Hello, today i got a PM over at MODDB from Peaman where he sent me a screenshot of a "Cease and desist"-letter because of some assets in use in his mod from the German Westeros mod. These assets were taken from GoT Enhanced and not from the Westeros mod as far as i recall - it is a few unit-cards, maybe the head of the Daenarys model and the dragons (originally from Warhammer: The Sundering but reskinned).
As i recall Gigantus already made a rule on this for GoT: Enhanced.
Peaman might have taken other creatures such as wolves from there but i am not entirely sure of which assets he took for the Wildlings and "The Others".
I wrote this to Peaman regarding the GoT: Enhanced assets:
"Their mod has stolen assets from lots of mods.
Gigantus over at TWC already said it were fine to use unit cards from their mod because they were taken from mods such as Thrid Age, GoT: Enhanced etc. Those guys terrorised our mod GoT: Enhanced in the comments for quite awhile after we took the dragons, the head of Daenarys and som portraits.
But - they had a few years back stolen all the portraits of GoT - they did also steal other assets from Westeros: Total War 1.0 before it were released. Most of their creatures are stolen Warhammer units. They do not have permission for either the Dragons nor the mammoth.
The mammoth i wanted myself - but the creator said no. He hasn't given the German mod permission. Tell those guys to stop with their hypocrisy and remind them of their mod being based on lots of stolen material.
And as i wrote - Gigantus over at TWC has said that mods who are banned on TWC doesn't count as long as the assets aren't the property of another hosted mod over at TWC. So you could use their assets as long as the assets aren't owned by a third party hosted on TWC. The german mod doesn't fall under the rules of TWC - as the mod was banned for stealing assets.
I don't know about moddb - but GoT: Enhanced suffered no penalties after taking a few assets - they had after all done the same to us in the past.
About copyright and cease and desist that seems crazy.
- They do not own Medieval 2 - CA/Sega does, they do not own Game of Thrones - JRR Martin does, they do not own most of their assets - they took them from other mods and they can't say a mod has copyright.
Mods can have copyright in the sense you can't just steal from a mod. But any legal threats are out of the question. At the most TWC can punish a mod by banning it for stealing assets - like what happened to them in the past.
- But if they try to sue you you can laugh at them. Because this isn't a matter of money at all. If they proclaim you've stolen their work and they've lost money on it then they are criminals who are earning money. If they just think the assets are copyrighted then many other mods can sue them as well. Then we can sue them."
Now - what do you others think of the matter?
I think they are hypocrites trying to C&D a mod for using assets that are in their mod, when many of those assets were stolen from Warhammer, Third age and Westeros and even GoT: Enhanced.