is, and the risk/reward calculations involved.

If I were to run my life similarly to how many corporations do (based purely on risk/reward), I would look at this situation roughly as follows.

If there is no repercussion for selling copyrighted works, why shouldn't I rip game models and sell them on the asset store? Using the example in OP, I can make a few thousand from ripping characters from relatively unknown games, and there is no clawback so its free money.

All reward, no risk.

What stops me from doing this is a sense of morality, and I resent the fact that people hold corporations to such lower standards than they would individuals.

If I found out that I was dealing with stolen goods or selling something illegally, I would make an effort to make the situation right (refunds, etc). Most reasonable people would. Holding corporations to a lower standard than you hold individuals to makes no sense.

 

This thread is a clusterf... the rules for Trademark have nothing to do with Copyright and vice versa.

 

The key is what Unity does with clear evidence of ripped models being on their store. If they don't act on obvious cases, they probably will have some repercussion, such as people avoiding buying assets from there. I know this thread has made me consider what else on the store might be ripped and might cause me trouble, even though I don't really have a need to buy art from there myself.

It would be a bit silly of them not to encourage and leverage the community to lead them directly to the problem. That said, I don't know what the volume and quality of this type of complaints would be for them.

 

I do the same for the models in our game, Trijicon becomes Tricon etc. Luckily we don't have a scrap yard

 

Anecdote is not data, but a few years back I reported an asset I had reason to believe was an infringement because I owned said asset from the original source. It vanished from the Asset Store shortly thereafter.

 

Maybe for artwork requiring a few progress pictures would be a good way to prove originality, though it's probably easy to fake.

 

In this case I can't see how the distinction matters. Whether something is a copy of other people's work or a design infringing on a trademark, if it can't be used in our projects then it's putting us at risk.

If anything trademarks are less painful, because there are already systems in place to manage at least some of that.