Huge thank you for giving us the opportunity to remove these assets that are no longer allowed on Roblox!
What do we do about group names that include a trademarked name? I need my group name changing but have requested and have been turned away.
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If we could delete models ourselves, and delete other things like games, and stuff that would be amazing, and make this a lot easier.
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Not even delete, we should just be able to archive these assets like places.
You could try contacting Developer Relations over email about that issue.
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Already tried messaging them through DevForum DM and emailing Roblox through support, they just told me to contact me to support.
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I got one more question.
If we make free models of existing promotional items or meshes that were used for events, would that be risky?
Jailbreak uses Hero Factory cuffs IIRC.
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I’ve uploaded a lot of things to groups I no longer own / have access to and I have no way to find these assets. There should really be a way to see every asset you’ve ever uploaded regardless of where you uploaded it to.
I’ve also uploaded group icons to these groups, which I now can’t change (but I would assume is still associated to me).
Basically, I think we need a better way to find any content we have ever uploaded.
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What about usernames or past usernames of users? Can these be DMCA’d too? Will they get a free name change, a strike, or simply terminated without warning for “inappropriate username”?
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So… this sparked some confusion for me.
I work for many groups and one has the name of a large clothing brand. If this brand were to submit a DMCA takedown request, would we be able to change the name or would we simply get deleted/locked?
I know some other groups have been able to name change in the past, but I don’t know if this is still applicable.
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I’ve been wondering the same thing. I have two friends who have copyrighted characters in their usernames and I don’t want them to have to lose their accounts over something so stupid.
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Well this is somewhat disappointing of an update. I was hoping for more info here, but it seems the only two main pieces of info are worded in such an odd way where it could mean what it’s saying, could not mean. That’s rather concerning when we’re dealing with such a major topic here.
While the stats are a nice addition, showing that the DMCAs aren’t coming in at a rapid rate, it doesn’t really answer the questions regarding the system itself.
Maybe with the fact that this thread is open to questions, unlike the previous one, I could ask a few?
Starting off with asking about a couple clarifications…
Would this mean that if I get a strike for, let’s say an old Minecraft shirt since it’s pretty known at this point, over some content, and then two weeks later get a FNaF model removed, would those bundle up as the same strike 1?
This means we’d be able to DMCA strike stolen content? Is such a system going to handle everything that’s thrown at it? Clothing, meshes, places, everything? How will Roblox keep track and make sure that the DMCA both comes from the original owner, and wasn’t released to the public by that owner beforehand?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has made an article regarding safe harbors such as this one. They mention that the DMCA requires handling of the stolen content reasonably, but also mentions the following.
In order to protect their customers’ rights, service providers should avoid knee-jerk and over-simplified policies such as “three strikes (takedown notices) and you’re out.”
While the EFF isn’t exactly the law, I’d imagine if a foundation dedicated to dealing with digital rights for over 25 years, what they have to say here should at least lead to looking into things deeper. Suppose it depends on the details regarding that strike system.
How big does an offense have to be to count as a strike? An off sale t-shirt? A non-profit place? What about a profitable one? Is there a point where it can get so big, it can give multiple strikes?
Is there any leniency towards this strike system, to the point where the average user can email all of the content they know isn’t theirs, avoid uploading IP which isn’t theirs from henceforth, and handle any other possible things that could pop up without getting banned? Essentially, if someone is more than willing to obligate here and handle IP properly, will Roblox meet them half way in their goal to obey the law and not ban the user?
Moving ahead, how will Roblox handle cases where the user can’t be expected to know they’re breaking the rules? There’s a few spots here.
First would be rather young children. Young enough to not understand copyright, and are simply looking to enjoy small things like uploading t-shirts for personal use, not to make big IP breaching games like Pokemon Brick Bronze. This is somewhat similar to the previous question of “How big is big enough for a strike?” but gets more into the detail of “How will Roblox handle an age group which can’t reasonably be expected to understand copyright?”
One thing to consider, instead of a looming ban, why not restrict uploading of content temporarily for users like these? Considering Roblox has two major sides to it, playing the games, and making the games, would it be possible to restrict creating content with stolen IP until some time passes?
A somewhat different issue of unintended rule breaking can occur when multiple people are involved. First would be in terms of paying for content, two major scenarios which worry me.
Let’s say User A hires User B to make a vampire character, and uses a picture of a vampire from some movie that User B has never heard of. User B makes the character, uploads it to their account, and sends it on over to finish the commission. The work is still under User B’s name. Are they accountable for breaking IP, even if they couldn’t reasonably be expected to know that they were doing so, and wouldn’t have made that vampire had they known the original source?
Now, let’s say User A hires User B to make a werewolf character in Studio. User B comes back with a character from some TV show User A doesn’t know about, and User A ends up using the model. The werewolf model is now in User A’s game. Is User A in trouble for not knowing that User B had given them stolen content?
If I had to make a guess, this scenario would be somewhat familiar to Roblox. They outsource some of their catalog work to individuals outside of the company, and there have been a couple cases where an original source can be traced back to if you know where to find it.
This doesn’t just have to be these two specific scenarios though. Any situation in which content is passed from user to user, where the receiving user can’t be expected to know they’re using stolen content, is a worrying one. Games built in teams, free models/decals/audio, even Roblox’s own content that they offer. These are all places where someone will use stolen IP without even knowing it.
Speaking of Roblox’s content, what’s all allowed there? It has generally been believed that anything Roblox uploads is allowed to be used, but in more recent years there has been a shift away from that. Are we not allowed to use any content related to sponsors? How will Roblox handle content where the sponsor set up some sort of “Build using our IP!” event in the past, like the Jurassic Park template place, or as an older example, the Zeke and Luther skatepark models.
Also on the subject of Roblox’s content, what was the situation regarding Roblox using IP in recent events? That would be the “Guess The Pokemon!” quiz in the Roblox TNL obby a few years back, and Noggin The Gnome from this year’s Bloxy events. Was there a specific situation which allowed either of those? I could maybe see the gnome having some special case I’m missing here, but I don’t think Gamefreak or Nintendo approved of the obby quiz…
If a user reports all of their old content and is shown that they agree with the rules and follow them, how will Roblox handle finding content the user may not have found? Some good examples would be hidden in places which aren’t so organized. It’s easier to dig through the years of decals uploaded straight to my account, but there are places which aren’t so straightforward to find.
Inside group uploads is one spot. Decals uploaded to a group aren’t added to your inventory as far as I’m aware, and for things like clothes users may delete the older versions of clothes while editing and tweaking their uploads until they finally had a version of the shirt they thought looked good.
Places can also hide content in less obvious places. A mesh or decal hidden in a crevice, buried under folders, or a script made to use a sound buried several hundred lines into the script.
Unions. We can’t even see our own union uploads tied to our account unless we have the actual union inside another thing such as a model or file, and even then we need to save the union as a file and dig through that file if we want to see the ID.
Lastly are some questions I couldn’t quite categorize into chunks. Sorry that they’re less organized in terms of topic.
Fonts, vehicles, designs of other various things in the world. In some cases these are things where it can be harder to determine what’s allowed or not. For fonts, some sites offer the font for free, while others show that it’s something which needs to be licensed. With vehicles, is the whole car itself considered, or just the brand name? What about if I were to make something like the Sputnik 1, the first satellite launched, as a model?
Is there room for fair use, more specifically parody, to be taken into account? If I were to include a section of my game which would be considered parody and fair use outside of the Roblox platform, would that same parody be defended in the Roblox platform? If Roblox won’t defend it, will we have the option to defend ourselves over that usage?
Lastly, how will inactive users be handled? There’s plenty of players who don’t log in as often. As someone who does a lot with the egg hunt community, one big example I could give is users who only come on around those egg hunt events. When Roblox handles DMCA’d content from a user who hasn’t been on in some time, will they be given a reasonable chance to handle that content once they return, or can that user enter a situation where the last time they’ve logged in they had 0 strikes, and the next time they do they’ve gotten banned for having a 3rd strike?
Unfortunately I can’t ask every question here. Copyright isn’t all that simple, and there’s bound to be more questions that pop up over time. I’d hope that there’ll be a decent method for asking about such cases in the long run.
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A few questions (Might be answered, but I didn’t find answers to them)
1: Is it okay for us to keep copyright materials as long as they ain’t reported? (With this I mean if we have old content that is copyrighted that we might not know about)
2: If we have a lot of old models that could be copyrighted, is there any easy way to get rid of them without picking out one at a time? (Maybe a select function with a delete button would fix that)
3: Is it possible to get rid of the strikes? Like, is there a time limit you have them?
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That was quite a long read, but this part really stood out to me for… obvious reasons. It almost feels like they read this and decided to go directly against it.
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I have a lot of assets that I deleted from my inventory. Some of them may contain copyrighted content, but I have no way to find them. I’m sure there’s also a ton of copyrighted content in old versions of old places that have been overwritten.
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Me and many others are asking are the strikes permanent because it would really suck for lets say you get 2 strikes in 2019 and then 1 in the future lets say 2022 and get your account terminated.
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I have a few questions. Let’s say Roblox did find copyrighted content (if the owner sends a DMCA on it) which a user is in possession of. How would the interaction between the user and Roblox work? By that, I mean how would Roblox verify if the user in question is innocent?
What would classify as a “repeat offender”? I know it may seem like an ignorant question, but I’m asking if a user would be classified as that if Roblox found a few copyrighted assets on a user, and if each copyright asset counts, or if it’s grouped as a whole.
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That’s not how it works. Roblox doesn’t police content until the original copyright owner sends a DMCA against it. A user cannot report IP infringing content of another user if the reporter doesn’t own that content / that content hasn’t received a DMCA in the past. Roblox doesn’t know what infringes on IP and what does not until the original copyright holder complains about the content being used on the platform inappropriately.
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Sorry for the confusion, I didn’t mean reported by another Roblox user. Will change the wording.
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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
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