There is no way to avoid it.... only if community will be reporting those items.

Shame that it's happening already. sigh

i'm trying to encourage original authors to submit their own works to the workshop raising awareness of the new possibilities, active thieves discourages that.

I don't see the issue with converting and uploading original quake 3 maps + maps from other quake engine games provided they're not trying to pass the maps off as their own and give full credit to the map authors.

id Software actually has a policy against that.... or had

They've shutdown Generations Q2 in 1999 for exactly that reason. - and that's besides the point of this thread (which was about people violating the rights of authors of original community works from years past).

This doesn't make it right, but noone is making money off of this so I'm not so concerned with a youtube like workshop where it's a ffa copy fest. Eventually you're going to know who are the best mappers and subscribe to the quality material

"no one is making money" is not an excuse.

Look the game is old and finally they decided we can have custom maps on Quake Live.
Which should have been done from the very beginning of QL.
Now what we really need is Tutorial on the map editor and links to get recent versions.
I have to search hard on google to find anything about quake mapping.
Most of the links and downloads are not even available anymore.
We need more resources for mappers, if you wanna continue the games life.
Custom maps make the game way better imo.

You're not searching hard enough. GTKRadiant tutorials and q3map2 resources are still plenty about. You could even use QuArK to map if you wanted. ..::LvL is still around going 16 years strong with new content monthly.


...not like that will matter anymore while people still continue to post old crap , spamming the workshop and burying new original creations actually made for this game from creative people.

How hard someone searches is irrelevant to knowing what to search for. When someone wants to look up tutorials for Quake 3 mapping, they'll search "Quake 3 Mapping Tutorials" and "Quake 3 Mapping Tools". "GTKRadiant" or "Quark" isn't something that someone would think of searching unless they already knew about them.

Google tends to bring up a lot of junk and useless results when you aren't very specific, and many a newcomer would get lost.

Not really.

Originally posted by SM Striker:

How hard someone searches is irrelevant to knowing what to search for. When someone wants to look up tutorials for Quake 3 mapping, they'll search "Quake 3 Mapping Tutorials" and "Quake 3 Mapping Tools". "GTKRadiant" or "Quark" isn't something that someone would think of searching unless they already knew about them.

Google tends to bring up a lot of junk and useless results when you aren't very specific, and many a newcomer would get lost.

This is totally true. I map for UT99 still and the editor is very simple in the system folder. Easy to find, easy to learn. Quake mapping especially for Live is pretty complicated. And yes for new people who don't know about it pretty difficult to get into.

Since Generations was mentioned, I would like to chime in. I am the project leader at Wirehead Studios and programmer for the Generations Arena mod for Quake 3. I've already had to ask one person to remove a model from here that was used without our permission. Not that I like to do that, but a lot of people don't understand how copyright and intellectual property laws work. I'll try to help explain a bit so people don't go making a mistake that could get a major studio ticked off at them. Some of them sue first and ask questions later, and often times it's an innocent assumption that gets someone in trouble. Well, here goes.

First off, a little history. Generations for Q2 was shut down voluntarily when our producer, Lee Montgomery, discovered that the mod violated pretty much every copyright law in the book. Id might have given the project a pass, but Activision, the publisher, also had rights to some of the work, as did Apogee. There were multiple parties in question, and it simply could not be done legally in any way. The project was, pardon the pun, doomed from the beginning.

Generations Arena is legal because we talked with Todd H. at Id to verify beforehand that we could do the project without crossing any lines. Once those details were ironed out and we had their express permission on what we could and could not do, we went ahead with it. If we did not seek permission and coordinate with Id we could have been shut down the way Reborn or Generations Q2 was.

Now, as to copyright. Copyright means the creator of content owns rights to it and has control over who may copy it and for what reason outside of what is known as "fair use". Founder stated above he doesn't think there should be a problem with posting a map as long as credit is given. That is asking for trouble. Unless the map author explicitly states you can do this in a readme file you MUST ask their permission. If not, they have the right to tell you to remove it and/or file a DMCA complaint with Valve. Legally speaking, a copyright holder is actually REQUIRED to defend their copyright, or else they risk forfeiture of it. This is why I had to ask an individual to remove our railgun model from the workshop. It's not that I want to be a jerk to modders, but if I don't have it removed when used without permission it can be considered abandonment. I can't allow that to happen to my own project at this time, so understand that if a content author asks you to take something down it's not necessarily a case of hostility, but of requirement.

Now what is fair use? Fair use means copying a CD onto a backup so your original doesn't get toasted, ripping a CD to MP3's to use on your portable player, making mix albums, etc - all for your personal use. You're allowed to do that. You're also allowed to tinker with other people's stuff like maps and models to see how they work on your own machine - again, for your personal use. For example, I have NO problems whatsoever with someone loading up a model from Generations into an editor to see how texture maps, tags, md3 objects, animations, and meshes work. They can even modify the model or texture to work in another game - for their own personal use. Someone can use Mastaba's map converter to make a Q2 map work in Quake 3. All of that is fair use and is 100% OK. The problem arises when someone goes the next step and distributes any of that to someone else. That's stepping over the line and going from fair use to copyright infringement.

The short version is this: When in doubt, DON'T. ASK FIRST. If a content author gives you permission then do so with their blessing and be sure to mention it so as to avoid confusion. If not, respect their hard work and talent and let it go. It's not enough to just do it and give credit and hope it's OK. It's not. That's a trap a lot of people fall into and it's resulted in a lot of hard work getting lost.

Anyway, I hope this helps clarify some stuff. We've been modding at Wirehead for... well, I have since Wolfenstein 3D, so we know our way around this stuff. I'm always willing to answer questions about copyright, fair use, etc, and offer general modding tips, and though I won't do your work for you I will do what I can to help steer a prospective modder in the right direction and avoid the pitfalls of copyright. I'm subscribing to this discussion, so please, if anyone needs help clarifying anything, don't hesitate to ask me.

A lot of those maps have readme.txt files with permissions in them. Most of the popular ones say basically "This file is allowed to be electronically redistributed so long as this file remains entact and credit is given"

A lot of the people that made the old maps are no longer active in the scene at all. You'd never be able to locate them. If they included that statement in the readme AND you properly give them all credit - I just don't see a problem - It can only do good for the game and the community and if anything - help prolong the author's original creation and let more people see it.

If there were no permissions included or if they specifically said not to redistribute it - that would be another story.

The only issue I could see with that is the "file remains intact" part. If alteration of a file is required to get it to work with Quake Live that could be a snag, however if the map author is unreachable then technically speaking the copyright could be considered abandoned.

Also :

https://steamhost.cn/subscriber_agreement/

You represent and warrant to us that you have sufficient rights in all User Generated Content to grant Valve and other affected parties the licenses described under A. and B. above or in any license terms specific to the applicable Workshop-Enabled App or Workshop page. This includes, without limitation, any kind of intellectual property rights or other proprietary or personal rights affected by or included in the User Generated Content. In particular, with respect to Workshop Contributions, you represent and warrant that the Workshop Contribution was originally created by you (or, with respect to a Workshop Contribution to which others contributed besides you, by you and the other contributors, and in such case that you have the right to submit such Workshop Contribution on behalf of those other contributors).