Spotlight: Señor Casaroja's Noesis

[finale00]

If they wanted us to remove all of the content that they own, of course I would comply. I'm not an idiot. But that won't shut down the entire site, because there is a lot more content than just that of one company.

As an additional, that company would probably get a pretty bad reputation in the community, which is a vast quantity of their customers.

Companies may seek legal methods to shut down your entire site even if you own content that are completely unrelated to, much like how a company can seek to have noesis stopped because they don't like how it's ripping their models.

Fortunate some laws that would make this 10000000% easier didn't actually go through, otherwise you'd probably be screwed if a single user says "hey, this guy's got copyright material kill his site"...no matter where you are in the world.

And probably bad rep is of no concern to a company that would come at you, especially if it is a decent size company. Sure, maybe among your community, but unless you "own" a large share of their market, it's likely a drop in the pond. A lot of people don't agree with the idea of ripping resources from games anyways simply because it's "IP theft" or whatnot.

If anything, it may just make news headlines saying that company XYZ decided to shut down a bunch of pirates that were stealing resources from thousands of games and the rest of the world will praise the company.

[Demonsangel]

company XYZ

I think you need a tiny break from here.

@MrAdults:

I tried setting the lightmap by calling
.setBlendMode for each material
and .rpgsetLightmap for each commitTriangles that had a material that required an emissive texture.
Now I tried GL_ONE,GL_ZERO,GL_SRC_COLOR combinations but none of them work.

Just to clarify I'm trying to apply the left image onto the right one so it comes out like the bottom one(where I manually added it in 3ds max as self-illumination texture)



But nothing appears in Noesis, though in 3ds max it only appears on the render and not in the viewport. Is it the same for Noesis?

[MrAdults]

Dazz: I don't see how I could have been any more clear. I don't want you to "hide and lie to me", I want you to actually knock it off. I've stated my intent with Noesis before, and the reasons I work on making model/image/archive/etc. formats accessible to people. A big reason for that is for people to learn and privately enjoy/examine content, and longterm preservation of the data is a goal too, but giving people like you a tool to illegally distribute content IS NOT THE GOAL. I don't really care if you're a celebrated hero of ripping content off or what your views are on it, you are breaking the law in my country and your own country. And this isn't a law that can be seen as particularly unreasonable from an ethical standpoint. It's simple copyright law and it exists for good reason. I might have some sympathy if these were all 15+ year old games that no one cared about anymore. In that case what you're doing would still be illegal, but might be actually be helpful rather than harmful. (in that you might stand to reinvigorate old IP's for the companies in question and make them less likely to want to shank you in the throat) However, you are distributing all manner of models from all manner of generations, even for games that just came out in the last year, from companies that have a demonstrated track record of not at all liking that sort of thing. So not only it is illegal, it's a flagrantly illegal and as has been mentioned all you have to do is piss ONE company off. I see no reasonable justification for what you're doing, and the fact that you feel justified in it and have received publicity in magazines for ripping companies off while still not being shut down is just fantastic but I'm afraid it must've completely warped your idea of what is acceptable.

I know full well that I'm telling you something you don't want to hear, and it's probably getting through your head no more easily than it gets through the head of a religious person to be told that their beliefs stem from a bloody warlord who stole someone else's religion and shaped it as a tool in his own inventory of destruction. That doesn't make what I'm saying any less true or what you're doing any less illegal.

Demonsangel: Yeah you want to apply the left texture using a second material as GL_ONE GL_ONE. However it seems there's a bug (I never tested non-default blend modes on multi-pass materials) that's preventing it from using the blend specified by a second material. I'll get that corrected in an update soon.

[Darko]

true true. i've always wondered why Crystal Dynamics doesn't stop all the stuff going on at the XNALara forums. but my point was that I understand where Mr. Adults is coming from... I worked on a program too for several years, only to have one C&D destroy everything; but that was my own doing of course . fucking patents lol.

They have permission from Crystal Dynamics to distribute TRU freely.

Also, I know it's illegal but I don't see what harm you can do by using models for renders or mods (ie skyrim) unless you're making some profit from them (there was a website literally selling UE stuff ripped with gildor's unreal viewer when you can get that stuff for free by owning the game and ripping the content by yourself).

See ya.

[finale00]

They have permission from Crystal Dynamics to distribute TRU freely.

Also, I know it's illegal but I don't see what harm you can do by using models for renders or mods (ie skyrim) unless you're making some profit from them (there was a website literally selling UE stuff ripped with gildor's unreal viewer when you can get that stuff for free by owning the game and ripping the content by yourself).

See ya.

It really doesn't matter what harm there is or isn't, or whether it will benefit humanity greatly or not, intellectual property laws come before personal interests as far as the courts are considered.

But what is the difference between an artist drawing an awesome piece of art, or a writer writing an awesome piece of text, and everyone else just takes it, puts it in their own projects, and likely passes it off as their own work because they put "effort" into converting the format into a usable format? Even if they provided credits, does everyone pay attention to credits? Probably not.

There are plenty of arguments from the supporters of such IP laws as well.

[Darko]

They have permission from Crystal Dynamics to distribute TRU freely.

Also, I know it's illegal but I don't see what harm you can do by using models for renders or mods (ie skyrim) unless you're making some profit from them (there was a website literally selling UE stuff ripped with gildor's unreal viewer when you can get that stuff for free by owning the game and ripping the content by yourself).

See ya.

It really doesn't matter what harm there is or isn't, or whether it will benefit humanity greatly or not, intellectual property laws come before personal interests as far as the courts are considered.

But what is the difference between an artist drawing an awesome piece of art, or a writer writing an awesome piece of text, and everyone else just takes it, puts it in their own projects, and likely passes it off as their own work because they put "effort" into converting the format into a usable format?

There are plenty of arguments from the supporters of such IP laws as well.

Lol, Actually I was talking about getting economical benefits from other people work vs Using something for personal purpuoses.

Also if the copyright laws were so rigid, using a copyrighted image as an avatar would be considered as a crime. You know, this kind of stuff sometimes is confusing and it depends how people interpret it.

And there's something called fair use.

[howfie]

Lol yeah darko crazy shit goes on. Actually yeah, i knew cd was ok with it as long as they don't do nude or gstring laras. What amazes me is the rest of stuff they do hahaha. But I hope dazz gets a little more careful... Being featured in a magazine, having ads on his website, those are red flags he might be making a little money and tha deffo crosses the fair use line. I should post my c&d lol. It's funny until they want to start prying into how much money you've made. Tip: lie lol.

[MrAdults]

Copyright laws are quite rigid where distribution of copyrighted content is concerned. They wouldn't do much fucking good otherwise, would they?

Directly distributing ripped copyrighted content is not fair use and it is not parody. Implying otherwise doesn't help your cause. It just narrows us down to 2 potentials: You know better and you're dishonest, or you're genuinely clueless.

If you were putting up depictions of content (not actual content - fair use does NOT cover this) for informative/educational purposes, that would be fair use. That is not what you're doing. If you were creating new content inspired by or even partially depicting the original content (e.g. Pyst) for the purpose of satire, that would be parody. That is not what you're doing. There is a grey line ethically but there is not a grey line legally, and that site has crossed both lines anyway.

[finale00]

Also if the copyright laws were so rigid, using a copyrighted image as an avatar would be considered as a crime. You know, this kind of stuff sometimes is confusing and it depends how people interpret it.

The law is there, which means you have the right to sue someone for breaking the law.
But just because you're breaking the law, doesn't mean people are definitely going to get you for it.

In the end, it amounts to whether someone feels it is worth it to take action. Is tecmo going to pay a team of lawyers $200/hr to bring justice to copyright infringement via forum avatars of DoA girls? Probably not. Anyone want to sue howfie for having an image of a copyright character? How much are you willing to spend to have it removed?

It'd be a waste of their time and money. I guess they'd have more reason if my use of DoA girls in a forum avatar is harming their image or taking away profits or something. Or if I were distributing nude mods.

But what if I was making $10k a month off ad revenue by running a massive site that offers free, proprietary models and other resources for download? There is no surprise that the sprite resource site has a nice little ad on the side, the top, on every page, even if it goes towards genuine things like paying for the servers (although I'm not sure if google actually pays out for each page that you view)

[MrAdults]

And I wonder where these people are getting their knowledge of copyright law. The homeless? Back when I made AVALANCHE, I consulted with a friend of a friend (who happened to be a contract lawyer) to at least make sure I had my bases covered in avoiding personal financial liability through my chosen development approaches and release venues. I've since found my own fulltime lawyer (I had to for my own business/contracting purposes) who has given me far more elaborate explanations of the terms and conditions of fair use and parody, and told me that my "asset whiteroom" approach used in AVALANCHE was a terrible idea. (although as he also noted, it's been out there for so long now and I never made a penny on it, so I should still be safe from any serious action) But in all my naivety and stupidity, I don't think I've ever been so ignorant as to think I could just slap up a ton of copyrighted content directly on a web site, much less one fueled by advertisements, and get away with it. What you're doing there could very easily get you slapped with a lawsuit for tens of thousands of dollars, and you'd be purely at the mercy of the company suing you. It could quite easily ruin your life all because you pissed off the wrong person and made the (rather huge) mistake of profiting off of their content.

[Mr.Mouse]

A nice heated discussion. In the end, it all boils down to copyrights. Apparently, the Spriter's Resource, as I gather it from the discussion here, hosts models that one might be able to use in some way. It distributes them. That goes a little farther than a "Sprite" in the usual sense, a 2d image in some 8-bit game, or - granted - just any 2d game. It is a fine line. I'd say there goes a lot more work in a 3d model, and perhaps companies were going to use the models in sequels. Now they are out in the open and any one can use the models. However, who would be foolish enough to use a stolen model from some game and use it in another? A law suit would be imminent. The Spriter's Resource is apparently not a target yet. But then again, it has only recently started using models.

It would be an interesting case in court though.

I once thought about doing a similar thing, create a game sound library. I refrained. That shit is copyrighted. And to host something like that I'd have to get a lot of funding to support it, with big sounds files and probable popularity and all. This would only be possible if I got some official status of a non-profit foundation to archive the artist creations. I would then have to strike deals with each copyright owner to be able to host it. Check out Home of the Underdogs, that hosts a lot of old games. Or sites like World of Spectrum. You will notice some games they talk about cannot be downloaded, as the copyright owners forbid it. That is the way to go.

Let it be clear that the Xentax Foundation will not stand for unlawful activities. I know we too walk the fine line, but our goal is to improve the longevity of games, by allowing discussion of efforts to mod existing games and expand on them. All of these activities must result in free mods, or when specifically allowed by the company that holds any copyright - be downloadable for a price.

Noesis is not intended as a tool to rip models and then distribute them, meanwhile cashing in the $$$ from adverts.

[Dazz]

I am actually shocked that you guys believe I could make a living from these sites - the server costs are incredibly high, and advertising is by far no means a well paying venture.

As for the issue of legalities, I've also spoken those in the field of games development as well as those in the law business in the past. All of whom have said that it is a tough issue, as it is entirely how you look at the purpose. My purpose for running these sites isn't to distribute the content of the game for people to sell on - I originally opened The Spriters Resource as a means of educating people in the art of 2D animation.
The success story of The Models Resource that I know of was an animator who landed a job at Bioware for using models from using models on the site to demonstrate his skills in animation.

I'm not profiteering from this - I'm spending a lot of my spare time in maintaining it. The server exceed that of £1000 a year, which is hard to finance.

We don't encourage people to use ripped content and editing it by any means, but we encourage them to look at it as inspiration - the easiest way to learn is to be able to take a close examination at things that already exist.

[MrAdults]

That's why Noesis exists. So people can learn from content they own. Not so you can illegally distribute that content all over the internet.

£1000? Shared hosting would handle your site just fine at <£200/year, unless you're getting tens of thousands of downloads per month. I pay $150 USD a year and push hundreds of gigabytes per month with no trouble. And if you are getting tens of thousands of downloads per month, that's all the more reason you should be scared shitless at what's going to happen to you when a company that doesn't like it finds out.

[Dazz]

That's why Noesis exists. So people can learn from content they own. Not so you can illegally distribute that content all over the internet.

£1000? Shared hosting would handle your site just fine at <£200/year, unless you're getting tens of thousands of downloads per month. I pay $150 USD a year and push hundreds of gigabytes per month with no trouble. And if you are getting tens of thousands of downloads per month, that's all the more reason you should be scared shitless at what's going to happen to you when a company that doesn't like it finds out.

The Spriter's Resource receives over 250,000 unique hits a month, at over 8,500,000 pageviews. It holds massive image files, of which there are many on the most popular pages.
It uses a lot of resources.

I know what I am doing. I've been running this website for 10 years, and have been with it controlling its server usage.

I will promise you that I will now choose not to use the application, because I simply don't agree with the owner and I hate to actually use something by somebody who doesn't see the alternative perspective of helping people, which has on many occasions been agreed by the companies that that content includes.
However, I'm not going to force my users to do the same. This is a personal decision.

I am not going to close my websites. They have been used to aid in schools and educated professionals in the field. I would be stupid to close it, and yes I am paranoid about the consequences, but helping people is not something that people should just give up on because something MIGHT happen.

If it pleases you, I shan't post here any more. I'll restrict my own education to make your staff happy - because that would apparently be my only option if I want to continue to do the same.

[MrAdults]

You are really deluding yourself if you think you're helping people by blatantly violating copyright law. Tools like Noesis exist so that those people can legally get at those resources. That BioWare animator didn't get his skills by stealing content on your site, and he could've done the same thing if he had instead used Noesis to rip content from one of his own games. Unless you're way too computer-illiterate to be doing anything with the models to begin with, you can figure out how to use Noesis. It's not a big step forward to use most other standalone/commandline tools either.

And yes, absolutely do stop using Noesis to rip copyrighted content that you intend to distribute. I just had a look through your models section and am pretty disgusted by the culture there. Did you realize that I worked on Jedi Outcast as well? The guy that "ripped" the models for that game on your site probably used Noesis too, then just went around copying the textures used by the models. Using my tool to rip and then illegally distribute content against my wishes, from a game I put months of my life into making professionally, and praising yourselves for your uncanny ability to click "File", "Export", "OK". You should all be very proud. And yes that is sarcasm. Because I don't know how else to react to someone who has absolutely no respect for the work of others. I'm sure many of the other guys on the team would be flattered to know people are still playing with their models, but quite a bit less-so to know that people are choosing to steal them and illegally distribute them when a perfectly user-friendly content pipeline already exists for exporting them.

Once again I will repeat, you are not helping anyone by distributing this content. If you want to help people, show them how to use Noesis and other similar tools for their own private purposes, and stop contributing to a massive theft database that could very possibly take Noesis out with a random flying C&D in the aftermath when it finally gets shredded by a company that doesn't appreciate your particular means of "education".