Personality rights only apply to commercial use.
If you really want to go there.. you can expect to go into DMCA rights and litigation against you and your site.
Do the right thing.

if creators want copyright ownership, they should apply for it just like everyone else does. The fact is half the content sims creators use and share use stuff they have sourced from other brands/products WITHOUT permission.

I don't think you should have to get permission from a brand or creator of something to share something which is free.

Anyhow, as of right now i'll no longer just 'copy' custom content from MTS. And I will do my best to give full credit to the creator and link to the creators personal download pages. If MTS allowed guests to download, I wouldnt have thought twice about linking to the download page here. But asking our members to sign up on another site after joining ours to download a single mod seems a bit excessive.

But yes, i'll be moderating our site more thoroughly from here on and doing my best. Everyone here has raised valid points, we differ in opinions but I will and have taken everything you've said onboard!

Ads can pay for a site. Mine do (almost), but the occasional paypal donation I get from users make up the rest.

As for your name being posted? Um, your the one who left it publicly available in whois.

Taking content from other sites just to up your page views is sneaky, dirty, dirty, and not at all a way to treat others who freely share their content. If you want them to post there? Then have a good reputation, and they will come to you and ask to upload.

You're not in any position to request anything -- you are not the author. Feel free to remove your own content from this site anytime you want

You have no leg to stand on, and you know it. I'd suggest you quit whining now, and go clean up your site.

I don't think you understand how the law works.
Anywhere.

EDIT - Your name, email and phone number seem to be associated with a large number of other websites, all monetized and all in various states of abandon.

To me it looks like it's pretty FREAKING disrespectful to take 5-10 minutes to grab files from a site and post them to your own site, when it took likely HOURS of hard work learning software, learning to work with the code, along with possibly drawing/painting and finalizing designs.

Spin it any way you want. Take a swing at this site because you're butthurt that people are calling you out it. Bottom line. It's wrong. You're taking other peoples creations and posting them as your own. Sure, you might credit them with a line or two of text, but the average attention span tells me that no one takes the time to look and say "ahh.. bob made this mod.. good on bob."

The difference between the bolded BS and what you're doing is that no one here is making money on these creations. The only person taking these images/products/licensed content and making money off of it is you. Think before you gripe, sir.

- copyright is automatic, not something you have to apply for, at least in the case of things like these files, paintings, photos etc, Patents and trademarks are things you apply for, when wanting to mass produce a product etc,
- major brands being made into tribute pieces is considered fan art, and fan art is not illegal at this current time. Sure there is debate over that, but as it stands right now, it's not illegal and therefore not a valid justification for what you're doing.

to be clearer: fan art is something that looks like heath ledger (a painting, a 3d model, a figurine), not a carbon copy clone of heath ledger himself (living a breathing).

what you are taking: actual clones of the original things
what people here are making: tributes that are "like" something but in no way the actual thing

Well - I can't find what it was I set out to find. It was a post that had a specific answer from someone from/connected to EA about cc, commercial use and copyright. It's something that did exist at one point in time, it's possible that the site it was on has since closed. (I'm hoping it wasn't Coconut's blog.)

This is from the EULA for TS4 and how you interpret it depends on how you interpret "through the software":

E. Your Contributions. In exchange for use of the Software, and to the extent that your contributions through use of the Software give rise to any copyright interest, you hereby grant EA an exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, fully transferable and sub-licensable worldwide right and license to use your contributions in any way and for any purpose in connection with the Software and related goods and services including the rights to reproduce, copy, adapt, modify, perform, display, publish, broadcast, transmit, or otherwise communicate to the public by any means whether now known or unknown and distribute your contributions without any further notice or compensation to you of any kind for the whole duration of protection granted to intellectual property rights by applicable laws and international conventions. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution with respect to EA’s and other players’ use and enjoyment of such assets in connection with the Software and related goods and services under applicable law. The license grant to EA, and the above waiver of any applicable moral rights, survives any termination of this License

If you interpret "through the software" to mean uploading to the gallery, then as long as you haven't shared anything that way you'd retain copyright over it. TS3's EULA mentions the launcher - that would be through the software in my opinion. I personally interpret through the software to mean uploading to the gallery and/or on the official site.

If you're interested, Echo posted her own interpretation of the TS2 EULA years ago- http://www.eternal-echo.net/sims/other/copyright.php If ANY of TS2's EULA has been carried through the series then this part in particular is of interest:



We already know that EA is 100% fine with people creating new content for TS4 and offering it for others to download. So, like I already stated- if any of the TS2 EULA has been carried through the series (having been reworded obviously, since the above quote does not appear in that form in the TS4 EULA) then anyone hosting content from a site other than EA that breaks the original creator's TOU would be clearly in the wrong... assuming said original creator never shared their work through the software or official site. This is something I'd really like to see answered and put to rest.

It's funny how this very same problem crops up every. single. iteration. of the sims. 14 years in and there are still people ignoring the flippin' basics of custom content sharing on the flippin' internet, a rule that boils down to : if you didn't make it, don't offer it on your own site. So basic, and yet seemingly so complicated to grasp.

You're the scum of the community and I can't believe MTS is allowing you to pedal your bullshit justifications here. There is no excuse.

So many people these days lack common decency.

Also, kid, if DC or Ledger's family have an issue with someone creating a sim called that that looks similar they will contact MTS and request it be taken down, it isn't up to you. If MTS then doesn't remove it within a specified period of time (which they would, of course) they would have a lawyer send a C&D.

What do you expect... EA has taken on the "it's too hard!" mentality approach to software design.
It's only natural some of their consumers pick up on it.

To be honest I think a lot of people don't actually realize how skeevy shit like this is. They're just stupid kids who just figured out that they could get money from internet advertisements and don't understand how copyright works and think it's the key to easy money.

It doesn't usually affect them because they don't produce anything in the first place that can be stolen.

@Honeywell - it's ok, really it is. Why? Because there isn't one single person in this thread that's buying what he's trying to sell.

@sims4forum - MTS HAS been asked to remove branded content in the past. That's why there are certain (have to say certain- at the moment I can't recall which items) downloads that you might see talked about elsewhere can't be found here anymore. And just so you know: I use images found on the internet in a lot of the content I make. If an image isn't free for public use, I don't use it. So copyright=will not use.

Okay guys, I am not going to argue with you.... some of you really feel strongly about what you are saying and therefore I will take everything you all have said into account.

I felt like I had to defend what I believe in, and obviously we'll be disagreeing till the cows come home (wherever that saying is from)

I will from here on before sharing stuff I find, ensure content shared on my site does not contradict the content owners TOU and thus it's the content creators responsibility to outline a TOU with their content. That is fair and acceptable. And a rule of thumb I will abide by from now on.

I apologise to everyone on here for stirring things up, debating... but you all have to admit. There's nothing more fun than a good online debate but lets not make things personal.

I love you guys, you'd be surprised... I'm not an all bad guy if you got to know me please don't judge me based on a few lines of text you've read from someone else who doesn't know me either. I love your avatars btw :p

Anyhow, let this not taint the reputation of my forum. We're a half decent group of simmers if you gave us a chance. No one will force you to click our ads, or pay for anything.... and by all means if you are MTS.info for life so be it, good on you continue to use this site for your custom content and whatnot!

Also, offtopic... how come you guys have a .info domain. And who owns the .com? I visited the .com a few times by accident and got warned about malware. :S

Also guys, I have got to get some sleep It's extremely late here and I have got to get up early tomorrow as I have stuff to do. Thanks for listening to my side of things, despite overall disagreeing but I feel justice has been done as i've had a chance to explain myself and put to bed the rumor I was charging money for other peoples mods.... which is ridiculous!

Anyways tomorrow after I get back in the evening and this weekend I plan on some reforms on the site. And those creators who have content that dont want us hosting it on their behalf will be listened to and we'll be linking more content to the source of the content and become a more trustworthy site in doing so (fingers crossed)

Hope you all can forgive me to some extent, I was very much clueless on all this before today... I had no idea creators had their own TOU to look out for and abide by gah.

Hopefully the mods here can close this thread now, I don't feel any more good can be done arguing over it. I accept everyones opinion and will take it onboard and act on it Hope ya'll don't lose faith or complete trust in our site, we're not all bad

Who are you to define what is "fair and acceptable"?

All content belongs to its creator by default. It's your job to ask people for permission, not the creators' job to sit down and write up a TOU just for you.

Wouldn't it be fun if suddenly every single upload post here on mts contained a line at the bottom: "No reuploading of any part of this upload (including screenshots and description) at sims4forum.com without explicit consent of the author?" And a nice big News post on the front page with an explanation and link to this thread?

I have a feeling it would spare lots of people a lot of typing =):

@sims4forum

Sure thing; I will indeed close this thread and copy it to an archive. If that content is not REMOVED within 3 days I will then send a DMCA to your host requesting that you remove the content. If they want an individual request from each creator then I will make a post explaining in detail what they need to do.

In addition, I have also spoken to TSR whose content you have also stolen and uploaded under the name Chris. I expect they will also issue a DMCA.