Goal: To press the issue of mesh theft and present some solutions.
How this affects content creators
Because there’s no viable solution to proving that you own something once it gets stolen, it affects the credibility of the original creator, thus harming their probability of being hired by employers or their potential-ship for Roblox’s accelerator program. It is extremely discouraging and drives away talented developers by demeaning their hard work.
Creating content on Roblox is a source of income for many people, but thievery jeopardizes this.
Once something gets stolen and is sold for free, there is no way of keeping track of how many times your work is being taken and used in other people’s models or games. This nullifies the process of trying to report the issue, because it’s impossible to track down the amount of copies there are.
Here’s an example of a leader board and chair I made for the game Royale High. Because I’ve updated the thumbnails on mines, the date has changed and I wouldn’t have any proof that it belongs to me. This affects my credibility as a creator by making it hard for me to prove my ownership when signing up for Roblox’s accelerator program or presenting it in a portfolio piece.
Why Roblox’s report and moderation system is insufficient and fails
Need for thorough examination.
As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, some situations are a lot more complicated to explain and will require immediate attention, and Roblox’s automatic replying system fails to properly address these issues.
Wait time
Some of these reports can take up to 3-5 days. The longer it takes to look into an issue, the harder it’ll be to keep track of the amount of times someone’s content is being taken and used elsewhere.
Lack of consistency.
Roblox still does not have a consistent system of taking down stolen content. Some developers get their issues dealt with and others don’t. This lack of consistency makes it hard for developers to be heard and treated equally.
Suggested solution:
Extend upon the “Inventory Privacy / Add to Profile” option.
The inventory privacy option works in hiding my inventory, but it also comes with it’s problems. Just because I want my meshes hidden from public-view, does not mean I want my clothing or models hidden. As a designer, I rely heavily on my clothing being showcased through my inventory, and users have no way of viewing it without having to manually search up my username through the catalog. The “Creation” tab should be extended upon, and users should be able to “Add to Profile” more than 6 pieces of items. Give developers the option to customize what they want and don’t want to showcase to the public. Our profiles are essentially like portfolios to display our work.
Conclusion:
Stealing on Roblox stems a lot further than just meshes alone. If Roblox wants to be seen as a reliable and professional platform, they need to better protect the IP of their developers. This includes clothing, games, models, meshes, decals, etc. Whatever it is, our intellectual property is not secured on Roblox.
I’m not really sure telling even the people who probably didn’t know how to do this, exactly how to do this, if it does work. It’s nice to press the issue, but should you instigate theft in the process?
Not to disrespect but telling how to steal meshes publicly is just stupid. I suggest you to edit that out immediately as you instead of stopping stealing increase stealing, which isn’t your goal obviously.
@Tor_Laws
It’s already been mentioned in countless of other topics. It’s not a secret. This is a category for reporting bugs/issues. At least I should explain how this is happening.
May be so, but now you’ve just made three people steal meshes.
A lot people were unaware of this and you just contributed towards making more people steal meshes. I don’t condone anyone that shares these steps, once again I request you to remove them.
That means that the link was clicked on 3 times, it does not prove that anything was actually stolen. I appreciate your concern, but the link will remain as it reports on an on-going issue that needs to be looked at. The link is public information that can easily be google searched. I’d appreciate it if we didn’t derail the conversation from the real issue that my post is trying to address.
The suggested “solutions” would not be worth the time and effort. Roblox has hundreds of experienced engineers, and these are issues they have looked at already. However, there is a reason why it is virtually impossible to stop assets from being stolen.
Anything the client renders on their computer can be stolen, and this is how computers work by design. If stopping asset stealing was as easy as you describe, then it would have been done a long time ago.
I agree with your points.
But there could definitely be measures taken to hinder theft like making it against the TOS or improving moderation on stolen content. As seen in the Roblox email below, they don’t yet have a proper system to address these issues. So even if I have proof that something belongs to me, Roblox will not take the proper steps to protect my IP. The “Inventory Privacy” option works fine, but like my post mentioned, it is not a perfect solution and only poses more barriers for developers.
Stealing content is most certainly against the rules, and they will investigate DMCA takedown requests.
However, you contacted Roblox support which does not handle DMCA nor do they have the tools to takedown assets since it is not part of their job. You will need to email copyright_agent@roblox.com or file a DMCA request under the support page (make sure to select “DMCA” for your type of help category.
Yes, that issue was filed through the support page and I’m guessing it was forward to the Roblox Support team who emailed me that. I was made to believe that the DMCA take downs only applied for developers/companies outside of Roblox. Roblox was never really clear on that, but I will go back and read up on their original post.
DMCA take downs can by anyone as you legally own all of the content you create on Roblox, therefore, DMCA does legally protect you. Roblox should comply with your request as long as you are able to show them that you’re the original creator of the stolen content.
I’ve read all of the posts regarding the DMCA/New IP protection policy, but they all seem to address the issue as if we’re the ones doing the infringing on companies/individuals outside of Roblox. Their stance on protecting the IP of Roblox developers is not very clear. It also leaves out grey areas like the impossibility of tracking down every single item that was stolen or taken.
Those posts were written to clarify on DMCA compliance with using third-party work. However, you’ll want to read the Terms of Use and read clause 6 on intellectual property which goes into depth of how to handle copyright infringement.
For more clarification, I would recommend reaching out to Roblox’s dev relations team as there is only so much information I can give to help you out.
It’s not enough to block duplicate asset uploads because someone can easily make minor changes to an asset and upload it again. Additionally, what if someone uploads a free or paid asset that’s already being sold somewhere else? It’s not feasible to allow only one “owner” of the asset when multiple people have permission to use it.
Roblox has over a thousand full-time engineers, and if the solution were simple, someone would have proposed it to product management by now. Stolen assets from games, apps, and websites are difficult to solve since clients already have the assets on their computer, making them easy to steal. These assets have to be sent to the client for rendering the world. At the end of the day, there is not much that can be done to prevent clients from stealing assets.
