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Bell 412

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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby Thorsten » Sun Feb 25, 2018 7:01 pm

I disagree on that. You have a lot of tolerance for IP violence if you assume that you do not touch the aircraft producers IP-rights because you think that FG aircraft are pieces or art. FG is not a piece of art and your aircrafts are not pieces of art.


Not sure which countries' legislation applies to you, but in many legislations computer games and their artwork are perfectly well recognized as artwork - whatever you personally may think about the matter.

According to your own policy for protecting model meshes, you would have to ask every producer if they have registered a trademark (e.g. for the name of the aircraft) a design right (in Germany) or Industrial Design Right (in many other countries) and whether or not it would be ok to use their product in FG. BEFORE you start working on the model.


No, because such a thing is not necessary when creating artwork and there's no policy for obtaining permission where none is needed (we also don't have a policy for using public domain material - on the grounds that you can use it however you like).

Please stop teaching me about IP-rights and what is right or wrong about it.


Given that you seem in some instances mistaken about how it works, I won't unfortunately stop - not so much because I hope to teach you something (that's really up to you) but rather to avoid other readers of the thread to acquire the same wrong notions you have.

Some people call what you do here "bullying".


Some people call pirating content while shouting 'copyleft' very loudly a perfectly legitimate activity - neither makes it such. Truth isn't decided by what 'some people' say.

I find parts of your stance factually wrong and will continue to (politely) say so. You have certainly given the impression that you want to play down the importance of auditing content for copyright violations - if that is not what you're after, it'd be up to you to state clearly what else it is.

And calling somebody a thief and criminal is TOTALLY different than telling somebody politely that s/he has done something which is not according to YOUR policy.


Please read back - I don't think I called anyone a thief (in the event at hand, unlike others I have not looked at the evidence myself and have not reached a conclusion, so all my comments were of general nature).

More generally though, whether it's okay to call something theft depends on whether something has actually been stolen or not. I see myself under no obligation to be polite to the person who just drove away with my car for instance.

And pirating content (if it happened) would not be just not according to our policy, it would be plain illegal, period (and I do hope your comment is not expressing the notion that you think adhering to copyright is just our policy...)
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby hans05 » Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:22 pm

I disagree on that. You have a lot of tolerance for IP violence if you assume that you do not touch the aircraft producers IP-rights because you think that FG aircraft are pieces or art. FG is not a piece of art and your aircrafts are not pieces of art.


Not sure which countries' legislation applies to you, but in many legislations computer games and their artwork are perfectly well recognized as artwork - whatever you personally may think about the matter.


I know a little about USA and a bit more about Germany. FG will never be recognized as artwork since there is absolutely nothing of originality, uniqueness or creativity. FG is aiming at exactly the opposite: Copy the reality. In many computer games are a lot of artistic content. In FG not.
In absence of evidence that a simulation would have been recognized as art, I pass the ball to you, Thorsten, to give evidence that a computer simulation program HAS been accepted as art.
What I do have is an article about people who, like you, thought that it is ok to use the form of a technical product freely:

http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/dopp ... 63376.html

This is unfortunately only in German, but I believe Thorsten is German?!? For all non-Germans the essence: Volkswagen has (of course) rights not only on their logo, but also on the silhouette and form of the beetle. For years the form and silhouette together with the VW logo has been used by thousands of people. Volkswagen has then decided to take legal actions against that, and they CAN. Yes, even for violations for which the violator did not use it commercially (like FG does not use their models commercially). And again YES, even though this was tolerated for many year before, suddenly they can!

So Thorsten, you seem to be so 100% convinced that you are right. Can you please bring forward evidence?

Given that you seem in some instances mistaken about how it works, I won't unfortunately stop - not so much because I hope to teach you something (that's really up to you) but rather to avoid other readers of the thread to acquire the same wrong notions you have.


Well, ok, teach me something. But please no blabla. Please hard evidence. Thanks.

I find parts of your stance factually wrong and will continue to (politely) say so.


This is a contradiction in itself! Either you FIND something wrong OR it is factually wrong. Factually wrong means that there is no place to find something.

You have certainly given the impression that you want to play down the importance of auditing content for copyright violations - if that is not what you're after, it'd be up to you to state clearly what else it is.


This is again something you need to stop doing. How did I give this impression, that I want to play down the importance of auditing for IP violations? By stating, that I think FG aircrafts are probably heavily violating IP rights? All I did is pointing out, that it is always possible to do the auditing in a polite, respectful.....oh wait, I think I stated above that I should wait until maybe some other member in the FG forum understands me and translates it to Thorsten-language. I can only repeat myself, but I speak obviously not Thorsten-language.

And calling somebody a thief and criminal is TOTALLY different than telling somebody politely that s/he has done something which is not according to YOUR policy.


Please read back - I don't think I called anyone a thief (in the event at hand, unlike others I have not looked at the evidence myself and have not reached a conclusion, so all my comments were of general nature).


Mhh, I did not even want to say that you, Thorsten, said that personally. But I do acknowledge to have given this impression so I apologize! That was not correct of me!

Thorsten, please come down from your high ross (hehe this is an insider joke for Germans) and treat other people like they are not idiots and you know everything. Even IF you would be right in every point, you can still try to be polite, respectf.....oh no, not again!
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby Hooray » Sun Feb 25, 2018 9:35 pm

Volkswagen has (of course) rights not only on their logo, but also on the silhouette and form of the beetle. For years the form and silhouette together with the VW logo has been used by thousands of people. Volkswagen has then decided to take legal actions against that, and they CAN. Yes, even for violations for which the violator did not use it commercially (like FG does not use their models commercially). And again YES, even though this was tolerated for many year before, suddenly they can!


Sorry, but you might want to do some homework first, had you done that, you'd have realized that we're much more aware of legal/copyright matters than you may think. For instance, see (as a matter of fact, Thorsten himself brought up the exact example in a number of topics recently):

Ask for forgiveness or ask for permission?
curt wrote:Yes it's very true. I received a polite, but very stern letter (real physical mail) stating that the honda name, the honda jet name, the honda jet form, etc. were all owned by honda and they objected to our use of it and requested that we immediately delete it from our project. It may not have been right, it may not have been in Honda's best interest ... but sadly it's more about what Honda wanted and who's lawyers would win a battle. And since I have no lawyers ... and it didn't sound like a lot of fun to launch the mother of all legal battles and immediately get myself crushed. Other people might enjoy fighting and have the time and money for that, but I like airplanes and computers.

Honda is primarily a car company and imagine all the car racing games out there that would create honda race cars and make money from the use of the honda trademark and form ... I think that is where honda was coming from and we just got caught in an overreaching google search.
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby hans05 » Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:00 pm

@bugman/Edward

This time you are not offending me and I am grateful for that, and it motivates me to answer you.

You write a lot of things that I can not really follow or that are "behind the scenes", while I can only judge what I read here in the forum. Please correct me if I summarize incorrectly, but I understand from your writing that Valery has always had a bad attitude, ignored hints about copyright violations and then got totally impolite using f-words and the lot.

Now, believe it or not: Right after the first post in the forum that Valery was supposed to have violated IP rights I wrote a personal mail to him since I have used his chopper and (contrary to what Thorsten refuses to stop stating about me) I do mind about IP rights a lot.
I wrote to him VERY politely that I strongly disapprove the way that the people in the forum communicate with him in their posts, but that I do have a problem with IP rights violation. I RESPECTFULLY stated that I can only imagine a misunderstanding or a mistake but I would feel more comfortable if he could explain the situation to me.

And guess what? He actually DID! And he was....polite, respectful and not arrogant.
You see? I now have a problem. You forum guys are (in my personal opinion) not so very polite and respectful at the same time you write that Valery is an as...uhm not very nice.

Very difficult. Currently (might change if I get new information) I conclude:

1) To me it seems that Valery is OK regarding IP violations. On some points he has done mistakes but he has admitted and corrected those. I got additional information from him that I will not reveal here since Valery does not want that, but I tend to say that he is going the right direction and I doubt that what he will release as v1.0 will have IP-violations in it.
2) Who is the nice guys here? The criminal Valery who turned out to be very nice person? Or the big shots here in the forum who know everything and talk to me like I would never accept it in real life? Tell me Edward, what should I do now?

Now, at least Curt and Edward have managed to write in an acceptable manner. So I start to hope for the best....
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby hans05 » Sun Feb 25, 2018 10:14 pm

@Hooray:

Oh dear, another person who is impolite :(

Sorry, but you might want to do some homework first, had you done that, you'd have realized that


And you could not have thought of a way to formulate this in a non-offending, polite and respectful manner?
Hope just started to develop that there are only a tiny minority in this forum like you, but yet another one is really frustrating!

that we're much more aware of legal/copyright matters than you may think.


Hooray, also to you: STOP this! Do not try to make conclusions of what I think! I never said that you are not aware of legal/copyright matters. All I pointed out was that maybe there is a chance that you start to evaluate the possibility to think about questioning if you are not 100% strict with violating IP rights of aircraft companies but you are 100% strict with violation of copyrights for 3D models and the such (even though they might in fact violate IP rights). And I have not even judged on that! It is just what you do.

Is politeness a lost art? Has respect been lost in the last years? Come on guys: One less aircraft and spend the time on being more gentle with others? How about it?
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby curt » Mon Feb 26, 2018 1:56 am

Hans,

I appreciate that you are looking for polite ways to express your vantage point, while still trying to move back to a place of civility in all of this.

I have an different perspective on one of your points. I think it is pretty clear that vslash's model started out as a copy, errr adaption (?) of a commercial FSX model. As more people took brief looks at his work, more and more areas of copying were quickly revealed. Vlsash's model appears to have begun life with identical 3d meshes, identical textures, identical texture mapping coordinates, and even identical sound files. Now I personally believe Valery significantly downplays the level of copying he has engaged in. I don't think that any level of modification or incremental replacement of bits and pieces of a stolen work eventually makes it your own. I just don't see the logical or legal path there.

Let me say this another way. If (oops) Valery grabbed a nice sound file off the internet, but later we discovered it was somehow copyright or a commercial product, that could easily be an honest mistake. Replacing the file with one of his own creation or a free version would surely satisfy me. Honest mistakes do happen. But in this case, it really appears that the whole project started out as a converted FSX model. (Which he never mentioned anywhere that I am aware of.) It appears that (oops) Valery grabbed the whole 3d model, at least all the cockpit textures, all the sound files, and used that as his starting point. Valery vigorously disputes that, but I am basing my conclusion on all the evidence we've been able to find ourselves by looking at the mesh, textures, texture coordinates, sounds, etc. So if the evidence tells the truth (and that's an 'if') then the situation is reversed from the way Valery portrays it. Instead of sprinkling in some unintentional copyright work into his project, the whole project started out as a copied work. In that case, the strategy of changing or replacing enough little things to make the new model appear to be different from the original doesn't satisfy me.

I don't think it accomplishes anything to argue about who the nice guys are here. We all think we are the nice guys, at least we intended to be before the other bad guys said what they said ... that's how it goes. We all find justification in our actions. It's our culture that it is ok to be mean to the bad guys (and still be a good guy ourselves). Even better, we get to decide who the bad guys are, and then it's ok to be mean to them. (I'm describing our modern hollywood culture and values here ...) Sadly, a lot of us think it's ok to conduct our own social interactions this way. I really like your repeated point that the best option is to be polite to each other. I would love it if you would consider expressing this idea of politeness to vslash personally with the same level of passion you present it to us here!

Best regards,

Curt.
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby wlbragg » Mon Feb 26, 2018 2:54 am

@hans05

How many conversations have you had with any of the people on this forum who you are so passionately schooling on their manners?
I have had hundreds and I know all of the people your trying to school are professional, dedicated volunteers that all have given hundreds of hours of free time to pursue this hobby and produce lots of really wonderful content. Not a one of them in my opinion are interested in being disrespectful or mean to anyone that hasn't given them good cause. Even then, I have observed in my many years following this project, that they generally go out of their way to be polite and professional. I would have to say in all my years of experience in meeting people, these are some of the friendliest and most all around nice, sharing people I have ever met.
Maybe you should examine how it is you expect others to act or respond to someone with your history in this project, for how long, lecturing them on how they should behave or what they should believe about a subject that they have been dealing with for how long?
As someone else sitting on the side reading these post I too have an opinion about this experience and I agree with you in as much as it is always a bad experience when these issues arise, just as Curt stated, which should be a good indication as to where his heart is. I know these people and none of them like it or want it. They, to a person, would rather just get on with their hobby. It simply takes up to much time.
One more observation on my part, how considerate or professional is it to make statement or argue points such as "Thorsten-language". Do you really expect that type of communication to potentially move someone into seeing something from your point of view?
What would you believe if you knew the people here as well as I think I do and you knew them to be of the character I portray them as, yet you knew nothing of the one person or issue they were highlighting?
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby hans05 » Mon Feb 26, 2018 8:15 am

@curt:

You formulate this in a way that I can absolutely follow. As you already wrote: We do not agree on every detail, but that is not necessary or important. Thanks again for that!

I would love it if you would consider expressing this idea of politeness to vslash personally with the same level of passion you present it to us here!


I will!
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby Thorsten » Mon Feb 26, 2018 8:34 am

In absence of evidence that a simulation would have been recognized as art, I pass the ball to you, Thorsten, to give evidence that a computer simulation program HAS been accepted as art.


I've never seen a legal distinction between a game and a simulation being made anywhere - as far as I know they're equal before the law.

As for video games being recognzied as art form, a second of googling gives The US legally recognizes video games as an art form.

As far as German legislation goes, I've come across an assessment of Nazi symbology appearing in German computer games a while ago (for those who don't know, display of e.g. the svastika is prohibited in Germany) and the lawyers were of the opinion that freedom of art would well permit such symbols in a video game.

Having said that, a law being written in some way never means all court cases go the same way - not even all murderers get convicted and all innocent freed. In the legal zone between copyright, trademarks, personality rights, trade secrets there are borderline cases where another right may trump the freedom of art - making it necessary to slightly alter a 3d model/logo from what it is in reality.

What I do have is an article about people who, like you, thought that it is ok to use the form of a technical product freely:


Well, offering a literal copy of a brochure VW holds the copyright for is a copyright violation, not a work of art - this bears no resemblance to creating a 3d mesh and is rather equivalent to including the original aircraft manual in the documentation without permission by the copyright holder.

But I trust that's enough information to get you started in your googling.

This is a contradiction in itself! Either you FIND something wrong OR it is factually wrong. Factually wrong means that there is no place to find something.


Yeah, life is full of these little contradictions :mrgreen: I'm interested in epistemic relativism (what is a fact? how do we know things? what hidden assumptions do we use) and tend to phrase things carefully.

Even IF you would be right in every point, you can still try to be polite, respectf.....oh no, not again!


Well, thank you for this extremely polite assessment of the hard work of dozens of volunteers pouring their original idea and creativity into creating a flightsim:

FG will never be recognized as artwork since there is absolutely nothing of originality, uniqueness or creativity.

For someone who seeks to be treated politely and respectfully, that's quite rich.

In any case, please read back - despite several quibs aimed at me personally ('Thorsten-language', 'high ross', 'bullying' (the phrase is 'high horse' in English by the way, but it means the same) you have not seen a single hard word in reply from me. And on that note, I will finish the meta-discussion on politeness with you and confine myself to post corrections to any claims you may make.
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby hans05 » Mon Feb 26, 2018 8:40 am

@wlbragg:

Please note that I put this @somebody to the top of all my posts. What I write is then generally directed to that person. I thought this is generally understood this way. If not, please take it this way.

How many conversations have you had with any of the people on this forum who you are so passionately schooling on their manners?


With what I write above in mind, I hope that you understand that I feel to have had a conversation with all the people that I am addressing since if I write @somebody it is usually an answer to somebody who addressed me in her/his post.
To call this "schooling" is again not showing a lot of respect. All of what I do is expressing that I personally do not find ok how some people here in this forum communicate. They may continue to do so, just that I then have to say that my personal experience in this forum is not very pleasant (as per the title of my topic).

Maybe you should examine how it is you expect others to act or respond to someone with your history in this project, for how long, lecturing them on how they should behave or what they should believe about a subject that they have been dealing with for how long?


I thought some of you might find it intersting to get feedback about what impression the communication in this forum makes on someone with my history in this project.
And I pointed out already that if the policy of this forum is to not care about things like this, then feel free to delete it. Or ignore it.
What you should not do is offend me because I do this! And saying this is not schooling or lecturing, this is self defence.

One more observation on my part, how considerate or professional is it to make statement or argue points such as "Thorsten-language". Do you really expect that type of communication to potentially move someone into seeing something from your point of view?


That is a very good point! So please advise me how formulate things so that people like Thorsten understand me.

What I try to say is: Stay polite and respectful.
Thorsten answers: We take IP violations seriously.

I do not at all expect Thorsten to see things from my point of view. I just wish that he would signalize that he understands what the topic is.
I am really lost how to formulate more simply what I am talking about. So I admitt that speaking of Thorsten-language might sound not so nice but it is really not meant badly. I really do not know how to put it differently. I apologize, but I would dare to state that it is my lack of English skills.
Oh and I am really NOT trying to be professional here! Considerate yes. Professional...no.
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby bugman » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:26 am

@Hans: I would suggest taking a little breather and look back at your posts here to see how while asking others to be polite, your passion in this subject might be making you write a impolite things yourself without realising it.

Let me also connect a few dots that you may have missed:

    1) The admins and moderators are legally liable for what is posted here.

    2) All available evidence, including everything that is currently publicly available, paints a clear picture. Valery took a FSX model and converted it for FlightGear. But this is a commercial model and this is not legal.

    3) There is evidence of Valery hiding the connection between his model and the Cera Sim model. This includes silencing of the public git repository (or rather no longer pushing commits to the public repositories) to hide development history. Though Valery's commits up to Jun 29, 2016 have been preserved in his FGMEMBERS git repository (see this public copy).

    4) The 3D model for the Cera Sim model is the same as that found on 3D CAD Browser. Whether or not they have a legal licence with the original author, they are the original author, or the 3D CAD Browser model is a rip-off of their model is irrelevant.

    5) The fact that Valery has the Cera Sim textures means that he probably has the 3D mesh as well.

    6) There appears to be an effort by Valery to claim that the 3D mesh therefore originates from 3D CAD Browser in the README file and COPYRIGHT_3RD_PARTY files rather than Cera Sim. However looking at the git repository history, this was not originally the case.

    7) Valery does not mention anywhere from where the textures come from. They were committed at the very start, then deleted (see the git repository history). But the replacement textures added on the same day as the initial commit look rather similar (i.e. this vs. this).

And some more dots relating to my post on the Bell 412 thread:

    1) Despite the massive pile of evidence that Valery has ripped off a commercial FSX model, I made the assumption here that he did not take the 3D model from Cera Sim. To many people, this is what looks like Valery's alibi against the claim of theft.

    2) However even in this "safe alibi" situation, Valery does not have copyright licences for the 3D model from 3D CAD Browser, the textures that still contain Cera Sim's "watermarks", or the sounds stripped from YouTube.

    3) With more research, this could probably be extended to the textures that Valery used for the 3D instruments. For example where did this one posted in the Bell 412 thread come from? Considering Valery's history of just quickly grabbing stuff from any corner of the internet, it is probably very safe to assume that he does not have copyright licenses for these textures either.

Confronted with this evidence in private and then the public, rather than producing valid copyright licenses or admitting to making a mistake, Valery then is the first one to be rude, impolite and then physically threaten people. This aggressive and defensive behaviour is exactly what you would expect from someone who has knowingly stolen copyrighted material and is then confronted.

Please read this post a few times over and then have a good think about what you would do in this situation if you were a administrator/moderator and legally liable for this mess, rather than from the position of a user of an awesome helicopter model that ended up smelling a little fishy.

Regards,
Edward


Edit: Let me add that the claimed source 3D CAD Browser model is untextured - i.e. it does not have the Cera Sim textures which came from a different source.
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby bugman » Mon Feb 26, 2018 10:56 am

Here is a quick exercise, try to spot the many, many Cera Sim watermarks on these images from Cera Sim:

Image
Image

And then try to find them on Valery's last screenshot:

Image

Note the many colour changes to these distinctive watermarks.

Regards,
Edward


Edit: Here is a permalink to this post in case the evidence is deleted: https://web.archive.org/web/20180226095 ... 1&p=328554. And to the Bell 412 thread and associated images: https://web.archive.org/web/20180226095 ... =4&t=29660
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby bugman » Mon Feb 26, 2018 11:46 am

Here is another screenshot of the Cera Sim helicopter cockpit:

Image

Have a close look at the cyclic of the pilot (the "joystick" on the right hand side), and compare it to Valery's screenshot. Note the two black blobs on the white part of the cyclic! This is what it should look like:

Image

Regards,
Edward

Edit: Here is another permalink for the records: https://web.archive.org/web/20180226104 ... 55#p328555
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby bugman » Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:05 pm

And here is a screenshot of the latest version from vslash:

Image

vs.

Image

Also note the white and black labels at the bottom of the instrument panel, and the rivets on the right hand side. Try to find matching label colours, shapes, and text when doing a Google image search for "bell 412 cockpit"!

Regards,
Edward
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Re: Not a very pleasant experience!

Postby bugman » Mon Feb 26, 2018 12:23 pm

Here is another:

Image

v.s.

Image

Regards,
Edward

Edit: And another permalink: https://web.archive.org/web/20180226112 ... 57#p328557
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