I've been absent from this discussion simply because I lost interest in it, just came to see how it has progressed while I was gone. To be clear,  I don't care much about any of it either way, it was all mostly for the sake of a good debate.

However, I'm not knowledgeable enough about copyright and contract law and will therefore have to throw in the towel at this point. Arguing without a proper foundation of facts is just too frustrating.


Are you calling me a troll?

At least I haven't resorted to name calling unlike some other posters here :wink:

I'd do that myself but the weight of my eyelids is becoming unbearable. Thanks for your effort tho

There are plenty of people who do a bit of artwork or software development or whatever because they enjoy it and might therefore call it a hobby, and also charge money for whatever they make. I don't see anything wrong with that.

I can understand those feelings, but I also understand that people who spend countless hours creating meshes and tweaking UVs and painting textures and so on... may want some compensation for their work, especially when said work is of high quality and many people express interest in paying for it. After all, is it not the customer who ultimately defines the fair price?

Still, a lot of the so called artists do very little compared to the efforts of the community, that I don't deny.

That's misrepresenting the issue quite a bit, as analogies often do :wink:

In that scenario the chair would be lost to you. But when Maxis "loans" you a chair and you make a copy of it and sell it, Maxis hasn't lost anything except maybe a potential sale (if whoever bought your chair would as a result feel it unnecessary to buy content made by Maxis).

To put it in your terms: I tried to make it clear that I'm not defending creators who don't do anything more than provide a custom paint job for objects created by others (Maxis or third parties). I'm talking about artists who instead of painting and selling your chair would create a new one from scratch, and sell that.

Of course, given that a lot of the value in any CC is dependent on the game (IOW, the meshes and textures by themselves without the game wouldn't be worth as much to most people), it's fair to say that Maxis/EA could justifiably lay claim to some of the earnings made off CC.

(is it just me or are my language skill deteriorating... time to go to sleep methinks)

Anyway, this discussion was... well, at least somewhat entertaining if not terribly enlightening. Thanks for being so civil, I expected a lot more negative feedback given how homogenous (and at times ever so slightly fanatic ) a bunch you appear to be

Fair enough :wink:  

Such leeches and scam artists exist in every industry, yet you probably wouldn't expect every small software entrepreneur or artist to give away the fruits of their labour for free. Why is this an exception?

Quite frankly, if some people are daft enough to pay ridiculous sums of money for virtual "designer lingerie", that's their problem. It's hardly a reason to punish legitimate artists.

But in the end, it's not much of a concern for me. I don't plan to make money doing CC for TS2 nor do I use much of it, free or otherwise. I just couldn't quite understand where all this hate comes from.

Yes, the stuff. What is the stuff? Meshes, textures, code... But consider a package that only contains custom meshes and textures (a skintone for example). Would such a package also have to contain material copyrighted by EA to be functional?

Just out of curiosity, why should custom content creators willing to sell their creations be required to get approval, when those who distribute their content without charge don't have such a requirement?

Me neither, I'm just curious. Perhaps it's best not to pursue this argument any further since neither side is able to cite any authoritative sources.

One thing I find curious is how in this issue people appear to be willing to defend the rights of a big corporation against "the little guys", when it's usually the other way around.

To use a copyrighted work legitimately one must obtain a license, that much is certain. But what restrictions can the copyright holder impose on its use?

Can you give me an example of a restriction on the use (apart from making copies or distribution) of a software product that you find reasonable?

No. But I still don't see your point.

I knew this would come up :wink: That was about a patented algorithm, different issue.

You can make a package that contains entirely original meshes and textures and very little else. So the questions remain: what copyrighted material do those packages contain and is the package file format itself protected?

Not much (except extract the meshes and textures and whatnot), but how is this relevant?

I can't find any support for the claim that file formats are protected by copyright and therefore stand by my original claim. If you or anyone else can point out evidence to the contrary, please share. I'd do the research myself but trying to decipher legalese makes me feel stoopid and I don't like that

Any lawyers around? IIRC, (at least in Finland) copyright law actually grants certain rights to the creators of derivative works as well, but things have changed thanks to all the greedy megacorps.

I don't believe copyright applies to file formats.

If it did, don't you think Microsoft for instance would have done away with OpenOffice.org as it both reads and writes file formats developed by Microsoft for their Office suite?

And btw this is the number one reason why I don't fully support your cause; I simply don't believe that EA has the legal right to restrict the creation and sale of CC, provided such content does not include any of their intellectual property (meshes, textures). Furthermore, I'm willing to bet there's still a lot of uncertainty about the legal applicability of software licenses, and I certainly wouldn't want to operate in a digital world where software companies can dictate what their software can or can't be used for.

Having said that, I see nothing wrong with people charging money for their CC, especially considering that some of it is of no less quality than what is in the original game.

And finally, I'm also not condemning your activities and might very well download stuff from your hoard as I'm not about to pay for CC given my current financial situation and it would therefore represent no loss of potential income for the creators. In other circumstances I certainly would pay because some of those people deserve it.

So there. I'll just find my way to the nearest plank now, thank you :grin:

(First post!)