I thought I’d seen it before and then looking on the Unity Asset Store confirmed my suspicions. It was the same exact art as the Cartoon Town and Farm Pack by Manufactura K4
Turbosquid guy is selling this pack for $198 bucks while Manufactura K4 sells it on the Unity Asset Store for $55 bucks. So I know you can use the art as your own in your own game, but I am thinking you cannot resell it for profit. The real question in my mind is, what about the people who bought “stolen” artwork from Turbosquid…are they culpable and just as liable?
PS - I did contact the Manufactura K4 guys on Facebook and they did it appears to be a copy of their work.
No one here on the Unity forums is going to buy stolen assets that are listed at 3x times the price point as the Unity Asset Store, so I don’t see this as an advertisement at all. This is just exposing a thing that’s obviously happening. Hopefully other Unity Asset Store devs take a look around the web and see if their assets are being sold elsewhere.
PS- I’ve already let the developers know about this directly. If anything this will put eyeballs on the legitimate Asset Store seller’s stuff, thus actually promoting a Unity sellers stuff. I’m not affiliated, I just know they do quality work and recognize it when I see it.
That’s pretty much what the license you get with the asset says.
In my home jurisdiction of Australia is an offense to ‘knowingly import, possess, sell, distribute or commercially deal with an infringing copy’. The penalty is up to half a million for companies (100K for individuals) and can carry up to five years prison term.
So yeah, just paying for an asset doesn’t put you in the clear if the person you paid doesn’t have the rights to distribute the asset.
The link will potentially make them more visible in searches, though. I’ve no idea if that’s significant with TurboSquid stuff (ie: I don’t know if Google et. al. would index products individually), but it’s worth knowing that’s how those things work in general - more links to something = generally higher search rankings.
@angrypenguin Ah okay I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve stripped out the hyperlink and it’s simply text at this point. @Ryiah - What’s up with the Shutter Stock thing, they sell game assets over there?
Seems to me if you paid for the asset from a storefront you could get out of severe legal trouble. Like buying a stolen car or any other stolen goods you have to know it was stolen. If you can provide a bill of sale or reciept you should be able to show that you thought things were legal and paid for something. It would be the fault of the seller if you were able to show you had reason to believe you were buying a legal item. I’ve seen this happen with dirtbikes from time to time and altough not identical the basic idea applies. I go buy a used bike from a guy with no title which is common. I get a bill of sale with his drivers license info and serial numbers from the bike signed by both of us. When the cops show up and confiscate my motorcycle they dont take me to jail because I show that I legally paid for it and did not know it was stolen. They go visit the guy who sold it. I don’t get my bike back, I dont get my money back, I loose but I dont go to jail for it. I’m told my only course of action is to sue the seller which is completely pointless since he is about to be broke and in jail. I’m sure they could make you quit using the ill gotten asset but I dont think they would go much further. It might turn into a big ugly bunch of lawyer fees but a good lawyer should be able to prevent a half million dollar fine and jail time. Im obviously not a lawyer but this seems right.
You cannot “return” digital goods like this, they can’t be “recovered” by police and sent back to the original owner. Your example makes sense for a recoverable physical item, but with digital goods once it’s released it’s permanently released. With that said there has to be a different policy for digital goods like software.
Agreed. I was thinking more like you must remove any illgotten assets from your released software. You can no longer profit from it. I would imagine there is some kind of protection for the buyer of said stolen goods if he did not know it was stolen. Surely you could avoid jailtime. The way Kiwasi phrased it someone would have to prove you knowingly did wrong which leads me to believe there is some leniency for people in that situation. That is the only way I see a fair system working. I know things aren’t really fair but people generally try to an extent and that seems like a commonly occurring case that would have found fair solutions by now. As for the real goods I know a stolen motorcycle you paid for will be confiscated and you are in no further legal trouble. You can not get your money back and that is your penalty I guess. I have seen this first hand.
Of course you can’t be culpable as a customer for buying a product that you don’t know is stolen. Criminals depend on that but to suggest every time you go out to the store to buy something you start an investigation into everything you are buying actually is a futile effort. Such futility investigation whether animals used in animal products I buy at the store were treated humanely is why I just threw my hands up & said I’ll go vegetarian. I am not in a position to investigate all those businesses and the governments tasked with regulating those businesses.
The failure and liability there is at the company listing the stolen product and law enforcement not finding those stolen goods but then why would they if the creator of the product failed to report that the product was stolen and being resold. Even if the customer has a pretty good ideal that the product on offer might not be legitimately on offer when it is being sold by such a business; who’s expertise and knowledge of the listed product should the customer trust - their own almost total ignorance of who the business or person that submitted the product for listing or a public business that is supposed to vet and QC the products when listed? So now the customer is being asked to be interview who at TurboSquid? And elsewhere?
Trying to pin such shenanigans on the end customer is folly. Ain’t no way I’m going to start a new investigation when I buy a new product in the asset store or at some modeling place to see if the model might of been stolen IP. That’s the job of the model owner as I found even with failed games there are all sort of bogus ‘pirate peer sharing’ networks that propagate websites full of bogus stolen content fast and their only attraction is they are ‘illegal’. Pure silliness. Ain’t no way I’m going to spend my time as a private citizen investigating the entire internet every time I buy an asset or model when I am paying and the product author is profiting. Let the product IP owner protect their earning themselves I as a customer going to a legal operating business am not the guilty one.
I don’t report dozens upon dozens of stolen IP on youtube regarding music either nor do I report the onslaught of t-shirts using famous IP like Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the Peanuts or Calvin & Hobbes despite the fact that I have serious doubts whether those doing the selling actually licensed the IP to sell that merchandise. Facebook is overrun with such merchandise.
It’s asking too much for me to spend all that time as one that doesn’t own that IP and is not tasked as a law enforcement officer for that particular crime to investigate all those possibilities. The IP holder should always know though so they are ideal to do that job, as they should.
It is worth remembering that there’s a big difference between stealing a physical object and copyright infringement.
A digital object can be copied infinite number of times, and because of that you can’t really “steal” it, only to use it without permission. Rather than stealing a car, the closest example is actually a patent infrigement.
So a matter of “returning” an unknowingly pirated asset would be wiping it from your hdd after requesting a refund from the store. Even easier if the store maintains a digital library.
Also, my thought after reading this reply:
Was “How do you know that this is not the same person?”. Turbosquid license appears to be more permissive than unity license, so selling alternative version there at a higher price would make sense, especially if it is in *.max/maya format (meaning with modifiers and all).
Based on following replies it turned out the assets were actually pirated, though.
For the legal liability you’re probably right. Unfortunately it isn’t the whole story.
Lets imagine that I went to an arbitrary online store, purchased a model in good faith genuinely believing it was an original creation that the vendor had legitimate rights to sell, and put it in my game. But whoops, it turns out that the model is of Pikachu… and it was ripped directly from a Pokemon game!
In that case I’m not too concerned about the IP’s real owners throwing mountains of lawbooks at me. Even if they can, it’s going to be a heck of a lot of effort for comparatively little gain, and it’s not exactly a good look for them. However, I do expect a Cease and Desist letter (and if I refused to do as it asked then I’d expect them to follow through with something more meaty). And while that might not mean that I’m in direct legal trouble it does make me practically liable for any costs arising from that, like getting the model replaced and the game updated on short notice. For digital distro this might not be a big deal, but for anyone who’s got physical sales… ick!
As for the lengths I’ll go through to check things, it really depends on the project. Hobby stuff I just try to stick to reputable stores, because the risk is pretty low. For more important stuff I try to stick to vendors who have a reputation to uphold (great advice someone else gave in another thread on the weekend) and a demonstrated history of creating their own stuff. Also, getting lots of eyes on a project before commercial release helps increase chances of someone noticing if something dodgy did slip through.
I publish on asset store and on some other sites, including turbosquid. For me as publisher, best protection against someone stealing my 3D model is to be omnipresent.
But if i put myself in buyer position, i would probably prefer to buy from the asset store. Simply cause all assets here are going thru rigorous checks before they are being published. I would be happy if all sites had this. It would eliminate thiefs and those who publish unusable junk.
