German Westeros mod sends "cease & desist"-letter to PeaMan over his mod - assets from GoT Enhanced!

[Azorica]

Every time I see things as mind-boggling as this, one of my brain cells die.

That's why I'm down to 13... Nevermind, just saw another, down to 12.

It is quite remarkable I'm still able to have speech and able to write a second language.

Going as so far as threatening legal action for a non-profit, non-owned assets is probably one the pettiest things I have seen around here, particularly as the case is rather weak and susceptible to counter-suits if the goes forward.

[PeaMan]

Let me drop a few lines here:

1. Regardless if a mod has been banned, is made by the Chinese or Russians (who don't give a fig about 'copyright' either), it is not a waiver to use material from their mods without permission, particularly if that material originates with them. You do so at your own risk as TWC will support the rights of the original creator, without exception.

2. When the mod got banned here (and from a number of other sites) because it basically was a rip off of the one hosted here, TWC received an injunction from Mr Martin's lawyer. It so happened that it was an impersonation of the actual lawyer for Mr. Martin (down to the physical address in Germany), which took some effort to ascertain. From that point of view I can understand the hesitation of the team to actually respond as this simply appeared to be an intimidation tactic.

3. Good house keeping however recommends to follow up on any case of this nature. I have not seen any supporting material nor made aware if any was indeed submitted and as such voiced my doubts over the claims validity, especially in view of the above, but by Peaman's own admission 5 models are contentious and I have advised him on what action to take and trust he will find my recommendations acceptable..

Yea what you suggested was fair, I'll be sure to follow up on it at some point.

Though I'm debating whether to just remove those 5 units from the next version and get permission to use AdmiralThrawns instead as.

[mchmmroncrck]

I wouldn't touch anything having to do with those dirtbags with a ten foot pole. What a bunch of petty little girls!

Wouldn't presume to speak for him, but I'm pretty sure you'd have Admiral Thrawn's blessing to use some of his stuff without having to contact an "attorney"

Great mod, BTW!

[AlexHBK123]

Why is everyone so concerned about copyrights if no one gets any benefit from the modifications made? I would understand if all this is done for the sake of money, but all the author's modifications are free and freely available to all. If someone didn't want his achievements someone used this person would not publish all for free.

"Dragons" and "Daenerys" is not the property of HBO in relation to the Total War series and the process of borrowing ideas that serve only as a direction to create something more interesting does not carry any benefit to the author of the mod. It's not a commercial project, calm down.

[Mr_Nygren]

Why is everyone so concerned about copyrights if no one gets any benefit from the modifications made? I would understand if all this is done for the sake of money, but all the author's modifications are free and freely available to all. If someone didn't want his achievements someone used this person would not publish all for free.

"Dragons" and "Daenerys" is not the property of HBO in relation to the Total War series and the process of borrowing ideas that serve only as a direction to create something more interesting does not carry any benefit to the author of the mod. It's not a commercial project, calm down.

There are some reasons.

1. If a mod is unreleased you wouldn't want someone to steal your stuff before your mod is released and then release it in his own project. I can understand that mentality.

2. You wouldn't want for example Warcraft material in other projects because that would make the Warcraft-mod less unique - i can understand that as well.

But in the case of Westeros there are a thousand mods already.. And also the German Westeros built theirs by stealing so it is hypocrisy on their part to even write about stealing. Plus the dragons are Warhammer models.

[bitterhowl]

I took permission about 3-4 years ago from German team to use their Ironborn models (retextured CoW swordsmen by origin), also got permission from Ukrainian CoW team on all stuff.

Now I took some old vanilla oriented textures from outdated Dunkle Swingen version. What do you think on it?

Yeah, I'm Russian and I'm figuring about copyright and community rules.

[Gigantus]

Thanks for caring about modder's claims\work.

'Dunkle Schwingen' has been banned on several fora because of massive 'copy right' issues (modder's work, the root of this affair afaik) and eventually resorted to publish on it's own site.

Wouldn't touch material from it with a barge pole, even if they gave permission, you'll never know if it was their work to start with.

[bitterhowl]

Eh, what a pity. Posted Sicario styled Ironborn in KORAH thread, wanted to stay it in a project.

If somebody will claim for rights I'll remove that texture from mod ofc.