GitHub Removes GTA Fan Projects re3 and reVC Following New Take-Two DMCA Notice (torrentfreak.com) 51
After Take-Two Interactive sent a legal letter to Github referencing a copyright infringement lawsuit against the people behind the popular re3 and reVC Grand Theft Auto fan projects, Github has now removed the repositories for a second time. Take-Two has also demanded the removal of many project forks and wants Github to take action under its repeat infringer policy. TorrentFreak reports: Just before the weekend, a new entry in Github's DMCA repository revealed the existence of a letter (PDF) sent to Github from Take-Two's legal team. Dated September 9, 2021 (a week after the copyright lawsuit was filed) it informs Github that legal action is underway and it has come to the company's attention that the contentious content (and numerous 'fork' repositories) continue to be made available on Github's website. "We request that Github take expeditious action to remove or disable access to the materials [in the attached exhibit], together with any other instances of the same materials available within the same primary 'GTAmodding/re3' fork network (e.g. in 'private' or newly-created repositories)," it reads.
In common with the first DMCA notice, Github has responded by taking the project's repositories down. Given that the defendants in the case already stand accused of previously sending 'bad faith' counter-notices, it seems unlikely that they will follow up with another set of similar responses that will soon be under the scrutiny of the court. Take-Two also follows up with a line that is becoming more and more popular in copyright infringement matters, one that references so-called 'repeat infringers.' "Furthermore, it is requested that Github take appropriate measures to prevent further infringement by the parties responsible, including pursuant to any 'repeat infringer' policies maintained by Github."
This means that if any of the contentious content is reposted to Github, Take-Two would like the code repository to implement its own 'repeat infringer' process. It states that "in appropriate circumstances and in its sole discretion, [Github will] disable and terminate the accounts of users who may infringe upon the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of GitHub or others." The letter also provides a laundry list of repository forks that, on the basis they are also infringing, should be removed. While Github appears to have complied in many cases, there are two notable exceptions. After being targeted by earlier DMCA takedowns, Github users 'td512' and 'erorcun' filed DMCA counter-notices to have their repositories restored. The former previously informed TorrentFreak that he believed Take-Two's infringement claims to be incorrect. At the time of writing, both repos are still online.
In common with the first DMCA notice, Github has responded by taking the project's repositories down. Given that the defendants in the case already stand accused of previously sending 'bad faith' counter-notices, it seems unlikely that they will follow up with another set of similar responses that will soon be under the scrutiny of the court. Take-Two also follows up with a line that is becoming more and more popular in copyright infringement matters, one that references so-called 'repeat infringers.' "Furthermore, it is requested that Github take appropriate measures to prevent further infringement by the parties responsible, including pursuant to any 'repeat infringer' policies maintained by Github."
This means that if any of the contentious content is reposted to Github, Take-Two would like the code repository to implement its own 'repeat infringer' process. It states that "in appropriate circumstances and in its sole discretion, [Github will] disable and terminate the accounts of users who may infringe upon the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of GitHub or others." The letter also provides a laundry list of repository forks that, on the basis they are also infringing, should be removed. While Github appears to have complied in many cases, there are two notable exceptions. After being targeted by earlier DMCA takedowns, Github users 'td512' and 'erorcun' filed DMCA counter-notices to have their repositories restored. The former previously informed TorrentFreak that he believed Take-Two's infringement claims to be incorrect. At the time of writing, both repos are still online.
Re: Regulations, regulations, regulations (Score:1)
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Why can't security be FABULOUS?
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A lot of the problem with the process is due to how companies deal with the dmca. It the courts held them liable they wouldn't put the projects at risk if they dispute the claim. As with YouTube if you dispute you are punished. There should be no punishment for disputing a claim.
You may only Take One. (Score:4, Funny)
Take-Two also follows up with a line that is becoming more and more popular in copyright infringement matters, one that references so-called 'repeat infringers.'
Only they are allowed to Take Two.
Derivative Copyright? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Derivative Copyright? (Score:2)
It's akin to the other day when people were discussing Babylon 5 and Deep Space 9. In coding it's often a bit more obvious. If I can disassemble your code and perform minimal rewrites to make a product, that's a derivative. Almost any fork is a derivative.
Should this be allowed is a different question. As I stated forks are derivatives and yet this process is the beauty of open source.
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The obvious difference between this and forks of open source is that in the case of open source the copyright holder has explicitly permitted the creation of derivatives via the license.
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Fair. I was just trying to give examples of the use and also explain why people often are "pro-derivative" work but this position as you outline is often rather anti-copyright.
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They can decompile the code and produce their product off of that as long as those decompiling are not the ones writing or contributing to the code that is written. This is pretty standard. What has to happen is that those that decompile have to describe to the coders how the original works as clearly and as precisely as possible.
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Why would anyone act on made up terms?
You are confusing what is or is not a copyright infringement, and what the DMCA says. Github has no idea whether copyright was infringed on or not. And they don't care. They only care about not being involved in a lawsuit and not be liable for damages.
So what Github does: If they get a DMCA notice that meets all the formalities, they take the repo down. And if they get a counter notice from the repo owner, they put it up again. And by doing that, they 100% avoid being involved in any lawsuit.
There's t
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They are presumably referring to derivative works, which are covered by copyright law.
Question is, does reverse engineering a game and producing a compatible engine that can use the game assets covered by this?
Apparently debug information was left in some versions of GTA3, which helped develop the re-implemented engines. Does having access to that kind of information change things?
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There are legal ways to build a game engine that is compatible with GTA, and ways that violate copyright law. This project decompiled the original game, which is very obviously a copyright violation. Had they done an implementation of the engine based on clean-room reverse engineering (i.e. one person examines the game and writes a specification, another person implements that specific
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They can decompile and do so at will. The ones that view the code can describe to the ones coding the new project, but they cannot participate in writing the code. This is how legal reverse engineering works.
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Made up words? It is clearly defined in copyright law:
A “derivative work” is a work based upon one or more preexisting works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. A work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications, which, as a whole, represent an original wor
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Why would Congress enact laws based on made up terms, like "wire fraud", "conspiracy to", and "money laundering"? Those are the charges you level at someone when you don't have strong enough evidence to prosecute them for real crimes. But remember, prosecution is all about "winning the game", not actually achieving justice or fairness. The entire judicial system, and its players, are inherently starting on shaking ground, what would you expect?
Silkroad of Github (Score:2)
Just thinking out loud... but is there like a silk road version of git hub or a git hub on the dark web where people could development projects such as this....?
Re: Silkroad of Github (Score:2)
You could try gitee. Being a Chinese version they might give zero fucks about this kind of stuff.
Re:Silkroad of Github (Score:4, Informative)
You can host it on any server [git-scm.com]. It's fairly straightforward, and runs over SSH. You don't need the 'cloud.'
Tick Tock.... (Score:2)
With all these legal matters, no wonder GTA6, GTA7, and GTA8 are so late!
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Why bother when you still find idiots to pay for your old stuff? You'd only cannibalize your own product.
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Because there are a significant number of people who aren't paying for the old stuff and are instead waiting for the new stuff?
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Apparently they are not numerous enough yet to warrant making a new product.
Take a leaf from ID... (Score:4, Insightful)
ID software generally release their game source code after a few years, you still need to buy the game data but it allows the games to be ported to new platforms, and to be updated to take advantage of new hardware features etc.
Other companies should really do the same, there's no commercial market for old game code (which may not even run on current platforms any more) but it opens up a few extra potential customers for the game data.
There are a lot of older games that are simply unplayable outside of emulation these days. Dos and win3x/9x games often fail to run on current windows systems - especially 64bit or ARM based systems. Older mac games are even worse - they could be m68k, ppc, os9, x86-32 etc and not run at all on current models.
Old games are a great way to pass the time, and native versions would run at a playable speed on even the cheapest lowend hardware these days and don't take up a huge amount of disk space, while the overhead of emulation could still render them unplayable.
Re: Take a leaf from ID... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that Id software releases new games. Take two is basking in the glorious money shower of mmo and doesn't want any single player game to quench the carefully cultivated thirst of its gaming audience.
Re: Take a leaf from ID... (Score:2)
Even back in the day many MMOs released the source code. You paid for the large server population and the events. Most people don't enjoy playing an MMO on a severe with 50 population but hey, I had some good times.
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In GTA online, playing with fewer griefers would actually improve the experience...
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Same is true of most MMOs at least more in common terms. I remember games where people who kite nasty mobs into markets or across travel routes simply to lead to fucking nasty fights for random folk. I think the biggest difference is many MMOs make griefing too easy now days.
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Id just re-released Quake for modern systems.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]
Back when Id was releasing source code they probably figured that there wouldn't be much commercial value to it decades later. In fact you can now buy 40+ year old games, so companies consider them a source of revenue and will defend the copyright. We have seen Nintendo do this recently with ROM sites.
Rockstar has in also announced re-releases of GTA3 and the other games in the series. They likely see these efforts to re-implement
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I paid for premium money for Quake Champions before it went free for all. I think I have paid my dues to Id.
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Old games are trivially easy to pirate anyway, if they had copy protection to start with it will have long since been cracked by now. Many people wanting to play old games are forced to play cracked versions because the original copy protection is incompatible with todays hardware - for instance the "cd checks" when most modern hardware doesn't even have a cdrom reader and even if you attach a USB one the game might not recognise it.
Old games often have difficulty running on modern platforms, re-releasing i
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Why would these guys release the source code to these old games (which people could then use with used copies of the games or more likely pirated copies) when they are about to release new remastered versions of these very games.
If people can play these games on modern hardware (consoles included) using either second hand or pirated copies of the game data (neither of which makes the developer or publisher any money) then why would they want to pay whatever price the new remastered versions will cost?
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Except that ID released the source code years before any remaster stuff was even thought about.
Releasing source code that would enable running copies of the games on modern systems in a way that doesn't make the publishers any money at the same time as they release new versions come out that cost money makes no sense.
Re: Take a leaf from ID... (Score:1)
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The new versions can sometimes have updated graphics and sound, which weren't present in the original. The original serves as a low quality advertisement for the "better" version.
Often games are re-released even with the original graphics etc, look at all the dosbox bundles offered by GoG etc.
Having the source open and letting someone else port the game to newer systems makes it easier to release an updated version since you can just bundle a build of the updated source with a copy of the data. The game dat
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If they are going to use pirated copies of the game data, there's nothing to stop them using pirated copies of the remastered game either.
Re-released games tend to be fairly cheap and are easily available, there is little incentive to go hunting around for a second hand copy of the original game (plus any expansion packs it might have had), and then running the risk that the original media will have degraded, as well as having to get hold of old media readers (eg floppy drive, cdrom reader etc) that modern
Re: Take a leaf from ID... (Score:2)
I misunderstood. .. (Score:2)
two things (Score:2)
The main problem is that works with negligible marginal value are getting artificially inflated in price, and we need an overhaul of intellectual property in general.
A more pressing concern though is that thanks to the copyright lobby and the industry behind them, the laws we have on the books aren't even being properly followed and are manifestly unfair as they stand.
The whole point established by the founding fathers was for a limited term of protection to incentivize the creation of works that were i
Dispute the DMCA (Score:2)
Filing a response means github must put it back or they are liable. If the dmca filer objects then they must sue for a remedy.