Answers to your recent questions regarding our DMCA policy

It would likely be a notification that is shown as a warning. Not all Roblox accounts are linked to an email account and I doubt they should sent it via PM’s on the Roblox site. It would likely look similar to this:

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Well uh. This barely means anything. Most questions asked didn’t get answers, and one of the bigger ones (are strikes permanent) just got a “maybe” from Roblox.

The fact that some strikes can be permanent is upsetting, and I expected better from Roblox. However, it seems that they’re trying to one-up Youtube’s poor handling of DMCA.

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Is Roblox still answering questions? I’d say all of my questions are either left unanswered, or left with answers which are very barebones and only cover the bare surface of the theme around those questions.

I’d also like to note this part here.

As I described in my unanswered questions post there are many more places for potentially infringing content to hide than just my own develop page. Group assets, assets I’ve deleted, places, unions, and more. @NoahG59 even mentions usernames!

Referring to using the search bar, which I’m guessing is the Catalog/Library search bars since that’s the only search bars regarding our assets is a terrible, terrible piece of advice right now too. You recently made it where off sale assets don’t show up in searches, even if you’re the owner of them. Whenever an asset is uploaded to the site, it is by default off sale. It is not a viable option for searching for your own assets.

As these threads get made, it gets harder and harder to trust that Roblox will handle this new 3-strike system properly, since they can’t even get through describing the system itself, and the details around it.

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As I mentioned directly in the previous reply, the search bar is not a viable spot to search for your content, since the results it gives are rather limited. The fact you can search by your own creator name is irrelevant when you can’t search for your own off sale assets.

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When can we expect updates to our other questions? All we got for whether or not strikes are permanent was a “maybe” and we still don’t know 100% how strikes are going to function for multiple assets, how it will work on previously updated content, or why Roblox is so adamant on sticking with the 3 strike system even when EFF advises directly against that exact course of action.

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So we can not allow users to bring event gears or other users clothing without their (Sponsor or original creator’s) permission is my understanding?
Or would this count as other user’s UGC not being used by us but by the users?

Can users themselves get a DMCA for wearing another user’s clothing?
Let’s say I made a shirt and that shirt had my copyrighted logo on it and it was uploaded to my group. A member sets it on sale, someone buys it, then it goes off sale again. I don’t want this user wearing my copyrighted clothing that I personally never made available to them. Could I DMCA them for wearing it? Would I have to request my shirt removed from Roblox then reupload it?

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So some strikes can expire and others can not? What circumstance does it have to be for it to not expire? This part is still kinda vague.

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As they deem reasonable – probably not something they want / can define in the finest detail in a policy. It’s something that needs to be determined on a case by case depending on how severe the infringement is. I can’t imagine a well-intentioned developer getting a strike that doesn’t expire, that seems like it goes against the intent of the policy.

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Does it mean, if we have a stolen asset from someone else. Would we get a strike. or for example we take a render from google and it’s not ours, can we still use it.

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That is by definition theft and intellectual property infringement; you’ll get a strike for it. However, some things are licensed for free use so it depends upon the circumstances.

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By allowing developers to claim ownership over their assets this opens a whole new backdoor, I feel as if this should be a exclusive privilege instead of being accessible to every developer. For ex: If you commission a builder, programmer, or graphic designer then that doesn’t make it your property as you didn’t create it, you were only granted fair use since you paid for it.

Unless a contract is written up to where both parties mutually agree to terms stating permanent usage then anything that isn’t your property can be removed without your consent. Even if a contract is written up it could require to get the law involved to prove you’re not in violation of the terms previously agreed upon in order to get it reversed.

While this update will be beneficial it could be harmful depending on the situation.
Potential malicious usage:

  • Feel as if you were underpaid after the game was successful? Claim copyright infringement.
  • Feel like competing with a project that you previously worked on yet want to eliminate the main target? Claim copyright infringement.

If this policy does get enforced I may need to have contracts made for every task assigned regardless of how simplistic or complex it is. This policy will ensure protection while also raise concerns of potential misuse that lawyers can achieve with ease. Very few of us think about what happens after the game is successful, potential flaws that could be found within our original game plan to be used against you in court.

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Ideally, you should be intentionally transferring the ownership of any assets created under your employment to you because that protects yourself and your game from being sued, and prevents a contractor from selling the same asset they made for you behind your back. This is how companies do it irl.

That being said, I doubt that will happen. That’s mostly because you already own the intellectual property you create. This isn’t changing anything at all. It is simply publicizing a previous policy. While those are valid concerns, there’s no reason why it would suddenly happen more than it already did. If this wasn’t a concern to you before I don’t know why it would be now.

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Are we ever going to get the ability to delete/archive our own uploaded assets? Besides being beneficial to the IP protection effort, I don’t see why we don’t have this already.

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Roblox will never do this because if your account gets compromised they don’t want to deal with the crying of “Omg all my models and other assets are deleted ;(”.

Take the chance roblox is offering now and find your copyright assets.

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This seems like a neat system I hope it dosent cause problems in the developing community.

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I’d agree with this if the person only said deleting the assets instead of also saying archiving them. Just archiving the asset and hiding it on the site isn’t as big a deal as full deletion, especially when unarchiving is possible.

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I would hope we get some sort of archiving system. Perhaps, to solve the issue of assets being deleted off of compromised accounts, they could be deleted after being archived for like a month or so.

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Still no response.

That’s good. Still doesn’t say anything about my first concern.

Same reason as many decisions. Roblox has made (in my opinion) negative decisions before and upheld them; this was an existing policy, they say, so this could be the same case.

I’ll end this off with a second question of my own: What’s stopping a company from abusing DMCA and ignoring fair use, particularly in showcase places or other similar nonprofit media?

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There’s no such thing as fair use on Roblox. You cannot opt content out of monetization, and as per the TOS you need to be able to supply a license to Roblox to use the content as they’d like on the platform for any content you upload. This is not compatible with fair use constructs.

Wouldn’t expect one in the middle of the weekend.

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