If you like cc you probably, as I suppose, visit my sims 4 blog to get your new daily ''basis'' of cc.
There's recently a lot of creators converting stuff shitily from sims 3 to sims 4 without permission and getting mad when they are told to stop.

Personally I think it's not okay to the creators cuz it's theirs.
What do you think?

Here are some links:
http://darkosims3.tumblr.com/post/1...-disappointed-i
http://darkosims3.tumblr.com/post/1...-with-what-momo
http://www.thesimsresource.com/arti...post/post/26985
http://mysims4blog.blogspot.com.es/...-club-hair.html

I think it's not right, and I'll watch where I get my CC from so that I don't accidentally support plagiarism.

My thing is quality. I haven't seen any of the conversions for Sims 4 that I like but when the original creator do the conversion it looks okay. At least to me. I haven't downloaded too many hairs because lots of them don't fit the style of the game.

I'm personally a fan of maxis-match Sims 4 hairstyles, but there are many people who aren't, so I guess Sims 3 style hairs need to exist for TS4. S3 to S4 conversions are popping up like mushrooms, and I guess many of them are made without permission from the creator. As a creator I have to face a lot of crap comming from people who just don't respect us and use our work to make their sites more popular. I've been battling for months with a site that keeps uploading my stuff without my permission. I keep telling them to take it down and they keep uploading more stuff from me, and not taking down the ones they've already uploaded.

Those hairs take ages to create. I only create Sims 4 style hairs, but I made some S3 ones (fails mostly) some years ago and they are really difficult to make. As Darko says in the first link you provided, if a creator wants a conversion of their hair they'll do it themselves. Plus, I've seen many conversions where they haven't even edited the shadow map from the original hair, and that just looks terrible.

Not to mention they can be ridiculously glitchy. Many of the conversions I've encountered have really been hit or miss glitch wise. Sometimes more than half the hairs from a single creator will cause crashes.

I think it's wrong to share conversions of items that someone else have done but if you only use it in your own game, then I don't really see the problem. I personally think TS3 hairs look horrible in TS4 so I stay away from that type of cc.

This is going to be unpopular but... we are talking about mods, which as we all know is short for "modifications". This site is called Mod the sims, not "create something entirely new of professional quality using only original materials...the sims". The entire mod and CC community is built off of modifying and working from the work of other creators. When we recolour or modify an original EA mesh, or texture, we are building on someone elses work - usually without gaining or seeking permission from that individual developer. You cannot own anything you create for the sims 4 because it is a modification to a copyrighted game. Sure the EULA covers us but for cc creators to say their modifications to other peoples work cannot be itself modified is a little hypocritical and not very in keeping with the open spirit of the internet and the sims community. If the sims team themselves felt the same way, there wouldn't be ANY CC. The most you should have to do is not claim the content as your own work if all you have done is convert it, but short of that, all this mean spirited selfcentred moaning about ownership is pathetic and makes the creators look like they have no self awareness. Skysims cannot tell anyone not to convert their stuff anymore than EA can, and skysims shouldn't even be trying to stop people - it goes against the whole spirit of creation and sharing and learning from each others work to make better content for they broader good of the community. It's in our interest for that to happen. I see it as Ea were the adults at a party handing out candy and the CC creators who say don't share don't convert are scrabbling around grabbing the candies like little children saying "these are mine and YOU cant have them". You don't deserve to benefit from the sharing open spirit of others if you can't have the same spirit to others in return. i openly encourage people to convert the better cc out there. Don't seek permission, but don't claim it as your own.

I already know what people will say:
"they worked on it, they spent time and effort making it, it's theirs" : Nope.
"creators should be able to do whatever they want with their stuff" : it's not "theirs"
"we should be grateful that they even make the stuff" : yes, but not if they start dictating what others do with it

No, it's not. Offering it for free on a public site does not invalidate claims of intellectual property rights (although such a disclaimer on the site would be helpful, such as "do not edit my creations for sharing with anyone without my explicit permission)



The original author does still have a case. Now, the average author is not making a living with this stuff, so affording legal counsel to enforce those rights might be beyond their means.



The author SOLD those rights to the production company. As part of the sale, the author agreed for the manuscript to be rewritten into a screen play. If the author and the author's legal counsel failed to get rights to approve the screenplay, well, that's too freaking bad. They had the chance, but didn't take it when they sold the rights (although in all likelihood, as being an author does not make you a screenplay writer, the average production company probably wouldn't agree to that anyway, but still, the author could have negotiated something different than a blanket "here's my book, go at it")



Assuming the player can even find the original author's work to download it. Face it, sometimes a small blog might have an item that once edited or converted, becomes quite popular if placed on another blog/tumblr/whatever that gets more traffic, and without a link back to the original, it might be difficult to ever identify the original author to see if they did their own conersion or not.

As long as you limit this to modding, like recolors, I agree. However, new hair meshes, new clothing meshes, new object meshes. Those are new 3d objects that have been created completely separate from anything sims and could be used outside of sims. Therefore, I disagree when it comes to those NEW meshes.

I can see the distinction you're trying to make but... we can obviously only talk about Sims mods - if those meshes get used elsewhere, that's irrelevant. Once they're in the sims game and being used by simmers, they are for use by our community and that's when there are some guidelines to consider. my argument is that not even these things belong to anyone because they are made under the umbrella of breaking into a game to add things to it the original creators did not plan to be in there, even though they are o.k with it now and actively encourage it - which is very generous of them considering amateur modders don't extend the same courtesy. The thing is, modding the game, whether you create from scratch or not, requires doing to the game what some creators don't want done to their lesser, amateur creations. that's the bit that makes me furious. It's hyprocrisy and against the spirit of our community. This whole notion of this is MINE, is wrong, because its something you made for something someone else made...

this is one of the two evils of modding. the other being Pay-content

absolutely agree with everything you've said, and think you've put it very clearly

I think that if you do convert something and put it up for download, you should at the very least credit the original creator as best as you can, and try your best to respect their ToU/Policy. If you also know where you got the original mesh, the least you can do is to put in a link to the original item or the creator, or at the very least their name.

I all of a sudden saw one of my meshes, one I made from scratch, converted to TS3 at a russian site, and there was absolutely no mention of my name. It really annoyed me, particularly since the person who converted it was all "look at what I made, I'm awesome!!!"

Of course, it's not always easy to remember where you got one billion patterns, but if you know you've used a particular site, it's nice to at least put up a link. You should at least be able to figure out where you found the mesh.

If you convert something for your own personal use with no intention of uploading or sharing with friends/relatives/whatever, then it's more okay in my opinion, as the item won't end up all over the web. The minute you share with anyone, you should ask the creator if it's okay, or at least check if their ToU/Policy allows sharing or converting. Creating stuff from scratch is time consuming, and it is annoying when someone takes abolutely all the credit for something you spent hours making.

However, if the original creator has left the building and isn't active any longer and probably won't answer questions regarding their ToU, then I personally am a bit more lax on what is okay to upload. I will credit them if I use the whole of, or parts of their items, as long as I actually remember who made it or where I found it.

I also think there's a difference between the 'from scratch' meshes, and the ones modified from TS2/TS3/TS4. If you use a mesh someone else made, you've only modified it, and it's also made with the help of someone else. If you make one from scratch in a mesh program, map it, texture it, and then put it ingame, it's fully made by you, and you as the original creator should at least have a say in what happens to it. A copy of the item is perhaps converted into a game, but the original mesh files still exist on the original creator's computer.

I'm fairly certain that no one who mesh something they intend to be a free item would like it if the item suddenly ends up at a paysite because someone else decided that since it now was a Sims object, they had the rights to use it in any way they wanted, including making people pay for it. I'm fairly sure that the original creator would similarly be very annoyed if someone else took full credit for something they spent hours making.

Oh yes, i agree totally in as far as i also think it is outrageous to say you made something if you didn't - lieing in this way is indefensible. and out of courtesy, definitely putting someones name is better than not. I'd suggest it is optional though, the only thing you MUST do is be clear that it was not made by you. The rest is optional courtesy.

you raise an interesting philosophical question in regards to what the meshed and textured files are if they are not in circulation and in game, just sitting on someones' computer though... are they mods if not in use - or just files for the "creator" to do with as they wish, only becoming anything of value after they are downloaded and used? Does a tree falling with no-one to hear it make a sound? Deep, man. Of course the mesh was made by you and is an original work - but i still don't think you can say what happens to it, because you made something that can only function with the Sims game (and for the instances where it doesn't need the Sims that's a whole different thing and not relevant to what we are saying).

p.s there shouldn't be any pay content at all that isn't EA. It's morally wrong

I'd be interested to see a test case, where a creator makes a completely original mesh and texture, and EA claims ownership of it. I mean I would be genuinely interested, not being snarky

This makes me wonder about conversions into other games. My husband has quite a few sims hair conversions in his Skyrim and Dragon Age games. Disregarding Dragon Age for arguments sake (as it is also an EA game) I wonder what (if any) legal issue there could be regarding the conversions into Skyrim - it is not an EA game (it is published be Bethesda). Does this meant that the creators (converters?) of those hairs are breaking the EULA of EA? Could EA have any basis for asking Bethesda to ensure removal of those conversions from Skyrim or would there be no basis for a complaint?

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if EA burst in to my home and took my first born - there's probably a disclaimer in the Eula mentioning souls or some such - but who reads that thing, right?. I'm pretty sure they can do whatever they like
I have no idea if this has any legal basis because i'm thinking of this more as an ethical issue but is there not a difference between a mesh and a mesh that is usable in the Sims games in the form of a CC item? so if i make a unicorn in maya or blender or milkshape, that is my work, i created it no question. Once i convert it for use in the Sims series, making texturing that is appropriate for the art-style of the game, making sure it is appropriately tagged and so on, that becomes specifically a sims object and while maybe not the property of EA, certainly dependant on their creation to have any value. Its this that makes people getting precious about what happens to it after it's released into the community annoying, to me at least

If that ever happens we can only hope the judge actually understand the whole thing. There's more than enough judges who don't know s*** about the internet or games or anything that has a plug on the end of a cable...

can't really own a mod

Well, there's lots of content floating around, at least for TS3. It ranges from weapons of murder right on this very site, to raunchy items on SexySims, to pretty explicit animations available on Ladymoiraine controlled from Kicker's mod on Hall of Torque. And of course, the ton of animations available for TS2, including the wonderfully inappropriate baby BBQ. To the best of my knowledge, and someone please correct me if I'm wrong, EA has never taken legal action to enforce any intellectual property rights through a cease and desist or other mechanism to pull those items from public availability.

It's why EA is so big on the disclaimer that the ESRB only applies to their game, and not to any online interactions or content. It also raises another issue regarding the argument that states, in effect, under the EA EULA, all the stuff created for the Sims franchise really belongs to them, and not the original creator. While that might be in the EULA you agreed to, it has never been enforced by EA in 14 years. Again, if EA has taken legal action against a piece of content or code, please correct me. Because that is really important. Oh, and I'm not just referring to their curation (or lack thereof) of their Exchange for items violating their terms for posting there. That is governed by their terms for posting on their Exchange/forum, not so much their EULA for "ownership" claims. I'm referring to actions against independent sites, such as this one.

You see, while EA can claim "ownership" by virtue of the EULA, a court would look to see if the company has exercised its rights in prior cases to defend their claim (assuming an item isn't brand new to the market). So a simple defense argument would be that through 3, and now 4, generations of the game, over a 14 year period, EA has never once asserted rights of ownership over community made content. They have never, to my knowledge, demanded an offending piece of content be removed from distribution (unlike say, TSR, back when they were a pay site, and would frequently file DMCA letters with sites like Mediafire that offered a creator a place to offer content for download, and for all I know, they might still be at it under their new advertising revenue model as well). Therefore, they have ceded their right to suddenly arbitrarily attempt to assert such a claim. Which would hold up pretty well, ay least under US case law. So I'm not sure I would rely on that EULA as the sole basis for a claim that creators have no ownership interest in their creations.

No, it is not. Simple as that. Things only become public domain when the copyright runs out or when you explicitly make them public domain. Other than that no matter how or where you distribute your work, your copyright remains. The details differ from country to country, but that basic concept is shared by all strong copyright laws. There is the exhaustion doctrine of course, but that only applies to sales and is usually not applied to digital content anyway.

Another shared concept is that of the threshold of originality. As soon as you create something that makes the jump over that threshold, it is automatically protected by copyright. Making e.g. a mesh from scratch consistently exceeds the threshold of originality. The mesh and possibly the texture are actually the only things in a package file that do that. So if you remove those and add your own, then nothing remains EA could claim copyright of. That obviously doesn't mean there couldn't be other rights EA could claim, just not copyright.

Finally, there is the concept of derivative work. When you derive something on another's copyright-protected work, and your derivative exceeds the threshold of originality as well, then the creator of the derative gains full protection of copyright without weakening the original creator's copyright. So there are actually two parties who have copyright on a derivative work.

Not in any way part of the concept of copyright is that the way of distribution or the medium would somehow weaken the copyright. They simply don't. In terms of copyright, creating content for the Sims and uploading them to a public forum is in no way different than creating a painting and selling it via an arts gallery (with the exception that the exhaustion doctrine applies to the painting).

All those are simple facts that are easy to check out. There is no room for opinions here. The discussion can start when it comes to the decision what actually exceeds the threshold of originality. Sure, there are a lot of creations out there that don't make it. When you slap a band logo you downloaded on a t-shirt, or turn a random tribal icon you downloaded into a tattoo or make a simple tuning mod, then you won't exceed the threshold of originality and thus won't gain copyright. But copyright usually applies a lot sooner than people think. That much is sure.

There's a difference between
1) a game mod that contains only resource files made by EA, fixed, reorganized or recategorized by players
and
2) an object meshed and textured in whole by a player, but fitted to work in the game by a player.

You can't use the game mods for anything outside the game anyway, and if you could, EA could claim they own the parts - but in the second example the original creator can freely use the mesh and texture if they make a 3D movie, or unrelated pictures, even make their own game featuring the item, or whatever else, without EA having a single say in the matter. EA can't claim ownership or copyright to a mesh they've had nothing to do with, even if someone put it into the game. They may own the structural parts of the files, but they can't really claim they own the mesh or the texture file you used to make the file, as long as the mesh or texture don't contain any parts from EA meshes. You only use a copy of those files, after all. They can't use the items you made in whole in any of their games, just as you can't use their meshes or objects in a game you make.

As for pay files made by users, those aren't really allowed anyway.

I'd say that good manners matter. If the player don't want you to reupload or use their meshes freely, then at least have some respect for it. Some players make their own meshes or textures from scratch, and not everyone wants their stuff spread all over the web or reuploaded everywhere under someone else's name. It's also good manners to not take credit for something you didn't make. If the player is active, it's good manners to ask them whether or not your use of their files/meshes/textures is okay, unless their ToU say you can use their files however you want.