If I understand you right, you're suggesting that a thief could steal someone's code and post it for sale on Steam, and if the creator didn't bring a suit within three years (longer than Steam has existed), they would be able to continue violating that copyright indefinitely.
Steam has existed for over a decade. The steam workshop is a bit more recent, but AFAIK it's been 3 years by now.
Blugh, I meant Skyrim not Steam. Anyway...
The latter can be defeated in court if there is evidence of such fraudulent appropriation, but then again, if the discovery of that appropriation is not dealt with within 3 years, no legal remedy is possible.
Cool, we're on the same page there. Although this quote from the patentylo page you linked suggests to me that each sale would have its own timer. So even if someone (somehow) managed to sell the creator's code for over three years without any legal action, the creator would only have lost their chance to sue for the oldest infringements:
Copyright infringement has a three-year statute of limitations indicating that “No civil action shall be maintained under the [Act] unless it is commenced within three years after the claim accrued.” 17 U.S.C. §507(b). However, as in patent law, copyright follows a “separate-accrual rule” that sees each successive violation of a copyright as a new infringing act with its own statute of limitations. Thus, under the statute of limitations, MGM could be liable for its post-2006 actions such as copying and distributing the work.
Though I think realistically, Steam would have removed the content long before that point once the theft was noticed, and wouldn't care about the three-year statute of limitations anyway.
So, the two work together like this:
I make a work, and have it up on the interwebs. Somebody steals it, starts selling it, and makes a business out of selling it. I do not know about it, and thus do not shut it down in a timely manner (within 3 years). As a consequence, when I DO find out about it, I cannot seek legal remedy, due to Laches, and Estoppel. He has essentially stolen my right to control distribution and derivative works of my work, and due to my negligence, I am unable to fight it.
Even though this seems like an unlikely situation, I disagree with your conclusion because of the section I quoted above. But even if you're right, that just means that the thief can continue attempting to sell the other person's work (as long as Steam decides to allow it). You said the thief would be able to prevent the original content creator from distributing their own work, which is a different thing.
In regard to something patentable, it is first to file who gets the protection. So while I might be able to get his patent invalided by showing prior art, he is still the one who gets awarded the patent-- not me.
I admit I don't understand patent law, but... Is it even possible to patent specific code? Or art assets? As I understand it, one patents a concept like putting three buttons on a mouse, or possibly an algorithm. Not a texture or model, or a code patch.
Even if this is possible, I don't see any connection between this and the copyright issue. Unless you're saying that, once someone has violated a copyright for three years, they can then proceed to patent the copyrighted material as their own? That would surely be a "successive violation" under the section I quoted, and thus subject to its own three-year statute of limitations. If it's even possible at all...
That there is a risk of losing this protection/control over intellectual property, companies with a vested interest in that IP actively and viciously enforce their rights. That is why a market that allows resale of mods directly without paying the Bethesda Tax (tm), would be immediately and aggressively torpedoed by Bethesda's attack lawyers, lest the site exist for more than 3 years time, and become immune, making Bethesda unable to stop appropriation.
A Skyrim mod doesn't threaten Bethesda's IP whatsoever... If it did, it would do so regardless of whether it's paid or not. But it doesn't, because it's only modifying Bethesda's assets, not copying and claiming them.
Though, I haven't seen the license under which Bethesda offers its assets. If they have a clause which prohibits selling modifications to their assets, without their permission, then selling a mod might be copyright infringement (I don't know if a license agreement can legally demand that). If so, then Bethesda would have three years to sue for each case of infringement.
For a specific use situation where it would come up in the TES mod community specifically-- Let's say I am the creator of SkyUI, or some similar highly utilized tech mod. Other people incorporate my work, and produce derivative works from my work, and I do NOT crack down on them for 3 years after they start using my work without seeking license from me. This removes my power to legally compel them to stop using my work should they decide to then use their protected user status to sublicense their immunity with their own licenses to my work. EG-- While I might switch to a paid model, they can fork my mod as it was when it was incorporated 3 years prior, and continue development of it outside of my control, and there is not a god damned thing I can do about it.
Again, I think each time they distribute their derivative work would be a new violation. They *definitely* don't gain "protected user status to sublicense their immunity", that would clearly be a new violation with its own statute of limitations.
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Topic: Paid Mods -- Round 4: McGregor vs mAAAyweather (Read 100685 times)