Photographer sues capcom for 12 million dollars for using her photo in their games

[JZStudios]

10 hours ago, poochyena said:

no, its more like buying a cake recipe book, baking the cakes from that book, selling those cakes, and then getting sued for stealing cakes.

If they used those photos in the game, that could maybe be an issue, but most of these seem to just use the object in the photos as reference for their own work. What she owns the copyright to is the photos, not the objects in the photos.

I'm just going back through this thread, and this argument is beyond awful. It's mind bogglingly bad.

 

Your example is like buying a tutorial book and then saying they'll sue you for using the techniques taught in the book. You're making your own cake from scratch. Why did you even think this was a good argument?

This case is exactly like stealing a cake from a bakery, then reselling it to someone else. No shit the bakery wants it's money.

[Bombastinator]

12 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Which is clearly not what they did.

 

So you're saying it's perfectly fine to steal photos? Wow, good take. Photographers everywhere jump at the opportunity to not make any income from their source of... well not income apparently.

100% false. They can't "make the photos" using raytracing, and even if they could, that's not what happened. They aren't making the images from scratch, or just miraculously taking pictures of the same obscure and inaccessible subjects with EXACTLY the same lighting and angle, they're using her textures. What the hell is so hard to understand?

It really seems like you fundamentally don't understand anything about 3D modeling, rendering, or texturing, yet are intent on providing your incorrect opinion.

Really, the only damning evidence here is every instance shown in the source.

 

It doesn't matter if they're "non-essential" in your eyes, they still took her work without her permission and used it in a product they made money off of. That's illegal. What kind of monkey brained tomfoolery is this?

Still a long time.  One of the hard ones with stuff like this is the alleged crime happened at or before the time of game release, which was a period when different laws were in force.  I recall this being an issue with music sampling copywrite back then. The book was apparently literally a book of textures who’s only possible purpose is the one it was put to. Without some sort of effective license quitclaim, Such a thing would be radioactive today.  It wouldn’t be used.  So why was it? And who is responsible for that breakdown and was it capcom?

[JZStudios]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Still a long time.  One of the hard ones with stuff like this is the alleged crime happened at or before the time of game release, which was a period when different laws were in force.  I recall this being an issue with music sampling copywrite back then. The book was apparently literally a book of textures who’s only possible purpose is the one it was put to. Without some sort of effective license quitclaim, Such a thing would be radioactive today.  

As mentioned before, these texture pack CDs were common. They're like the old PS1/PS2 demo discs. You may pay for the demo disc, but that doesn't mean you can start redistributing Spyro. They're supposed to trial the textures (Which they can use, "Ready to use" with an "Easy index" and "Offer 1200 images") in non-commercial work. If they want commercial licenses, big fucking surprise to everyone here, you need to get the commercial license from the copyright owner. It's always worked this way.

 

Again, I can't overstate enough how baffled I am by the fact that this simple concept is seemingly so hard to grasp.

[Brooksie359]

15 hours ago, TetraSky said:

From the amazon page, the full back cover description : 

If that's all the description says, then I would be under the impression I didn't need to contact them to use these files in my projects and that whatever I paid for the book/disc would cover the licensing cost.

It literally says it OFFERS files that are "ready to be used in your *stuff*". So unless it says somewhere on the physical product "contact *blank* for commercial licensing" or something similar, then I would take this as a shameless money grab from the photographer.

Yes, it's very likely to be their work from all the evidences found (from the filenames that were leaked by hackers being the same, to the textures and all). But sorry, you sold your photos.

 

If anything, that description further exemplify that these pictures can be used if you buy it (and looking at the reviews on Amazon, I somehow very much doubt they are also paying licensing fees).

 

Is it just something that is "par for the course" and is such common sense that everybody should know without them mentioning it anywhere ? They sold their pictures in a bundle, but whoever buys them is still expected to contact the photographer to give extra money if they want to use said pictures in anything, even if it's not actually explicitly mentioned ? What kind of business model is that.

They could easily get sued for false advertising if that is the case. Their description is definitely misleading if you actually have to pay an additional license for commercial use and they never stated it. I mean the advertisement clearly indicates that what Capcom did was ok and the intended use of the product. I think if they don't have anything saying about not for commercial use or you need to pay an extra license for commercial use they will lose the court case. 

[Bombastinator]

16 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

They could easily get sued for false advertising if that is the case. Their description is definitely misleading if you actually have to pay an additional license for commercial use and they never stated it. I mean the advertisement clearly indicates that what Capcom did was ok and the intended use of the product. I think if they don't have anything saying about not for commercial use or you need to pay an extra license for commercial use they will lose the court case. 

Should and will are different things.  I suspect this is going to attempt to leverage music copywrite stuff and treat this as a case of music sampling.  That whole thing is really messed up.  There was a famous rapper of the period who did some CDs actually designed to be sampled from in the hopes that they would be so he could sue the other artist. There was this big thing at purple rain studios in minneapolis to create a copywrite safe sampling collection.  They would hire musicians to play for them just so they would have stuff they could sample.  

 

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, JZStudios said:

 

100% false. They can't "make the photos" using raytracing, and even if they could, that's not what happened. They aren't making the images from scratch, or just miraculously taking pictures of the same obscure and inaccessible subjects with EXACTLY the same lighting and angle, they're using her textures. What the hell is so hard to understand?

 

What is your problem. You're reading something that is not there.

 

I said. THEY HAD THE OPTION TO MAKE THEIR OWN. That has to be something proved that they did not. For all we know Capcom licensed the same assets from someone else on a different compilation disc that instead did the first infringement.  What part of this are you not willing to understand?

 

That is the entire problem here. Did Capcom commit the infringement, did the artist, or was there someone else who did? Because, again, these kinds of rubbish discs were very common shovelware by themselves.

 

In fact I can even point to one example of these discs, which was a collection of amiga MOD files, and Midi tracks some of them being copyrighted songs, or transformed songs into mod tracks and lower sampling rates. The author of that disc, simply downloaded some BBS's collection, complete with the file structure that lists the metadata of the files. Clipart, icons and sound effects discs were a thing.

 

Would additional discovery reveal that they had the entire cd-rom's assets somewhere, or was this a handful of textures dumped inside some capcom asset library years before the game was made?

 

As I said, again, a brick or cobblestone texture is not unique. If that game used dozens of textures from that cd-rom and no other source, then there is a much bigger problem. I have not looked at the capcom hack, and I'm sure there are legal problems with her doing so, as the only indication of wrong-doing came from the hack.

 

Now, it is entirely possible that she could enlist someone who could reverse engineer the GC RE4 game or one of the later ports to prove those textures are actually in the game itself, unaltered. 

 

Without knowing that inside information from the hack, the only thing she has to go on is the RE4 logo, and even then that likely would not have happened without the hack either.

 

She clearly isn't being damaged by the RE4 game existing, so what I'm predicting here is that Capcom settles without admitting wrongdoing, they purchase a license for the intangible image usage in the RE4 logo, and Capcom goes and audits the source of all their textures in their texture library and purges everything that they can't find the license for. Any future ports of RE4 end up with a different logo and some new high-rez re-created textures.

 

Capcom could also just license everything based on how many copies of RE4 exist, and if the lawsuit proceeds rather than settling, it's likely they will find those textures in more capcom games.

[Avocado Diaboli]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

For all we know Capcom licensed the same assets from someone else on a different compilation disc that instead did the first infringement

Even if that were the case, Capcom is still liable and the original author still entitled to royalties, so that doesn't really change anything about how this copyright case works.

 

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

She clearly isn't being damaged by the RE4 game existing

Yes she is, her work got used without her permission and without the compensation that she would have gotten if it were properly licensed. And given that Resident Evil 4 is a pretty high profile game with many copies sold on numerous platforms, she could've stood to make considerable money by licensing these images to Capcom with that knowledge.

 

It's interesting and quite telling how you've pivoted so hard from "Capcom didn't use her exact images" to "Regardless if they did use her images or not, it's not that bad", because I assume you have some kind of motivation to defend Capcom as much as you do here. What exactly is your problem here?

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

As mentioned before, these texture pack CDs were common. They're like the old PS1/PS2 demo discs. You may pay for the demo disc, but that doesn't mean you can start redistributing Spyro. They're supposed to trial the textures (Which they can use, "Ready to use" with an "Easy index" and "Offer 1200 images") in non-commercial work. If they want commercial licenses, big fucking surprise to everyone here, you need to get the commercial license from the copyright owner. It's always worked this way.

 

Again, I can't overstate enough how baffled I am by the fact that this simple concept is seemingly so hard to grasp.

That I don’t think is the issue.  That seems to actually be part of the issue in the first place.  It seems bizarrely improbable that cap on would knowingly place itself in this situation. That the thing is going to court and has not been settled implies cap on thinks there is something hinky and is challenging it.  This sort of stuff is usually settled. The issue seems to be why now, How could these things have gone from unsafe to use to being viewed as safe-to-use?  Either they were safe to use in the first place, or there was some sort of massive screw up.  12million also seems excessively large.  There’s a bunch of limitations on actionable copywrite.  1 is the substantial change limit, another is lampoon (which I don’t think applies here)  there’s also limitations involving 10% of an image or limitation of use.  It could also be that while the plaintiff WANTS to sue cap on because they at least in theory have 12 million (I get the impression that capcom is on the rocks a bit) the party they may actually need to sue is a long defunct holding company or something.  That may actually be the basis for the case.  Capcom consolidated something and is now liable for the debts of some company that could have this hung on it. 
 

Copywrite infringement of this nature is generally not the sort of mistake a company makes for obvious reasons.  There are generally multiple measures in place to prevent such things.  Therefore something weird has happened.

[wanderingfool2]

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is the problem, the photographer doesn't own the subject of the photos, only the digital photos themselves.

They might not own the subject of the photo, but utilizing the photo to create things such as textures is still a breach of copyright.

 

4 hours ago, Kisai said:

Basically, as mentioned in the filing inself, they are using the hacker information as proof that they used the CD-rom "low resolution" files and not the licensed high resolution ones, which would have been irrelevant for 2005 (when Resident Evil 4 was released)  since high resolution images aren't ever used as textures on gamecube/ps2 hardware. Perhaps Capcom modelers used them as placeholders, or used them with assumptions that is what they were for.

 

Really the only "damning" evidence at all here is the logo. Even though it's transformative, it's difficult to create that image by coincidence.

 

Bricks, Stones and glass, can be coincidences simply because a lot of these things aren't unique to begin with. The trim around the doors and mirror, not a coincidence.

You mention the filing, but it's like you didn't look at the exhibit portion of the filing (or the article).  It is quite clear form the game textures that they match up either 1-1 or simple manipulation of the image.  Admittedly there are likely a few that were manipulated heavily enough that they likely don't constitute as distributing copyright infringement anymore; but the vast majority do bear enough resemblance to the original (like in the brickwork, it is clearly sampled from her brickwork picture).

 

One doesn't have claim to bricks, stones and glass...but if you take a picture and it clearly is your picture used in a game asset, then they should be required to have a license for it.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Even if that were the case, Capcom is still liable and the original author still entitled to royalties, so that doesn't really change anything about how this copyright case works.

 

Yes she is, her work got used without her permission and without the compensation that she would have gotten if it were properly licensed. And given that Resident Evil 4 is a pretty high profile game with many copies sold on numerous platforms, she could've stood to make considerable money by licensing these images to Capcom with that knowledge.

 

It's interesting and quite telling how you've pivoted so hard from "Capcom didn't use her exact images" to "Regardless if they did use her images or not, it's not that bad", because I assume you have some kind of motivation to defend Capcom as much as you do here. What exactly is your problem here?

Re: even if that were the case…

Possibly. Not sure how the law works on that one.  Should it be that way? Perhaps not.  Is it? I don’t know. There’s probably more than one totally dead unsuable company involved in this.  Suing a particular company because it has the money rather than them actually being at fault is a pretty shady act.  There is a reason this one isn’t being settled though, and I do not know what it is. 
 

re: Yes she is…

”was” not is.  Resident evil4 is already old news and has been for a long time.  Yet I his is being brought up now.  Kinda weird..  also the money is crazy.  12 million? 
 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

9 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

They might not own the subject of the photo, but utilizing the photo to create things such as textures is still a breach of copyright.

 

You mention the filing, but it's like you didn't look at the exhibit portion of the filing (or the article).  It is quite clear form the game textures that they match up either 1-1 or simple manipulation of the image.  Admittedly there are likely a few that were manipulated heavily enough that they likely don't constitute as distributing copyright infringement anymore; but the vast majority do bear enough resemblance to the original (like in the brickwork, it is clearly sampled from her brickwork picture).

 

One doesn't have claim to bricks, stones and glass...but if you take a picture and it clearly is your picture used in a game asset, then they should be required to have a license for it.

Re: they might not own..  

depends.  There are limitations involved in fair use.  Degree of alteration is one. 
 

Being recognizable is not the standard of measurement iirc. There is a reason this one is going to court rather than being settled.  I do not know what that reason is. I suspect it is not in the provided information at all.

[wanderingfool2]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

 There’s a bunch of limitations on actionable copywrite.  1 is the substantial change limit, another is lampoon (which I don’t think applies here)  there’s also limitations involving 10% of an image or limitation of use

That's just wrong.  It doesn't matter if they used 5% of the image, it can still be pursued as a copyright action.

 

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

12million also seems excessively large.

You ask for the larger amount because it gives you more wiggle room.  You aren't necessarily expecting the 12 million, but you are setting the number high as it can work out better that way.

 

  

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Re: they might not own..  

depends.  There are limitations involved in fair use.  Degree of alteration is one. 
 

Being recognizable is not the standard of measurement iirc. There is a reason this one is going to court rather than being settled.  I do not know what that reason is. I suspect it is not in the provided information at all.

Fair use only comes to play in that she was taking pictures of things like bricks (in the defense of the people who claim structures are copyrightable, they are but only to an extent and the textures she photographed would be hers).

 

For the Capcom thing though, it is definitely not fair use; literally some of the textures were mapped nearly 1:1...but I didn't even say recognizable is a standard (I did say that a few of the images were manipulated enough that I think it wouldn't be classified as distributing copyrighted works)...specifically the OB2 one...that one I would say would be a stretch.  All the other ones are quite clearly her images

 

11 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Even if that were the case, Capcom is still liable and the original author still entitled to royalties, so that doesn't really change anything about how this copyright case works.

The thought that it could have been from a different asset disc they got the license for did cross my mind...but in that case it would mean likely the minimum damages (like 250 per work, at 80 works so $20,000).  My thought (just a guess), what could have also happened is if someone bought the rights to redistribute the assets from the CD, and sold the asset library to Capcom.

 

So yes, it would chance the copyright case, but mainly in how the damages are awarded since $12 million assumes will-full infringement.  If it wasn't will-full, it's like $1 mill max penalty or something like that (too lazy to look it up)

[Avocado Diaboli]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

”was” not is.  Resident evil4 is already old news and has been for a long time.  Yet I his is being brought up now.  Kinda weird..  also the money is crazy.  12 million? 

Resident Evil 4 being an old game doesn't change the fact that it has reportedly been sold a total of over 10 million times. Not to mention that it just got a Switch port two years ago and given its high profile status (being considered one of the best games ever by some people) I would absolutely not put it past Capcom to put out a port for the PS5 and Xbox Series. And again, there is the "discovery rule", where a statute of limitations doesn't actually expire until after a plaintiff becomes aware of an infringement, which if you've been following the thread, happened because of a data leak from Capcom that revealed these assets in the first place in plain sight. Resident Evil 4 could be 100 years old, as long as there is an active copyright on the assets used and you just became aware of the infringement, you can demand royalties for them or sue others for infringing on your copyright.

[RejZoR]

17 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

Wait did i understand it correctly that she's basically sueing Capcom because they made textures of wood, stone, etc. and claims they're based on her images because they happen to also include wood, etc?

 

Or is it really full "pictures" that they implemented as ingame pictures?

It's not really hard to match images. I have a program called "DupDetector" (its free) and what it does is instead of using hash of an image or size to find out if there is a duplicate of it, it instead uses pixel data to compare and uses % ratio. Meaning you can have images of different dimensions, different sizes and different hashes that it can identify as "same photo" and it even shows you the % ratio of similarity. I use it to weed out duplicate photos and keep bigger ones instead of resized smaller ones. But you can easily use it for such task too and with neural networks you can make even more advanced matching with just parts of images.

 

There is just no way someone can make identical wood pattern by chance. It's like fingerprint and can be traced back and spotted relatively easily. I do wonder how they come to finding out in the first place, coz you need some sort of idea where to look for it and then you continue comparing and finding it's indeed your content there.

[Video Beagle]

19 hours ago, Spotty said:

It'll be interesting to see if the court accepts evidence that was stolen in an illegal hack and extortion attempt.

Has no baring in a civil case. Wouldn't even in a criminal case, for that matter (research silver platter doctrine and fruit of the poisoned tree..specifically how this is not that)

 

18 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is the same argument of "I found it on google"

 

No, as this is a book that was specifically made to be used as image sources. I suspect a lot if not most users of this forum are too young to remember these things..I'm not.. I have a number of these type of collections, and even spent a lot of time looking into their viability as art sources for 3d assets...pretty much what nintendo did. in mine, there's 0 talk of limits on usage, commerical, private...nothing. I don't think there was even thought to that kind of stuff at the time for these.

 

The way Capcom used it _is_ the way these things were intended to be used. BUT, the scale of it...grand commerical application like this..wasn't...really couldn't at the time, be even envisioned, much less considered. (Could be why the suit is for a rather small sum all things concidered...today, this kind of stuff, with commerical liscenses is common, so this could be based on what it'd be had these books been published in today's world.)

 

[Master Delta Chief]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

This is the problem, the photographer doesn't own the subject of the photos, only the digital photos themselves.

 

 

9 hours ago, JZStudios said:

So you're saying it's perfectly fine to steal photos? Wow, good take. Photographers everywhere jump at the opportunity to not make any income from their source of... well not income apparently.

 

I wouldn't call this stealing really since the pictures in question are predominantly textures, not something of the individual's design. From my personal view, It should not matter whether if the individual owns the digital photos, what should matter in this particular case are the subjects of the pictures. 

[Zodiark1593]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

That I don’t think is the issue.  That seems to actually be part of the issue in the first place.  It seems bizarrely improbable that cap on would knowingly place itself in this situation. That the thing is going to court and has not been settled implies cap on thinks there is something hinky and is challenging it.  This sort of stuff is usually settled. The issue seems to be why now, How could these things have gone from unsafe to use to being viewed as safe-to-use?  Either they were safe to use in the first place, or there was some sort of massive screw up.  12million also seems excessively large.  There’s a bunch of limitations on actionable copywrite.  1 is the substantial change limit, another is lampoon (which I don’t think applies here)  there’s also limitations involving 10% of an image or limitation of use.  It could also be that while the plaintiff WANTS to sue cap on because they at least in theory have 12 million (I get the impression that capcom is on the rocks a bit) the party they may actually need to sue is a long defunct holding company or something.  That may actually be the basis for the case.  Capcom consolidated something and is now liable for the debts of some company that could have this hung on it. 
 

Copywrite infringement of this nature is generally not the sort of mistake a company makes for obvious reasons.  There are generally multiple measures in place to prevent such things.  Therefore something weird has happened.

The large number probably came from the fact that RE4 was a high profile game that saw a number of re-releases using the same assets. Undoubtedly, there’s probably intent to get Capcom to settle as well. 
 

As far as mistakes having been made, it’s likely the game dev culture played relatively fast and loose in the 90s and early 00s. There wasn’t quite the culture of, for lack of a better term, professionalism, in those days. Further, this was fairly early in 3D graphics where using more realistic image textures was just becoming a thing, where hand-drawn textures was previously the norm. Processes for vetting source material were likely minimal to non-existent. 

[Avocado Diaboli]

9 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

I wouldn't call this stealing really since the pictures in question are predominantly textures, not something of the individual's design. From my personal view, It should not matter whether if the individual owns the digital photos, what should matter in this particular case are the subjects of the pictures. 

Seems like your personal view doesn't align with what copyright means, because otherwise you have to start splitting hairs on what is and isn't art, and that's not something that should be defined by law. If I take a photo of a stunning mountain scene drenched in twilight and if I take a head on picture of a featureless concrete wall, both photos are protected by copyright and if you intend to use either of those in your derivative work, I deserve compensation. 

[Master Delta Chief]

45 minutes ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Seems like your personal view doesn't align with what copyright means, because otherwise you have to start splitting hairs on what is and isn't art, and that's not something that should be defined by law. If I take a photo of a stunning mountain scene drenched in twilight and if I take a head on picture of a featureless concrete wall, both photos are protected by copyright and if you intend to use either of those in your derivative work, I deserve compensation. 

I'm not questioning what defines art at all. Copyright doesn't need to define that either if it does and nor should a law. I'm against the ways how copyright operates and it requires change in order to operate in this day of age. It's absurd for you to think you got a sole right on a photo of something you find in nature. If you were to use a picture of mine that I took somewhere public, you can use that for whatever you like, even selling it if you wish. 

[Avocado Diaboli]

9 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

I'm not questioning what defines art at all. Copyright doesn't need to define that either if it does and nor should a law. I'm against the ways how copyright operates and it requires change in order to operate in this day of age. It's absurd for you to think you got a sole right on a photo of something you find in nature. If you were to use a picture of mine that I took somewhere public, you can use that for whatever you like, even selling it if you wish. 

Why shouldn't I have the sole right of what I photographed? I bought the equipment to do it, I sought out the place and had the presence of mind or creative spark to take that photo. If you intend to make money off of my work, I suggest you pay me. You do realize there are people whose entire job it is to go out and take pictures of surfaces in order to then create textures out of them, right?

 

Taking a picture of something doesn't give me the sole right of whatever is pictured, if someone else takes a picture of the same subject or object, they have the copyright on their version of whatever is depicted by that picture. But I have every right to a picture I took myself. And if they don't want to bother lugging a camera to the same spot and photographing the same thing I did, they can pay me for my efforts and use my pictures.

 

If you wish to make your photography part of the public domain, that's up to you. But just because you want to do that shouldn't mean everybody else has to give up on monetizing their work. Make no mistake, copyright has plenty of problems, but your objections sound like childish entitlement.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

 

 

No, as this is a book that was specifically made to be used as image sources. I suspect a lot if not most users of this forum are too young to remember these things..I'm not.. I have a number of these type of collections, and even spent a lot of time looking into their viability as art sources for 3d assets...pretty much what nintendo did. in mine, there's 0 talk of limits on usage, commerical, private...nothing. I don't think there was even thought to that kind of stuff at the time for these.

 

 

Come on guys, I've seen the exhibit, I've read the filing, I've read the articles on this before I even posted in the thread, quit arguing this point, it's not relevant. I'm not saying "those are not the images" like y'all have been suggesting. I'm saying that the person who made the book and therefor the cdrom has to prove that they had the rights to the subjects of those images, and you know what, if certain subjects in that image are over 200 years old, they are public domain for her to use, and she can only claim the photo itself as posed. That means other people can recreate the entire photo digitally if they were so inclined.

 

Those collection disc shovelware at the time were often ambiguously legal even for the time. Sometimes they were some rip of some BBS full of infringing files somewhere else, sometimes they were collections of whatever. In case people are confused, the digital cameras of the time were 2-3Mpixel, so a "high resolution" photo would only be obtainable from a film SLR that had been scanned on a flatbed scanner.

As I said in the previous post, the only reason she even knows about the improper licensing is because of the same file name of the texture in the game sources. That would not be the case had someone reverse engineered the game. But you know what, since we're being pedantic about that, let's just find out.

 

So, according to news sources, one of the things revealed by the leak was a Resident Evil 4 Remake, which is not the exact subject in this lawsuit. The source code to Resident Evil 4 VR was leaked however according to a tweet which might be the same thing. The existing game on Steam is just a "HD" port. The GameCube textures used by RE4 are mostly 128x128 textures, and you'd be hard pressed to compare these to files on that cd-rom, assuming anyone has it to compare. But let's humor this anyway. The exhibits are compared to the HD version.

 

I have not played this game, ever, so I have no idea where in the game these take place. But on the GC version, assuming you're not playing it on a emulator, would be blurry at 480i, so even at the time, assuming those same textures are in that version of the game and not just the HD pc port. All the hack/leak proves is that the textures may have been used somewhere in the game development process.

 

As for the CDROM, read the Amazon description

Quote

This new collection contains over 1,400 high-quality color photographs capturing a range of details and surfaces, organized by architectural elements: walls, facades, windows, doorways, ceilings, roofs, floors, pavements, columns, and arches. Architectural Surfaces provides a wealth of source material to meet the research needs of architects and interior designers, artists, scenic designers, and graphic designers. CD-ROM included: screen resolution scans in easy-to-use JPEG format for Mac and PC.

Here's a fun thing, https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/87449/54908427-MIT.pdf This is a document detailing a procedural modeling concepts and Judy's images are referenced at 4.4 in figure 4.8 with "this can be generated procedurally" statement

 

 

Again, I'm not arguing Capcom didn't do anything wrong. Quite the opposite, the evidence presented suggests that the cdrom was used at some point in the development process. The problem this lawsuit has is how the evidence was discovered, and if the author of the book/cdrom actually has the copyright on those things. 

 

Honestly I'm not sure how this would pan out. From a very technical perspective someone would have to look at the contents of the CDROM and against the data actually on the distributed versions of the game such as the GC and PC HD version. Both of these can't be done without asking Capcom to turn over the assets used by the game during the discovery process. I don't believe they can use the hack as evidence (which is what was filing), nor can they use a reverse-engineered game. Using a basic texture-grabbing application can be used against a legit version of the game to see what textures are actually used, but will violate the copyright license of Capcom to do so.

 

Like it's really kind of weird, because screenshots of the game don't prove the images are in the game. The hack does.

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

That's just wrong.  It doesn't matter if they used 5% of the image, it can still be pursued as a copyright action.

 

You ask for the larger amount because it gives you more wiggle room.  You aren't necessarily expecting the 12 million, but you are setting the number high as it can work out better that way.

 

  

Fair use only comes to play in that she was taking pictures of things like bricks (in the defense of the people who claim structures are copyrightable, they are but only to an extent and the textures she photographed would be hers).

 

For the Capcom thing though, it is definitely not fair use; literally some of the textures were mapped nearly 1:1...but I didn't even say recognizable is a standard (I did say that a few of the images were manipulated enough that I think it wouldn't be classified as distributing copyrighted works)...specifically the OB2 one...that one I would say would be a stretch.  All the other ones are quite clearly her images

 

The thought that it could have been from a different asset disc they got the license for did cross my mind...but in that case it would mean likely the minimum damages (like 250 per work, at 80 works so $20,000).  My thought (just a guess), what could have also happened is if someone bought the rights to redistribute the assets from the CD, and sold the asset library to Capcom.

 

So yes, it would chance the copyright case, but mainly in how the damages are awarded since $12 million assumes will-full infringement.  If it wasn't will-full, it's like $1 mill max penalty or something like that (too lazy to look it up)

Re: partial image thing: 

Then there are a lot of artists in massive amounts of trouble because it was a pretty common way to do things.  This isn’t true for every part of an image.  If the image contained a particularly iconographic section and that was the section used it wouldn’t work.  It does depend a lot on what section is used. 

 

re: amounts

even a fraction of that is still crazy. 1 million is still several times the value of the work.  Asking for absurd amounts and expecting to be knocked down is traditional, but that’s absurd even for absurd.  It sounds way way too much like a “how much can I screw them for” move.  
 

re: minutea  of fair use

You’re acting as the judge on this one behaving as if it an open and shut case.  Obviously it isnt or this wouldn’t be going to court.  This isn’t a criminal trial where a court case is mandatory. Capcom is just as capable of hiring a lawyer as the plaintiff is, and settlement apparently failed, so it is going to court.  You’re implying the stuff is recognizable, but also pointing out that they were just textures.  Which is it? This seems to happen basically every time an announcement of a court case is made here. It get announced and people jump up and say “it’s right!” or “it’s wrong!”  What also seems to happen almost every time is the whole story not being told.  In the first one I ran into there was a claim of a single act when it was actually two separate ones being conflated which was simply not mentioned. “This layer of sand or gravel or whatever is recognizable and special” is a value judgement.  One that may not be made by the judge.  Is it safer to simply not use such stuff at all? Emphatically yes.  It’s simpler for it to not even come up.  It does put such things within the purview of judicial review, which is not a safe place to be, and the Judge may in fact wind up agreeing.  It’s not a bound situation though. 
 

re: the rest of it

So you ream me for making points you later make yourself using different wording.  

 

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, Avocado Diaboli said:

Resident Evil 4 being an old game doesn't change the fact that it has reportedly been sold a total of over 10 million times. Not to mention that it just got a Switch port two years ago and given its high profile status (being considered one of the best games ever by some people) I would absolutely not put it past Capcom to put out a port for the PS5 and Xbox Series. And again, there is the "discovery rule", where a statute of limitations doesn't actually expire until after a plaintiff becomes aware of an infringement, which if you've been following the thread, happened because of a data leak from Capcom that revealed these assets in the first place in plain sight. Resident Evil 4 could be 100 years old, as long as there is an active copyright on the assets used and you just became aware of the infringement, you can demand royalties for them or sue others for infringing on your copyright.

But it is interesting that it wasn’t brought up before now. 

[Bombastinator]

12 hours ago, Kisai said:

Resident Evil was released in 2005.

 

The allegation is that the files were taken directly from the CD-ROM.

 

That doesn't mean that CAPCOM itself did it. It could have been someone they hired used it once, who had been using it all the time and never had the book at all.

 

Like I have 5 gamedev books (from 2003) just sitting in a corner here, and several of them came with CD-rom's at the time. Now the CD-ROM's didn't contain digital copies of the books (which are huge) but they tended to contain script, assets or even entire projects that would work in the software (eg flash) it talks about. Like look up "learn OpenGL" and the first 10 projects of pretty much every site, before you get to shaders, look the same. Also these books all have a page right before where the CD-ROM is supposed to be glued to the cover that has "this software is licensed to you for your personal use only"

 

This is what I imagine may have happened. Who knows how many times those files got copied, or if they even came from the cdrom at all while at Capcom. Maybe person who owned the book, copied the textures off the cd-rom in 1996, but didn't use it in RE4 until 1999, remaining in the assets in the 2005 release.

 

At any rate, ignorance is not an excuse. And for those of you not old enough to know what the internet was like between 1992 and 1999, there was no image search. The likeliness that they came from somewhere on the internet is quite low.

 

But stock image cd-roms, there were plenty of those back in the day, and I wouldn't have put it past someone having just uploaded them to a ftp site within Capcom without any information as to where it came from.

Okay 2005 until 2021 a mere.. 16 years?  With a long period befor it was even used.  Statuate of limitations could apply on either end.  

[Avocado Diaboli]

13 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

But it is interesting that it wasn’t brought up before now. 

Well time played into her hands, since the original versions were rendered at a much lower resolution and also with massively downsampled textures. Even now, it only came to light thanks to leaks of actual raw image files and not because the images in the textures were discovered by playing the game and looking at them. Here's a comparison of what the various ports of the game looked like over the years.

I'm not surprised it took this long. I mean, put yourself in the shoes of the photographer, how would you even become aware that your work might have been used in an infringing manner in the first place. To me, the only way I can even see how she became aware after the leak was because of some automated image comparison tool that compared the image files from the leak to a known database and just happened to match her images. Or it was just a massive coincidence that she or someone who knew her or was familiar with her work saw these images, recognized them from the book and knew that the book versions weren't licensed to be used in this manner and gave her a heads-up. Honestly, there are a million ways you can stumble upon something like this. If she's not a gamer and this leak hadn't happened, she probably would've never come across this use of her work.