Disallow Copyright Infringement

In order to prevent copyrighted material from being uploaded, I recommend that certain words such as “McDonald’s” and “Starbucks” be bl.ackli.sted. Furthermore, the Cfxre team should implement a section in the releases template where community members are required to check a box indicating that their release contains no copyrighted material, which will then be reviewed by the moderation team. Failure to do so would constitute a breach of the terms, conditions, and guidelines, which I believe should be severely updated.

While I acknowledge that my conduct on this platform as of late may have been perceived as confrontational, my intention is not to engage in such behavior. Rather, my aversion to individuals who ridicule the community, is rooted in my desire to uphold its dignity and integrity.

I am aware that Cfxre receives a significant financial benefit from the sale of content on the Te.bex sto.re. However, I have noticed that there has been a shift in how both Cfxre and T.ebex handle and accept copyrighted material being uploaded. I believe that this has been happening too easily, possibly due to the limited number of moderators compared to the number of community members.

The warning issued by Teb.ex to all FiveM server and asset creators on March 14th, 2023, regarding the sale of third-party copyrighted content, is too vague and relies too much on the honesty of the individual community member or Te.be.x sto.re OP. This puts too much trust in them to adhere to the terms and conditions.

I believe that both Cfxre and Teb.ex should be stricter in enforcing these warnings and should not allow any copyrighted material on their platforms.

I understand that both platforms have a limited staff and moderation team, so I believe that this should be a team effort between Cfxre, Te.bex, and input from the community.

Two resources that I have personally used are abuse@fivem.net and compliance@teebex.io, removing the second e from the second email address, obviously.

In my opinion, the paid releases need to be thoroughly vetted. Those who do not own the intellectual property rights to the content they are selling should not be allowed to profit from it. Modding should be about originality and creativity, not about copying someone else’s work and profiting from it, nor should you be allowed to reupload the same nonsensical crap every 12 hours with slight hue and saturation changes, claiming it to be “new” and different. You should ideally be updating your original post and not cluttering the releases section, which hinders the possibility of other actually talented members to show off their skill sets.

The report feature on the platforms does not cover anything regarding copyrighted material either; while it does state that a violation of community guidelines is inappropriate, I believe that it is a violation of the terms and conditions.

Some individuals have charged exorbitant prices for simple scripts that can be achieved free of charge and quite frankly, standalone. This has led to frustration in the community, and many people have resorted to uploading the same content for free as a way of protesting against the overpriced releases and to prove that simple natives van be done without relying on some ridiculous framework.

While I understand that some may view me as hostile, combative, or even a menace, I am not alone in expressing frustration with the current state of the modding community.

I believe that the introduction of paid releases and recent world events have led to a decrease in the quality of the releases section, with many unoptimized, pixelated, and or retextured work being prioritized over quality content.

Moving forward, I urge the Cfxre team to tighten up on the rules, guidelines, terms, and conditions, and for Te.b.ex to follow suit. This will help to keep the community focused on hobbies, sharing creations and passion projects, and offering insights, ideas, and suggestions, rather than hiding knowledge behind a p.ay.wal.l and trying to profit from someone else’s work.

I understand that my message may result in negative reactions, but I am not alone in my frustration, and I welcome opinions and views on this topic.

Sincerely,

TayMcKenzieNZ.

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Now while this may come off as combative, As someone who has taken down their copyrighted material to being compliant with CFX/Tebex I think there needs to be more standpoints on the people who get away with it.

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I’d not only like copyright Infringement to be dealt with more accordingly, but also intellectual property rights infringement.

I’m sick to death of people trying to act like a degree they got out of a cereal box, is enough to school me on licensing. I shouldn’t have to escrow encryp my work just to stop some bad hombres from selling my work. This is a community, and as a member of the community, I want to share my passion projects with people, aquire team members, check through pull request, improve on my projects, and everyone can benefit and have fun.

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I’d like to point out that there’s a certain level of hypocrisy in the stance CFX are taking on this, given the origins of the company and community. Let’s not forget that CFX’s very existence relies on Rockstar’s intellectual property.

When FiveM first started, Rockstar had an agreement with CFX to avoid legal issues. The condition was that every FiveM player must own a legitimate copy of the GTA base game, which ensured that Rockstar continued to profit from their IP. However, as time went on, it became clear that this agreement wasn’t enough for Rockstar, particularly after the introduction of cryptocurrencies into the game by Trenches RP late last year.

Following the cease and desist received by Trenches, it’s likely that CFX faced a similar warning from Take Two Interactive. Rather than standing up for their loyal customers and community, CFX chose to crack down on servers using copyrighted material. They most likely soon after discovered that enforcing such restrictions was virtually impossible due to the sheer number of servers and the time-consuming nature of the process.

As a result, CFX resorted to targeting asset developers in an attempt to prevent further copyrighted material from being published on the platform. This approach seems hypocritical when considering that the entire community was built on the foundation of using Rockstar’s intellectual property. Instead of imposing strict measures, perhaps a more balanced approach to addressing copyright concerns would be more appropriate and fair to the community that has supported them for years.

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Agreed, being told your free release that contains copyrighted content must be removed but everyone around you is seemingly allowed to get away it, sounds frustrating.

Too often I see the sole reason people joined FiveM in the first place, is because their existing lives are that mediocre, that they must roleplay as a Toyota dealership owner or a Tesla owning YouTuber, and that if they “had to use lore friendly content, then I’ll leave. It’s the only reason I play FiveM”.

This mentality is outdated, and people need to get with the times. If you have to infringe on copyright to watch a movie in your country or get a game that’s on an older platform, go ahead , I don’t care. Netflix can bug off, I’m not paying for their prices, but if you have to rely on copyrighted material just to enjoy yourself in a FiveM “city”, then clearly your deranged.

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Personally, I dislike the people who take models from other games (Forza, Gran Turismo, etc) and then sell them. While I understand some effort was done to get it into another game, they did not model the item in question so therefore profiting on stolen work.

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Exactly. It’s also like those who rename a GTA 5 prop, retexture it, and sell it. Oh, you photoshopped a shirt to say Popeyes? $60? Seriously dude?

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A simple “report” option directly related to copyright infringement should be available and it should be mandatory to have a commercial license attached if you are selling something copyrighted. And if there is none, we can just report it.
This is at least some sort of “QA” regarding this issue for real world brands.

But this is just the tip of the ice berg with the majority of servers just selling ingame (branded) vehicles and stuff like that that aren’t even mentioned in the release section (obviously). Sadly Tbx itself doesn’t provide a list of all stores nor a simple report option. You would always have to go through their support which often times is really slow from my experience.

One of my main concerns is using things like DMCA requests. Because these can only be made by the actual copyright owner or someone with permission from the copyright owner. And they also may only be made if it actually is copyright infringement. If you (accidentally) accuse someone of theft because it looks like your stuff but it is not, then you are doing something illegal. Of course I understand that this is to prevent false accusations but if someone is actually stealing your stuff and encrypting it, you by yourself have no means of confirming this.
If you simply cannot confirm it (even buying only nets encrypted code most of the time), this makes it impossible to take proper legal action against something like that. And if that user is actually stealing your stuff he will never actually show you the code by just asking.

I had four cases already where people were trying to sell one of my free resources that has a custom license attached which clearly disallows doing that. Three of those cases resulted in their stores being taken down (at least two had even more stuff going on than just my things) but the fourth one could never be confirmed. Contacting CFX only resulted in “we could not find any similarities inside the code” (loose quotation from a moderator message to me) which is fine. But the user took down the resource from the forums immediately after that (which makes me 99% sure that he did copy it) but it is still being sold in his store (and it does look exactly like my stuff).

And there are just so many stores out there that probably don’t even advertise in the release section which makes it impossible to find those copyright infringements of your own things.

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I think you’re misunderstanding the GPL v3 license. GPL stands for free as in freedom, not free of charge. Anyone is entitled to profit from GPL licensed material so long as source is made available on request among other requirements.

I thought GPLv3 stipulates that you must release the source code publicly with the same license no matter what, no?

Not publicly no. If you buy something which is GPL derivative then the source must be made available to you including the original license. This also gives anyone buying the right to derive from it and open source it if they choose.

So this means then that someone could take an open source GPL project from Github, change a few things about it, and then resell it as long as the package for sale includes the derivative code in an accessible format (source editable, unencrypted, unescrowed etc) ALONG with a copy of the original license

If the package for sale including the derivative code was for example escrowed then this would break the license (unless only parts containing non-derivative code are escrowed)

I think I’m following correctly

Not strictly unless they also don’t make the source available upon request.

Interesting, learned something new today. So the key words here are available upon request.

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It also doesn’t help that GTA5Mods seems to not give a shit. I’m surprised Nintendo hasn’t tried to get GTA5Mods shut down, quite frankly.

This is indeed a huge issue. Because you can report say, someone selling Prime Energy Drinks (or should I say ‘Slime’ since the slimy bastard is trying to get through the cracks of legality on the Tbx site?) but since you yourself are not Logan Paul, KSI or their marketing team, you really can’t do anything regarding a DMCA request, but if the site hosting it and profiting off it doesn’t want to get into any trouble, it’s probably in their best interest to remove it.

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Taken verbatim from the license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html:

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for them if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs, and that you know you can do these things.

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I’m a close friend of Tay and have been for a long time. The work he has done on DPEmotes has helped roleplay significantly and almost every server I go into uses it. As for his retexturing of clothing, the quality is absolutely amazing.

As for this copyright stuff, I don’t understand much but I personally am over seeing people re sell the work of others. People release free clothing, animations etc. And people go and resell others hard work. They do something good for the community and then assholes steal it and resell it. Without knowledge of the creator or asking permission from to creator to use and ultimately sell it. I’m sure many creators have left the community because of others stealing and reselling. It is a problem in the FiveM community.

So that’s all from me and my opinion!

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Cleaned up the topic since it severely derailed.

Changes for this are being pushed, and are already being enforced by forum moderation.

Please flag these as “Something else”. This option is actually preferred for most complex flags since it allows moderation to easier ask for details.

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You brought it up yourself, talking about GPL licenses and “profit off of the work that myself and other community members do”.


It literally is, the license stipulates the permissions granted to users.

We keep telling you how this crap works but you insist on breaking the terms of GPL yourself, and even attempting to use AGPL (wtf).


You may not impose any further restrictions on the exercise of the
rights granted or affirmed under this License.

non-permissive additional terms are considered “further
restrictions” within the meaning of section 10. If the Program as you
received it, or any part of it, contains a notice stating that it is
governed by this License along with a term that is a further
restriction, you may remove that term.

And now arguing that “freedom, not free of charge” is the “dumbest shit”; well that’s how it works, as Mojito already pointed out.

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