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CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

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Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#41

Post by Ukv »

NL807 wrote: post #17
pdntspa wrote: post #13

Today's lesson: don't paywall mods! Like it or not, mods should be free. Unless you want that scene to turn into another shitshow, just like what happened with Youtube. The moment you open the floodgates on that, the modscene will be flooded with crap and yet another commercial-free space gets molested by the icy hand of capitalism. Financialization destroys everything it touches!

>Like it or not, mods should be free. Why? If it's original work, and it does not violate existing laws, whoever makes it should have the right to seek compensation for their work, if they see fit. It's basically software like any other. Licensing models have been successfully applied to software plugins in past, mods fall into that category.

I'd agree that the modder should have the legal right to create a $10/month subscription mod, because I don't like copyright being so extensive as to give the game's authors control over that, but also really don't want to see such "licensing models" spread to another community that has so far remained largley uninfected.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#42

Post by expedition32 »

exegete wrote: post #37
somenameforme wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on your age the term Game Genie [1] probably brings back some fond memories. If it was before your time, it was a hardware device - a mod, you could attach to video game devices that would enable you to tweak the memory of the game in real time enabling you to do all sorts of things, mostly it was used for stuff like infinite lives or whatever but you could also do neat things like tweak the gravity in game…

DMCA wasn’t law during the lawsuits with CodeGenie and Nintendo.

Also countries have different laws not everyone lives in America.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#43

Post by Wowfunhappy »

b473a wrote: post #12
wjdp wrote: post #2

Context: It's a paid mod but doesn't appear the guy was in it for profit, rather to support the time spent which covers multiple games. The precedent here I find a little weak, a mod isn't facilitating piracy nor is it a replacement for the original product. You need to own the game, the mod is a layer that adds additional features. When mapping the context to the real world it's more worrying, you don't get car make…

At $10/mo for access even if he's not doing it for profit he's absolutely making bank. Verge in 2022 estimated about $20,000 a month [1]. CDPR has an explicit policy allowing free mods with a tip jar, but not mods that are pay-only. Whether or not you agree with that policy it's CDPR's right to make that decision, and you can't complain when they enforce it. 1: https://www.theverge.com/23190201/luke-ross-vr-real-mod-…

It shouldn't be CDPR's right to make this decision. A mod is just software that runs on top of other software. Microsoft doesn't get to dictate what I do with Windows. Apple does try to dictate what I do with my iPhone, but even then, if I manage to jailbreak my phone there's nothing they can do about it.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#44

Post by [deleted] »

j16sdiz wrote: post #18
metalcrow wrote: post #3

Question for people who are lawyers or lawyer adjacent: would you be able to reasonable argue against this in court, assuming you do not use any Cyberpunk assets or content directly, and instead just offer a dll mod of the game that writes memory at specific addresses and modifies code (i'm assuming that's what this mod is doing)? To me, if you're not using any of the actual game's content CDPR can't reasonably claim…

I suspect this is not a copyright issue, but rather a ToS issue.

[deleted]

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#45

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

fishgoesblub wrote: post #6
chmod775 wrote: post #5

Meanwhile thousands of modders make some money on nexusmods from their Cyberpunk mods. My Cyberpunk mods get me like 200 USD/month in passive income. Why is this guy getting singled out?

Difference between selling your mod rather than getting revenue from ads on the download site.

So why is the download site not being targeted?

(Not arguing that it should be, just continuing OP's logic.)

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#46

Post by matrss »

exegete wrote: post #39
wjdp wrote: post #2

Context: It's a paid mod but doesn't appear the guy was in it for profit, rather to support the time spent which covers multiple games. The precedent here I find a little weak, a mod isn't facilitating piracy nor is it a replacement for the original product. You need to own the game, the mod is a layer that adds additional features. When mapping the context to the real world it's more worrying, you don't get car make…

AFAIK DMCA is such a strong law that you just have to circumvent any kind of access mechanism to violate it. I’m not a lawyer. “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” “to "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair…

> “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.”

This wording always bothers me. If a person were to circumvent a technological measure that tries to control such access, then the circumvention itself proves that this measure was not effective at doing what it is supposed to be doing. Therefore the person is not circumventing something that _effectively_ controls anything. They just showed that it is ineffective, and therefore the law does not apply to them.

Of course, no one who actually has to interpret these laws shares my opinion.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#47

Post by xinayder »

somenameforme wrote: post #16
b473a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $10/mo for access even if he's not doing it for profit he's absolutely making bank. Verge in 2022 estimated about $20,000 a month [1]. CDPR has an explicit policy allowing free mods with a tip jar, but not mods that are pay-only. Whether or not you agree with that policy it's CDPR's right to make that decision, and you can't complain when they enforce it. 1: https://www.theverge.com/23190201/luke-ross-vr-real-mod-…

How is it their right to make that decision? This is taking the whole 'you don't actually own this game' to a whole new level when trying to dictate what mods you can use with it. The digital world needs a major reboot in terms of consumer rights, and this should happen sooner rather than later as companies are increasingly trying to take this into the real world by attaching software to hardware and then seeking to…

> How is it their right to make that decision?

It's their game, it's written in the EULA, which everyone accepts blindly without reading. You have accepted the EULA before playing the game.

This is the same as the Steam Subscriber Agreement saying you CANNOT make paid mods using Valve's IP unless given permission to do so.

There's nothing wrong with CDPR going after someone who thought they'd get away by making an important mod paid-only. It's a totally different story if the $10 fee was optional.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#48

Post by xinayder »

imtringued wrote: post #32
klez wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're not going after people who use the mod. They're going after someone who's profiting off of their IP. Someone else said upthread that CDPR doesn't go after people who make free mods (or donationware) so it's clear they don't have a problem with mods per se. I'm not saying I agree with their stance, but we're talking about different matters entirely.

How would they prove that he's profiting off their IP when his "mod" doesn't add content or require any particular feature of a base game (the "mod" supports many games) and is actually primarily meant for interoperation with a novel input and display method? If Valve was the developer of the VR compatibility software, CD Projekt would get crushed in court.

> How would they prove that he's profiting off their IP when his "mod" doesn't add content

Adding a VR mode to the game is definitely adding content. If you mean storywise, okay, I agree with you. Still, he's profiting off it in the fact that you need to pay a monthly fee to access the mod.

Even if he claims he's not, he indeed is profiting off it, because there is no way you can use the mod without paying first.

> If Valve was the developer of the VR compatibility software, CD Projekt would get crushed in court.

The difference is that Valve would have asked for permission first from CDPR if they could sell their software, or even then, work together with CDPR to have the software be implemented natively on the game. Plus, Valve has the same stance on paid mods on Steam, so it's not really a good comparison here.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#49

Post by thenewwazoo »

matrss wrote: post #46
exegete wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK DMCA is such a strong law that you just have to circumvent any kind of access mechanism to violate it. I’m not a lawyer. “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” “to "circumvent a technological measure" means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair…

> “No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.” This wording always bothers me. If a person were to circumvent a technological measure that tries to control such access, then the circumvention itself proves that this measure was not effective at doing what it is supposed to be doing. Therefore the person is not circumventing something that…

The meaning of effect is not what you think it is. In this case it simply means “to bring into being”, or “have the intent to”.

Re: CD Projekt issue DMCA takedown notice against popular Cyberpunk VR mod

#50

Post by marak830 »

zvqcMMV6Zcr wrote: post #30
marak830 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that do not(should not) have a leg to stand on here. They might not like the fact, but the dev is selling his software, not theirs. It would be akin to MS sending a take down request to software running on windows. I wonder how much "strength" the tos really has in this case.

The term "derivative work" covers a lot. For example all fan translations are one and all content stored on movie subtitles sites is by definition illegal. I don't know about those particular VR mods but in general case it is easy to show that game mod is not a standalone work and counts as derivative work, so game developer can limit the distribution however they want.

I think it's more a dependency and less a derivative (there isn't any source code/game objects being distributed via the mod as far as I can tell.)

I would be very interested to see how a court would rule on this, as AFAIK such as Lexmark v. Static Control Components, you can modify products you purchase, but how much weight would the TOS really hold?

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