Still, to address the other part of your question a bit more clearly: Roblox would not actively seek out IP infringing content either. You could hold a picture of Mario up to Roblox’s face, but Roblox will not conclude or refute that it is IP infringement until they actually get a DMCA from Nintendo about it.
EDIT: I see that you edited your question to be something else entirely, but leaving this post up since it still contains a good insight on how this works
I have a question about this. The primary group I am in is a Star Wars group, in the Clone Wars era. We create all of our own content and it is inspired by that, but we throw our own design spin on things. Would this be something that you all would strike down? Or is this something where action would only be taken if a DMCA takedown request was issued by Disney? In the past we’ve never received a content strike in the over 10 years that we have been on the platform, I just want to make sure this is not changing with this. Thanks!
This was just answered in the above posts. Action will only be taken if Disney submits a DMCA takedown request.
The way copyright strikes work has not changed: if Disney sent a DMCA takedown 5 years ago, then your content would have been taken down. The only reason you have never received a strike is because Disney doesn’t care about your game yet. The only thing changing is that now there is a concrete, public strike policy instead of it strikes depending on private policy or arbitrary decision.
As Roblox grows bigger and more popular, and as your game grows bigger and more popular, you risk an increasing chance of Disney noticing and sending a takedown. This can even happen if someone else makes a popular Star Wars game – if Disney notices, they may send takedowns for all Star Wars content on the website. And don’t forget: Disney cares a lot about copyright.
If you want to make fan-made content revolving around existing properties (e.g. Star Wars), then the safest way to do this is to essentially be a knock-off. If none of your assets or names actually match the original, then there’s nothing to take down. This can be as simple as calling the game “Star Battles” and have a character named “Zoda”, having it take place in the “Copy Wars” or “Clone Battles” era. Your community will still be able to have fun and immerse themselves in the world, but it’s technically not Star Wars.
How long do we have to get this sorted out until it becomes too late? As of May 9th of last year, I have been suffering serious hand injuries which makes it very difficult for me to perform basic tasks on a computer. The only way I am able to even interact on these forums is through customized voice-to-text technology that I took time to implement myself. Will I seriously be impacted for my younger self who was very unaware of the laws and ROBLOX lack of enforcement of these laws due to the nature of the platform at the time, and currently unable to do anything about regarding collecting and submitting links due to personal problems I’ve been dealing with for nearly a year?
I’ve been a user since 2008, I have a rather extensive history on my current account, and would be very disappointed if I lose it all because I physically cannot do something at the moment. I would gladly accept Roblox deleting all flagged assets automatically at the moment at the risk of losing some information if it means I get to keep my account, however it seems that we have to do this ourselves which I think is ridiculous regardless of my personal situation. If anything, we should be given a 30-day period or so to make a counter notification stating we have permission to utilize such asset based on how ROBLOX has previously handled this compared to now. For us older users, although I do consider modern ROBLOX to be overall a much better platform compared to what it was, I guarantee a lot of us had no idea this would be possibly a primary source of income for us, and think the company should help us out in regards to help making us compliant due to how the vast majority of us who’ve been here for such time were rather young. I know, even without my personal issues, it’s going to take a rather long time define invalidate all assets that I know I don’t have permission to use, especially since I’ve been on for so long.
Thank you, this definitely answered a bunch of questions
On a somewhat side note, do you know if the DMCA policy for Roblox will change in the future sooner or later? If so, what might we be able to expect from the changes? I assume if there were to be changed in the future they would be mainly based off of the current policy.
Roblox should just delete content and not strike users for content which was uploaded before the new policy was made. Thats how most laws work in real life, like if you commit a crime and get found out later on meanwhile that crimes maximum jail sentience gets increased from 5 to 10 years later on you would still get the 5 year sentience.
There is a feature request here about the idea that moderation should not punish for X year old violations of TOS / retroactively punish for new policies, you should support it if you haven’t yet:
I’m glad that thread exists, but I think it’s a bit sad we have to beg Roblox to not terminate us for content made years and years ago because of rules put in place after the content was created. Especially sad when there’s not even a single response from anyone who could make a change with how the moderation is handled in that thread.
This question definitely needs to be answered. There are many groups, some of them being large groups, and many people on the forum who would be affected by this if it were a lock-on-DMCA policy.
This provides many of us with quite a bit of relief due to not striking us for content uploaded before the new policy was released. Thanks for updating us on this.
The DMCA section of the Roblox Terms of Use/Service has existed since 2010 (based on Internet archive records), you agreed when you created your Roblox account and when you use Roblox.
Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you think about it, you agreed to those rules and still do.
If you made content back in 2008, I would say that you should be able to move on. Roblox have finally made more information public about it, rather than announcing it as a new policy persay.
My bad for “describing it as a new policy” then. Like it’s been said in one of the posts above this, it’s never been really enforced in this way and with Roblox finally cracking down on it a bit more than they usually would, it’s basically making us realise that the DMCA rules have been in place and still exist. However, up until now, I’m sure some people would’ve been blind to the fact that they existed because there has been minimal information realised about it before now.