OK to extract assets from FREE-licensed screenshots of proprietary games?
OK to extract assets from FREE-licensed screenshots of proprietary games?
I once asked something similar here but it's a long time ago, this is a little different. Some developers free-license a few screenshots of their games, for example Legend of Grimrock (one of my favorite games BTW, before I stopped playing proprietary games):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Screenshots_of_Legend_of_Gri...
This is WM commons and they seem to take license checking very seriously, apparently they have explicit confirmation of the license from the developers themselves. Games like this have highest quality assets and a few of them could be extracted from the screenshots (retouching an ocassional jpeg artifact is much less work than making the assets from scratch). I am personally not a big fan of this approach, but I am wondering, out of pure "academic curiousity", if this could be done here. I am not sure if the devs thought through this particular implication of the license -- maybe they did, but from my experience there are many people who don't know much about licensing and take CC licenses just as a cool sticker, maybe they only ever though that the license makes people be able to just share the screenshots freely? So I'm not sure if they'd be mad about ripping off their assets and if their anger could actually mean legal trouble. I'm just wondering how a post of these assets would be received here on OGA. Would it be accepted or rejected "just to be safe"?
They would be rejected. Although the authors indicated by way of licensing that the screenshots are FOSS, we would need to see their entheusiastic agreement that they intend assets to be extracted from those screenshots and used in (potentially) competing games. The conversation where this has been discussed before can be found here: https://opengameart.org/forumtopic/censored-broforce-sprites-and-game-re...
The motivation behind the LoG devs openly licensing the screenshots is most likely because "These are screenshots for Wikipedia, and Wikipedia requires images with a free license." Per Clint Bellanger, OGA Admin:
I can't say this method of obtaining derivatives would create "legal trouble" but- without the devs endorsement of this approach- it would create relationship trouble with respected industry developers. This is an excellent question to ask and I applaud you bringing it up because it is a topic worth considering.
--Medicine StormThank you very much for a quick response. Yea I think technically it might pass as legal but it's potentially a little "nasty" :D
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Please share your art under CC0!
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
I'd also like to point out that many freely-licensed depictions of nonfree works often are of copyrighted and/or trademarked characters (first two that come to mind is the Celeste and Multiversus categories on WMC), so it's often unideal for OGA anyway.
Though RE:Clint Bellanger's statement, I mostly agree with it (and wholly understand this policy on OGA), but absolutely despise how it's phrased. Ethical/nonethical are deeply charged terms. Is it icky? Sure. Is it rude? Absolutely! But I can't bring myself to say someone using a piece of artwork that was licensed under a license that explicity allows remixing is unethical, it's stealing a balloon on Free Balloon Day. My general motto is to be respectful to people so it's not like I'd go down this route anyway. I realize this is generally a very petty thing to point out (I understand that legality as well as respect is important for OGA. it's a good policy to have.), but I have a tendency to hyperfocus on details to the point of obsession, so...lol.
Sidenote (because I can't seem to collect my thoughts in a naturally flowing manner): Extracting assets this way will result in low(er) quality results more often than not, I surmise. An additional reason why it's unideal for OGA.
*unethical, not nonethical. Curse you, onoseconds!
I agree. Though I'm uncertain of a better phrasing. Perhaps "disrespectful" or "rude" over "unethical". Even that doesn't quite sound right.
--Medicine StormDisrespectful would probably be best, as it's the more formal-sounding word.
Thank you for saying this, I actually wanted to say the same thing but figured no one would care, so I appreciate you brought it up. I would like to second that we may have different views about what's ethical, my personal ethics is that any and all form of restricting information in any way is unethical, so I would rather judge unethical anyone preventing even his own art to be used in any way, I would gladly reuse even proprietary assets against the will of their author and it's only the threat of punishment that forces me to not do so -- this is not me deciding to behave unethically (like it was argued in the linked thread) but me judging my behavior as ethical, and I understand others may have a different definition of ethics, I just am not completely happy about equating rules of this website with ethics itself. I will respect rules of this website but will object if they're simply called ethics, they are just another form of local law here. I am now actually in the middle of extracting the assets from these images (there are of lower quality like you say) and will post them elsewhere, even if I wouldn't use them myself, I believe that if anyone wants to use them on own risk, the freedom to do so should be there.
By the way please don't take this as any kind of drama stirring or criticism of this website, I love this place and will respect the rules, just wanted to react to what's been said on the topic of ethics.
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
Also maybe two more points:
- I think I have stated it previously somewhere that I am not a fan of the rule that states art cannot be shared here unless the original author approves of it, even if it's free-licensed. The reason is that this is reintroducing permission culture back to free culture, it is negating the original goal of free culture as stated in Lessig's book, his goal was to make the CC licenses exactly so that people wouldn't have to ask for permissions all the time, that was deemed to be a bad feature of our art culture, so I just find this rule strange because it perpetuates it, but again, I will respect it, in the end I can share anything on my own server. I have shared public domain art here made by people who have long been dead now by the way, we can never find out if they'd object to me doing it, so this is also another complication.
- A short explanation of my ethics for those who are wondering: I would like to add that I don't see it as rude or disrespectful to use someone else's art in any way, on the contrary to me it's a sign of highest respect if someone uses someone else's art, it means the art is good. I don't think an artist should have any more right to decide what happens with COPIES of his art than a parent has the right to dictate how his child should live its life, or that who planted a tree should have the right to dictate who is allowed to breathe the air the tree creates. The notion that the creator is somehow entitled to "own" and dictate how all the copies of the art in the world are used makes no sense, it's only ingrained in our culture by the long existing tradition of copyright law, but it's not at all anything natural.
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
Quite right, quite right indeed. I have similar opinions to this (which is what brought me to the creative commons and free works in general in the first place), though I do consider licenses for their emotional boundaries rather than strictly their legal ones. Call me crazy, but in an ideal world (the sort of world the philosophy of a "free culture" allows you to envison), the punishment of violating one's work usage boundaries would be predominately social (that is not to say a light slap on the wrist, as social punishments can be quite harsh, remember James Somerton? I also recognize this system would likely only work in a post-captialist society but to prevent this discussion from getting too political for a game assets website, I will stop myself here).
I also worried about bringing this up, as the last thing I want to do is create an enviorment that's focused on drama rather than more practical things (like, say, game assets on a game assets website), but due to my aforementioned habit, the only way i could stop thinking about it was to just say it. I much prefer to go to sleep at night rather than stay up thinking about word choices.
My opinions have no bearing on the rules of this site. As everyone in this thread has asserted: we will adhere to the rules regardless of our personal feelings about them. But, while we're sharing our opinions:
My opinion diverges here. Although I am an advocate for free culture, I am also an advocate for consent. I believe using something as personal as somone's lovingly-crafted artwork without consent (furthermore; against consent) can be harmful, both personally and to our broader society. Are we saying that people's artistic expression should cease being something they have any say-so about the moment they finish creating? That seems like it would rob it of all the things that make great artwork: personal importance. intimate meaning. This is not a statement of chastisement or aggreivement, just a counterpoint to contrast various opinions being shared. :)
--Medicine StormTrue, I feel the same, no drama intended, I'd also hate to go much deeper on this. My impression was, and please correct me if I am wrong, that the rules that are in place ARE indeed mostly based in ethical beliefs but at least some of them are (again, as I perceive it) of practical nature, aimed at keeping this website a peaceful place, which in my book is absolutely fine, but let's just say so. It's an admirable deed to run a website like this already and there's nothing wrong in wanting drama out of course.
___________________________________
Please share your art under CC0!
liberapay: https://liberapay.com/drummyfish
Yes. This particular rule is- despite the frequent use the of the word "(un)ethical" above- actually based on practicality. Bart feels it is more beneficial to retain a reputation of good relationships with artists than it is to insist on the legal and ethical allowances, even if that reputation requires us to give some lattitude when an artist is being less than reasonable. I was skeptical of it at first myself, but the observed result is that we have gained more submissions than we have lost via this rule because artists feel more comfortable submitting knowing they don't have to worry about "donor's remorse".
P.S. And please note this is a rule for OGA. No one should feel they need to adhere to such a weird rule in their own endeavors. The licenses are irrevokable. Enjoy the assets accordingly.
--Medicine Storm