Answers to your recent questions regarding our DMCA policy

Except if you use it for a transformational purpose… IANAL, but then you could license your transformation to Roblox, iirc.

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Thank you so much! This answered my questions i was totally confused lol. Also DevEx questions! :purple_heart:

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Will there be a way for us creators to check if we ever uploaded any content that could potentially infringe IP to groups that no longer have owners? Like for example, let’s say you made a group 6 years ago and it has some decals, shirts, and models/games that are let’s say Star Wars IP. The group has no owner and there’s no real way to find the group without digging through thousands of group pages. But let’s say you remember you 100% did upload stuff like that and can’t find it. What do you do in that scenario? (Sure there’s the scenario where a rep of that IP won’t bother to dig through that stuff, but let’s say they do).

Because for a lot of us we have uploaded stuff in the past to our groups and a lot of those groups are lost to history with no owners and some of them can have IP infringing content (like all the abandoned game of throne’s groups, star wars groups, etc.). So it’d be very hard to find those groups that do have that content. And if we get a strike for that content that we had no way of finding, what do we do?

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Could the post title be corrected to clarify that they’re questions related to the DMCA policy? The current title is fairly obscure as to what questions are being answered.

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It is still not apparent who decides the validity of a DMCA notice.

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Maybe they can answer on how this has 750,000+ plays, 4,000 players, and is on my recommended when its a stolen game where the original was DMCA’d … :thinking:

image

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Maybe it’s because players who used to play the original PBB searched the game name and found that (possibly working?) stolen version. And it suddenly became popular. I’m pretty sure ROBLOX will take it down later.

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It’ll get taken down eventually. Recommended sort is totally automatic and is based on player increase/ratings over time.

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I wanted to ask for any situations where developers have received a reply, or seen action taken to the assets they requested a takedown for. I sent in my email a while ago (after the email asking for a resubmission) but have not had any feedback or seen any changes happen since. Has anyone seen a change?

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Doesn’t help Roblox filters the search bar, this causes you when searching for items or players and etc… to get hashtagged out and have to use or do something else.

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I would like to bring this point up, as a lot of my works are permitted under fair use, and no one has mentioned anything on this.

Do take what I saw with a grain of salt. I’ve done as much research as I can on the subject, but I’m not a lawyer, just a software developer and can make mistakes.

Fair Use does apply to Roblox, as they are a company in the United States, which must follow United States law. In the end, it is up to a judge to determine if a work is fair use (which can be swayed if the work made money), but that does not mean it is not a thing.
Roblox can require a license to upload works to their website, but in this case, fair use would be the license: “legal permission to do or own a specified thing” - American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th

Fair use does not just apply to highly transformative works, but also,

  • parody,
  • education,
  • criticism and news reporting,
  • and teaching.

For example, as a collage student of a recognized institution, I have permission to use someone else’s Roblox place in an assignment, as it is for an educational purpose.

For another example, last years Egg Hunt event used copyrighted works in highly transformative ways that where also parodies. In the second world, there is a tea party with a character that has a red split hairline, who is easily annoyed, who yells “OFF WITH YOUR HEAD”, in a colorful world with a black cat relaxing in the forest, and a castle where cards are painting roses red. It is clearly an homage to Alis in Wonderland. A character in the game even implies the game needed to be abstracted to avoid copyright infringement.

On which the copyright has long since expired (written in 1865). Alice in Wonderland is public domain. If a “character in the game” mentions something about copyright, it’s just a joke.

Besides, I don’t think I was talking about just transformative work at any point, rather direct infringement of the content, so I’m not sure why you’re pulling my post into that direction. The point still stands either way: you cannot opt content out of monetization on Roblox and you’re giving Roblox a very permissive license, so good luck explaining the fair use case to any judge.

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Sorry if you think I’m trying to invalidate your point. I only wished to clarify. My point is that fair use still applies to Roblox.

I would like to see what others have to say on this though, perhaps I’m missing something. I’m more familiar with Canadian copyright law.

Very simply, if you read the Roblox ToS it states that uploading anything to the website grants them a permissive license to use said asset in a multitude of different ways. Right off the bat, that alone voids ‘fair use’.

How would that void fair use? They claim permission to use the work, but the ownership of the work is unchanged.

Relevant part of ToS: 6(B)(3)

Since uploading assets to the platform also grants Roblox the right to use it in certain ways that potentially can generate revenue it voids fair use.

This isn’t just Roblox, when you upload something, YOU have the ability to generate revenue from it, thus the same.

Smaller snippet from 6(B)(3) that actually validates my point:

I sent an email to get IP Content removed on the 22nd of March, 17 days ago. Action still hasn’t been taken. How long can we expect until content we uploaded and requested to be removed from the site actually gets removed?

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I understand that Roblox is granted a license to make money from user’s works, along with the original user being able to do the same. Whoever I do not see anything in the law and Roblox’s terms of service that gives Roblox permission to void fair use.
Until I can see anything that inclusively says otherwise, I stand by my point. Fair use does exist on Roblox.

Fair use is basically a non commercial license.

As per Roblox’s ToS when you upload content to the website, it’s understood that you have a proper commercial license to do so.

Some other relevant ToS snippets (all under Section 6):

By “voiding fair use” I simply mean that it wouldn’t apply anymore with the license you grant Roblox when uploading content.

A quick google search turns this up regarding “fair use”:

From copyright.gov:

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Section (d), does disprove my point inclusively. Thank you!
At that point it does not matter what is considered fair use, it is a topic for another community.