People are Stealing Mods and Putting them on Consoles

In the latest edition to our "No crap" archive of news: people steal stuff over the internet.

Iffin' you recall, Fallout 4 mods are coming to the Xbox One version of the game, where people can link their games to a Bethesda account and download pre-selected mods as long as they fell within certain requirements. Mod creators could submit their mods to this 'mod marketplace' to share their creations with the console peasants, but, as it turns out, the actual submission process is far from ideal. Namely--there's no way to prove authorship of a particular mod, and a giant influx of stolen mods are being submitted to the Bethesda marketplace by people who aren't the original creators.

Now, while these mods aren't being sold for money (none of us have forgotten that mess), it did mean that mod creators were getting robbed of much-deserved credit, and some of the thieves were even asking for undeserved donations.

Now, console modding has been around for a week by now, and Bethesda has done an admirable job stepping up, and has already issued a statement to mod creators, telling them how to report an issue and take the necessary legal actions:
 

"A number of you have reported instances of users uploading Mod content that allegedly does not belong to the Mod creator. We take these reports seriously and want to protect copyright holders and authors of the Mod content shared on Bethesda.net. In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we request that anyone who believes their content was wrongfully uploaded to Bethesda.net formally submit a DMCA takedown request. Please Note: These reports should only come from mod authors and other copyright holders who believe their content was stolen."

 
Now, they aren't exactly user-friendly with the description that follows, and some of the proof you need to produce isn't exactly easy to find, but... at least it's something. And honestly, it's a little hard to imagine there's more that Bethesda could do, without risking people doing things like faking copyright claims, because people do that, because people are horrible.

So, it's not a perfect solution. But at least it is a solution, and Bethesda is listening. The alternative, of course, would be to not offer console mods to begin with... and is that really the solution we want to reach for?

I guess that's a very subjective answer.