Creative commons

[miumiaou]

I think It'd be nice if the game'll be release under the creative common license (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_license) (If it's not possible sorry to waste your time)

[sunsetbrew]

What right under CC do people need?

Creative Commons does not recommend the use of Creative Commons licenses for software.

The license would give everyone the right to give the game away freely to the world. That is pretty dangerous for a company who's revenue is mostly based on the distribution of their creative work. The license is mainly targeted for text, images and videos that are intended to be shared freely.

[miumiaou]

This way it'd be possible to have picture of the game on a blog or on wikipedia.

edit: and even if the game'll be get freely by people, doesn't this mean that the game'll be known by more people? Isn't it great? (In my country there's a system where people can have access freely to the content and in return, if they enjoy the content, they could buy it)

[Grabthehoopka]

If you're worried about copyright infringement, I'm pretty sure that any screenshots that are officially released can be posted anywhere without worry.

But as far as I can tell, since this is a copyright and not a trademark, Infinitap's legal team can just choose not to take legal action if someone is posting screenshots or videos or what have you. Then again, I don't know, I'm not a lawyer.

[ranger_lennier]

Generally, things like screenshots and gameplay videos would be allowed as fair use regardless of the copyright and licensing of the game. Nintendo did claim Youtube ad revenue for some Lets Play videos, but with that we're talking about much longer content, often playing through an entire game. And as far as I know their right to do this has never been established in court.

GPL would be a more common free software license, but it could make it more difficult to actually make money on the game. Perhaps it would be something to think about a few years down the road if the game is no longer bringing in significant revenue.

[sunsetbrew]

The main point is about taking screen shots of the game and similar. I am sure matt can provide a sensible way to do that without surrendering the rights. Further, everyone has fair-use rights which covers most use of the images when discussing the game. I agree with miumiaou that this is a mutually desirable activity.

And it is not possible to passively ignore people that are violating your rights without risking the inaction to be construed as a waver of those rights. It is one thing if you don't know its happening, but if it goes on record that you did know and allowed it then it can be argued in court you waived that right.

The whole opensource topic is separate. There is no reason the game should made opensource. GPL is a viral plague on software. MIT is a much better license for OpenSource. But we can leave that for another topic, on another day, on another forum since it is not relevant to this topic.

[miumiaou]

What is fair use? I don't think it's effective in my country since I never heard about it.

[sunsetbrew]

What is fair use? I don't think it's effective in my country since I never heard about it.

We can write a book on that. Here is a basic course http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html.

The principle of fair use is that some media may be required to discuss a subject. For example, there are millions of posters and if I want my readers to know I am talking about a specific one, I will need to show them a picture of it. Everyone has the right to do this. That does not mean you can't be challenged on it, but if you are acting in the spirit of the law, the owner will have very a tall and expensive mountain to climb before harming you. Most of the time, lawyers will send a letter trying to scare you if their client does not understand fair-use rights.

As a general rule, don't use media without permission if the result of using it results in monetary income for you. Ironically, If you are using your fair use rights, it is better to not ask permission. The reason is, as I stated above, the owner will be afraid of losing their rights and openly letting you do it could put the owner's rights at risk.

[miumiaou]

yes, as I think there's no fair use in my country, the only ways to use picture under copyright are for school, news and library. The only way I could use picture of this game (without being punish by law) for a blog or wikipedia would be to release it under the creative commons license (I know that won't be).

Anyway all I wanted to explain now is that not all country have fair use (I don't know why, I think it should be internationalized (I don't know if this word is real but who care))

[matt]

I think the main thing here is game vs. screenshots.

For the screenshots, I'm fine with them being creative commons. Is there something I have to do to make them available via creative commons other than say that?

I get a lot of requests for monetizing video of the game for YouTube, and I'm fine with that as well. Maybe I should put up a page explaining this?

For the game itself, I don't want everything to be licensed freely. That makes it difficult to sell. I am tempted to open source parts or all of the project, but we'd want the game assets to be copyrighted and licensed by buying the game. That's what id does.

Actually open sourcing the game is a challenge though... I can just dump the code up on the web, but I don't think that's useful to anyone. As well, I'm not sure I want to release the gameplay code because seeing how we do things behind the curtain might ruin some of the allure of the game. Anyway, for the time being, I'm focused on making the game, so I have time before figuring out how to open source things.

If you are curious, we did an open source project with Jawbone, which we are going to use for our audio in Neverending Nightmares:
https://github.com/Jawbone/OpenAL-MOB
It is LGPL, which makes it really annoying for iOS (although we do support it)

-Matt