Free Step Dodge

The distinction you're trying to make (in the context of your proposed analogy), would be: "We should allow people to eat apples but not oranges because eating one is ethically different from eating the other, despite both being edible fruits."

The sharing of DLC files is indeed an issue, though to compare that to sharing mods that use in-game content would be comparing apples to cement blocks. I don't feel that the solution to that is closing the entire modding thread, considering how active it is in the community.

No, the difference is that TN themselves have publicly been OK with fanart and stills people post on their social media pages. They have absolutely not been cool with people taking the game apart and sharing the files around (which enables people to use DLC they didn't pay for). It stays locked until the condition I listed is met.

I swear this is the most restrictive forum I have ever come across in my entire Internet career so to speak lol.

The other threads that contain tutorials or modded pictures need to be locked as well. Might as well stay consistent at least

The condition you listed is predicated on a subjective condition that is arbitrarily defined.
They've been "deconstructing" the game to extract its texture files since Day 1 of the PC release. Unless you mean a different type of deconstruction which is, again, arbitrarily defined.

They've even been sharing files for ages with the DLC costumes for posing that TN has shared on their page (even though I believe that to be an issue, albeit an entirely different one).

Creating original content for use with copyrighted content is not illegal, so long as copyrighted material wasn't used. In other words, skins are legal, as long as there's not a specific clause banning mods (contrarily, there's actually US laws protecting that right) which users have to agree to, so long as an existing skin wasn't the basis.

Odds are they didn't start with a clean sheet, but that has to be proven to a *reasonable* degree. We can reasonably see the models were ripped.

You're choosing things to respond to. The issue is the game, in its current official state, cannot be modded. The second issue is the sharing of the files. The second one will never fly and warnings have been issued with that. Once a method for modding the game without relying on cracks is found, the thread can be re-opened. That's not arbitrary at all. If > then.

Honestly I believed that until people weren't sharing on the forum files from the actual game (as official DLC) or the incriminated ones for the cracking, there was no problem just because the same modding activity is not legit since the beginning.

Many of samples I'm referring to are balatant reskins (ie: I recolored Honoka's hair orange or layed a gold filter over Hayabusa's C1).

However I thought that TN tolerated it in the past, officially through Hayashi in that interview where was subtly giving his OK to the PC mods asking just to not create NSFW contents, unofficially - if I remember well - when Shimbori visiting the old D.I.D. praised the showned mods of DoA3.1

The second issue you cited we agree on. The first we do not. The game in its current official state cannot be modded, except with textures that use no copyrighted material in their creation. Thus, no "recolors" would be allowed.

And if that's the argument you're sticking with, then yes, it's not an arbitrary distinction and you'd be correct (though it would be a ruthlessly strict one and I would still have to disagree).

Brute, you and I will have to simply let it go at that, then. I do understand where people have an issue with me choosing to lock that thread. I think at this point you understand where I'm coming from and that will have to be good enough. I did confer with another staff member prior to finalizing my decision. You've already landed on why I left the textures thread alone.

Of course i'm choosing what i respond to. It only makes sense to handle it that way with the 450 char limit.

Anyway, it's a bit bold to say that it cannot be modded Just because we don't know how, doesn't mean it cannot be modded. However, taking existing skins and editin them is very, very illegal.

I was responding to Brute, Kohlrak.

The mods on the "legal" version of the game is still illegal so to speak...You are still injecting into the game and extracting (stealing) the files.

All this accomplishes is less activity on the forum and people going to other sites for modding discussions lol

Reddit is one of those sites.