If your reworking is substantial enough you could claim copyright over the new skin, but you are dragging in grey areas that obscure the point.UpsideDownBox wrote:That isn't true. The re-skin usually ownly covers the parts which need re-skinning - the wheels, undersides, etc. don't change, so they're still the original skin - that makes it only partially created by me, at most and the model itself is Kuju/RSDL made.Potoroo wrote:As has already been explained, since you created the new skin through your own skill and labour your automatically own its copyright. If all you did was to tweak some minor part of a skin any claim you might make to owning the copyright might be dubious, but if the skin is unambiguously new then the copyright is yours.
You said "anything I reskin, which is uploaded, automatically loses any restraints I wish to have on it." That implies that the mere fact of uploading something you have created places it into the public domain ("loses any restraints"), which is nonsense. Equally nonsensical is your notion that freeware creations must never be distributed if their author wishes to retain control over it. Of course modders will release their mods into the community! That in no way implies they are ceding any control over things like how they are distributed and the law supports them.You are confusing what I said. I did not claim anything relating to freeware effects copyright. What I said was "it'll appear in scenarios and used in ways you didn't wish them to be used". Which is true. It happened with reskins I created for MSTS and it'll happen with RS - I have no problem with it, because it'd be silly to ask all the time "can I use your re-skin in a screenshot to promote my route?" or "can I use your reskin in this scenario?" - if I didn't want people to use it for anything, I would have kept it to myself, cackling about the exclusive reskins I had.The law says otherwise. You are confusing freeware with public domain. Unfortunately, it is a common error, but ill-informed opinions like this only hurt those who want to protect their work.
Furthermore, far from being silly to expect people to ask your permission to use your work in something they've created it is in fact required and commonplace. Some modding communities respect this requirement more than others. The CFS3 modding community, for example, goes to great lengths to contact copyright owners before using something in another mod, and many is the time I've seen posts to the effect that "sorry, we can't use So-and-so's completely brilliant and wildly popular mod in ours because we can't contact him." The SH3/4 modding community is similar. I would expect the RailSim modding community to adopt the same attitude, out of respect for modders if nothing else, but at the end of the day it is the law.
Using your mod in a scenario, assuming no undue restrictions, is generally fine since in the context of a user-modifiable game they have no meaning otherwise. You could in principle release a mod with the restriction that "it is never to be used in a scenario", but the general case is people release mods to be used and in the context of a game like RailSim that means used within scenarios.
A scenario creator can then reference your mod, which the user would have to download separately according to your terms, without problem. However, if someone built your mod into their scenario as a complete package without your permission that would be a clear violation. I reiterate this has nothing to do with whether a mod is freeware or payware.
The public domain debate is relevant to everything that is copyrightable, including things like skins. It has nothing to do with the quality of your creations or whether you charge for them. Creators of payware have no greater claim to copyright of their works than do those of freeware.The public domain debate really comes into play when talking about user-created models, for which, if I were a modeller, would consider charging people for (if I believed they were of a high enough standard), partly due to effort put in, but also to keep hold of the copyright.
. Well, the Hosters have to respect the rights of the Creators. END. There is nothing to discuss. Of course many of us wish to share the content on a wide field, not only of UKTS, becaus many people, especially from foreign countrys, want to download the stuff from a regional website. That can be because they can´t speak english, or they don´t like the download restrictions (Hope i expressed that rigt 
). So to ask the Creators costs nothing. But if he don´t want to see his stuff hosted on a other website, the community has to accept that. Of course I would prefer to see the great stuff not only at UKTS, and I ask Creaters for their permissions, and if they refuse they will have their reasons for that. Also it can be that other Creators don´t want to see their stuff on UKTS. Then this community have to accept hat. That are the rules.
