Guys, I recently learned how to make customs, my idea was to make the most RHCP customs possible, but then I stumbled into this: a lot of famous songs have RS2012 versions, however, since the old database is gone, I have no idea who made them, therefore I can't contact this people about making RS2014 versions of this songs.

 

so I tried to search on the forum for a list of the RS2012 customs or something, this thread showed up:

http://customsforge.com/topic/2350-rescuing-customs/

in it, the user "Xstatic" posted this great idea:

"It wont change anything but if people really were worried about credit they could just add a extra second of leading silence and in that second do a vocal file with their name so it flashes their forum name at the start of their work. "

 

so here is an idea of standart:

 

CustomDLC V1.0 by "USERNAME" from customsforge.com

contact: "E-MAIL ADRESS OR WHATEVER YOU PREFER"

 

I think adopting this standart can solve the following current issues

 

1. About credits issues

when we post customs on the database, it's pretty much given that some people will take it and share on other forums, blogs, or torrent websites. my first contact with customs was through torrents, it actually took me some time to find the source.

this happens now because the credits to a custom is only bound to the customsforge's database, when its taken out of the database, this information is lost. adopting this new standart will not only give authors credit for the custom regardless where it was downloaded, but it also ensures that the person who download it will know that the source is customsforge.com 

also, re-uploads to new databases (like the idea of the topic "rescuing customs") would mantain credits

 

2. About contacting issues

because of the past events, it would be good to be prepared for the eventuality of Ubisoft releasing a new version of rocksmith and the eventuality of customsforge's database vanishing.

with this standart, even if both happen, in the future another person that wants to make a custom that was already made before(or is looking for tips on custom making, or wants to re-upload) can easily contact the author of the older custom.

 

3.Archive names

since the version of the CDLC will be in the credits, versions on the .psarc filename could be avoided

 

 

That will also bring more people to the community interested in making customs, since more people will know about the forum.

Another thing is that, unlike editing the name of the custom's .psarc, this is totally harmless and won't affect neither sorting nor gameplay, leading silence is already a standart and the credit could be easily ignored by a player who don't care so it won't change anything.

 

what do you guys think?

 

Well if all agreed with some suggestions we can add feature to the tolkit for cretits hanling (but It probably will be at the end of the song).

I think it's ok to add the information (creator, version, release date, link to custom thread) despite it will not prohibit that your customs become part of a file sharing.

For the link to the customs thread - if the forum supports it you could add an unique number to the thread which is used by search to go directly to the thread.

I don't know if a post has a unique ID, but if 1st post of the customs thread has the ID 666, add this to the custom and if you enter it in the search field you'll be directed to the 1st post of the custom thread.

I do believe that this is going to be addressed at the staff meeting today - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, fellow admins.

Sounds like a great way to have the copyright lawyers find your information to sue you.

Sounds like a great way to have the copyright lawyers find your information to sue you.

 

If the copyrighters wanted to take us down they would have already. 

Perhaps they're just waiting until customs "fatten up"... after all, Rocksmith is still a small fry in their eyes.... but as we grow, the less privacy the big charters have, the worse it'll be for them...

 

For example, one charter focuses on metallica customs.... their lawyers get wind of it after this charter releases like all their albums... sues just that one charter for copyright infringement, and they notice they have his email address in the custom. They subpena gmail for his ip address and other information. They now have said charter's name. Boom, thats evidence they can submit in court. They say that this guy has pirated all their songs and they slap $$1000,000k times whatever number songs they have evidence that he uploaded - thanks to the handy "jondoe@gmail.com" thing at the end of each custom.

 

So yeah... no thanks to tagging our own customs.

bob64, creating customs is not an infringement of copyright laws.

sharing may be, although the "educational purposes" argument is pretty convincing, since, well, it is for educational purposes.

however that is the very reason why an internet database is fragile, and that's why I think a decentralized database could be convenient, IF we want to keep this model of ethics about preserving "moral ownership" to customs, otherwise it's impractical.

everytime something happens half the charters would disappear and we wouldn't be able to continue to support half of the customs db, meaning it's lost forever.

(my point is that if you don't want to leave a legacy to the customs you make then you should give up any kind of development ownership(authorship) of it, what would be expressed by it not being credited)

 

you do have a point though about drawing too much attention to customsforge.com , that might not be a good idea.

I actually did something like this with one of my customs -- although I'd put my name at the end of the vocal file, not the beginning. But I eventually got rid of the name.

 

Why? Two reasons.

 

For one, I felt like a dog pissing on someone else's tree.

 

And in the end, it just doesn't matter who charts what. In a few years' time, CDLCs will be like any other tab or GuitarPro file out there. Sure, there are names, and even email addresses on many of those. But when was the last time you bothered to look at those?

 

I understand @@vrusciante and his concern, since he's going to be working with other people's  RS1 customs and he's trying to give credit where it's due. I think a simple mention of the original charter's name in the database is sufficient.

unfortunately a  solution to the debate is to get people more technical and not include the .WEM files in the CDLC, and force users to repack the psarc.

 

That way all the hard work of tabbing/syncing/etc has been done, but the user needs to have the original mp3 file to create the end product.

unfortunately a  solution to the debate is to get people more technical and not include the .WEM files in the CDLC, and force users to repack the psarc.

 

That way all the hard work of tabbing/syncing/etc has been done, but the user needs to have the original mp3 file to create the end product.

 

You'd have to have the exact same mp3, guess the exact amount of leading silence that gets added... complicated!

 

 

You'd have to have the exact same mp3, guess the exact amount of leading silence that gets added... complicated!

 

 

Yeah, I know - that's the dilemma...  I guess you could say "ripped from this cd with these settings, song length is whatever, 3s silence added to beginning"... that would get to close enough to not matter

now, in a perfect world, I would download the digital version from iTunes/Amazon, or buy the CD, then my stored digital rights could be used to verify me, and therefore can download the CDLC.

 

I personally never download anything that I do not own the CD/iTunes/etc for, but a lot aren't so honest.

I think that making the leechers user part harder won't solve anything here.

 

At the moment you can easily find the author of a custom based on the name of the songs in the DB for CDLC available here. If someone doesn't credit the author it's because it didn't want to.That's not perfect but i hate when i'm obliged to have some DRM stuff and putting in place this kind of things won't be appreciated in my own opinion.

 

In the actual state, i don't see the point in bothering people for this and reclaiming some authorship while we're already in a grey area doesn't seem to be the best option at the moment...

I know - that's why I said "in a perfect world" :D

 

In a perfect world, all the artists/record companies would also say "have you seen this site?  this is the coolest thing ever! we should give them money!"

I actually did something like this with one of my customs -- although I'd put my name at the end of the vocal file, not the beginning. But I eventually got rid of the name.

 

Why? Two reasons.

 

For one, I felt like a dog pissing on someone else's tree.

 

And in the end, it just doesn't matter who charts what. In a few years' time, CDLCs will be like any other tab or GuitarPro file out there. Sure, there are names, and even email addresses on many of those. But when was the last time you bothered to look at those?

 

I understand @@vrusciante and his concern, since he's going to be working with other people's  RS1 customs and he's trying to give credit where it's due. I think a simple mention of the original charter's name in the database is sufficient.

 

yes but that's the point. most people would probably ignore it, it's more of an "internal control" thing for we to know who did what.

as for "go ahead and post it", I can't really do that because a lot of people that did this CDLCs are still here and want to upgrade them, so that would be really impolite of me, the hard thing is that there is no way to pinpoint the ones that really left.

(thinking about it now, an idea could be something encoded in the psarc that can be decoded by the toolkit, but I don't know how hard something like this would be to code).

 

 

as for piracy, I think people are being overcautious, it's fine that people worry about their privacy because the mafiaa and blablabla, but Rocksmith is a learning tool(marketed as "the fastest way to learn guitar"), you can't even listen to any song in it if you don't have a guitar plugged.

any lawyer would have a hard time trying to dismiss the fair use aspect of customs.