Billboard FC Banned

[Mika_Zahard]

World travel is a feature now, all this "disrupting" is the same as when people started to travel to Balmung. Just deal with it.

[Deveryn]

There's a nice lenghty video that covers the legality of everything. Ultimately, it's a question of will they(SE) or won't they. At the bare minimum, it's possible they could give a temporary or permanent ban the player that did the deed.

[SeiyaSoiya]

What the hell, are you guys being paid to shill for square here or something?
The material usage license requires you to "slap" the copyright notice and ffxiv logo onto anything that uses ffxiv assets.
The club owners have a very strong case to argue that the reason they used the ffxiv logo and the copyright notice is to comply with the materials usage license, and I suspect that's exactly the reason why they put those on the billboard.

Using mods is a ToS violation, and using datamined assets is not compliant with the materials usage license.
The former results in action taken against your account, and the latter results in, at worst, a cease and desist letter.

You want them to take it to court and argur a copyright law violation? The funny thing about real life court is that it doesn't work like ingame tos violations, you cannot just have a gm put the accused into gaol and suspend them for 10 days without possibility to appeal, you actually have to go through a trial and, and I know this sohnds ludicrous, give the accused a chance to defend themselves.
I know real life law sounds inconvenient but it is what it is.

[Krotoan]

The entirety of the "drama" is going to be that SE contacts the billboard company to take down the ads. That will happen because the billboard company(ies) contractually have an out (it is assumed you own the content you are posting) and already have their money so they won't care.

Billboards come down. Drama over. cyberhump-fest goes on with more trolls now and their discord is a clownfest.

.. whee.

[Kolsykol]

It'd be ridiculous to just ban them on the basis of association and be really unfair, it's clear that there was like at most a handful of people responsible for the billboard.
Even people mentioned on the billboard weren't told and had no idea it was going to happen and ended up receiving a ton of harassment.
I really doubt they'd just do guilt by association and it'd be really shitty.

[Atma]

What the hell, are you guys being paid to shill for square here or something?
The material usage license requires you to "slap" the copyright notice and ffxiv logo onto anything that uses ffxiv assets.
The club owners have a very strong case to argue that the reason they used the ffxiv logo and the copyright notice is to comply with the materials usage license, and I suspect that's exactly the reason why they put those on the billboard.

Using mods is a ToS violation, and using datamined assets is not compliant with the materials usage license.
The former results in action taken against your account, and the latter results in, at worst, a cease and desist letter.

You want them to take it to court and argur a copyright law violation? The funny thing about real life court is that it doesn't work like ingame tos violations, you cannot just have a gm put the accused into gaol and suspend them for 10 days without possibility to appeal, you actually have to go through a trial and, and I know this sohnds ludicrous, give the accused a chance to defend themselves.
I know real life law sounds inconvenient but it is what it is.

Yeah I don't think anyone expects anyone to sue anyone. It is more simply pointing out the severity of the infraction that was committed goes beyond simply breaking some rules in a TOS document.

[Iscah]

Since the FFXIV logo is an in game asset that can be slapped onto any screenshot in sticker mode, that I'm not so sure about. And the media usage license requires that it have the FXIV copyright notice on it.

The material usage license requires you to "slap" the copyright notice and ffxiv logo onto anything that uses ffxiv assets.
The club owners have a very strong case to argue that the reason they used the ffxiv logo and the copyright notice is to comply with the materials usage license, and I suspect that's exactly the reason why they put those on the billboard.

The thing with the copyright notice being required is that it goes hand-in-hand with other rules like where the FFXIV assets can be used (basically restricted to personal use on websites) and that they should not be combined with third party content – the end result being that the SE copyright notice is applied to an image that is entirely SE's property.

Breaking the other rules and then applying the notice to the billboard full of altered images and third party logos is probably a worse look than not applying it at all.

(Also, just from memory, I think there was something at one point where they stated that modded images should not have the copyright notice on them so they won't be associated back to SE? Does anyone have a source for that?)

[SeiyaSoiya]

The thing with the copyright notice being required is that it goes hand-in-hand with other rules like where the FFXIV assets can be used (basically restricted to personal use on websites) and that they should not be combined with third party content – the end result being that the SE copyright notice is applied to an image that is entirely SE's property.

Breaking the other rules and then applying the notice to the billboard full of altered images and third party logos is probably a worse look than not applying it at all.

(Also, just from memory, I think there was something at one point where they stated that modded images should not have the copyright notice on them so they won't be associated back to SE? Does anyone have a source for that?)

you could argue that in a court but you still couldn't prove that the intent when using the ffxiv and square enix copyright logos were malicious and intended to impersonate square enix or to give the impression that it was an official square enix event
once again real life law doesn't work like the ToS, square enix can't just dictate what is the truth in a court of law.

[Shibi]

you could argue that in a court but you still couldn't prove that the intent when using the ffxiv and square enix copyright logos were malicious and intended to impersonate square enix or to give the impression that it was an official square enix event
once again real life law doesn't work like the ToS, square enix can't just dictate what is the truth in a court of law.

You should watch that video. 45 minutes but it directly addresses what you are saying.

[Iscah]

you could argue that in a court but you still couldn't prove that the intent when using the ffxiv and square enix copyright logos were malicious and intended to impersonate square enix or to give the impression that it was an official square enix event
once again real life law doesn't work like the ToS, square enix can't just dictate what is the truth in a court of law.

It's not even about it being deliberate or malicious. If they claim they used the notice because it's in the rules that they should, then they can't claim to be unaware of the other rules they also should have been following.

Edit to add: Also, SE has no need to "dictate what the truth is" if it actually is a breach of copyright according to existing laws. I'm not saying it is or isn't a breach, but that would be the reason why SE would go after these people if they choose to.