[feedquote='Discovery RP Feed','http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=123841']As the next patch, which will bring major changes to how development is done on Discovery is getting closer every day, I believe it's time to refresh everyone's memory on an important matter: Copyrights

Let's take a look at this summary from Wikipedia, especially the two underlined sentences:

Quote:Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country, that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights to its use and distribution, usually for a limited time, with the intention of enabling the creator (e.g. the photographer of a photograph or the author of a book) to receive compensation for their intellectual effort.

Copyright is a form of intellectual property, applicable to any expressed representation of a creative work. It is often shared among multiple authors, each of whom holds a set of rights to use or license the work, and who are commonly referred to as rightsholders. These rights frequently include reproduction, control over derivative works, distribution, public performance, and "moral rights" such as attribution.

Let's put this in extremely simple terms: What you make belongs to you and cannot be used without your consent.

Does this mean you can do something inspired by that work? Yes, creativity itself is a mix of inspirations.

Does this mean you can make a replica of something that exist and claim it as your own? No. Neither if it's "kinda like it but with fluffy wings lol"

Let's be clear, modders are not exempt from copyright laws and submitting content to the Development Team that's either directly stolen from a commercial game or an """inspired""" work (that actually just looks like the damn thing but in a worse version) is NOT a good thing at all. We cannot spend our time checking if what you submit is copyrighted or not, you should be bright enough to figure out yourself that it will put the mod as a whole in potential danger.

This is what two former developers gave us as a christmas gift, a ModDB suspension for Copyright claim. Thankfully we've been able to solve the issue with the ModDB Staff but I will be honest with you, there was no words to describe how angry I was at these two.

Because of that, we will have to delay the update a little bit in order to run a complete check for items that fall under Copyright Infringement. There is already a Commodity Icon and a Ship that will be replaced.

Meanwhile, we're looking for a few talented modelers that wouldn't be afraid to remodel some ships. If you're interested, let us know.

(Swallow you're not going to escape this one).[/feedquote]