Question regarding licenses
Question regarding licenses
Sunday, June 25, 2017 - 14:30
Hi all,
I am new to this page and writing games, and this is my first post on this forum :)
I have come to a question regarding licensing and would like to seek your opinion.
As you know, spritesheet will require splitting before using. However, when I am using online image splitting services like: http://imagesplitter.net/
I am wondering if the uploading of the original image for splitting might already violate some license?
Since I think the site will have saved a copy on their server side in-order to split the image for downloading? Whilst we all know that under some license, asset is not allowed to be distributed to any third party.
I might be thinking too much, but I realize this might be something that is important.
Sites providing an alteration service don't violate any of the licenses accepted on OGA. They may hold a temporary copy of the asset on their servers, but there is nothing against any license condition in doing so. Even if it were, that would generally be considered fair use. It might count as a derivative, but all OGA-accepted licenses allow for creating derivatives. However, some licenses (GPL's and CC BY-SA's) require you to share-alike such derivatives, so be sure to share those changes under the same license as the original.
If the site in question is covertly taking those files uploaded and secretly using them for purposes other than what they've claimed (like distributing them under alternate license terms) that would be a potential violation, but it would be on them, not you. I've never heard of a site doing something so shady, though. So it's probably not a real concern.
If the site in question has a clear intent for redistribution (i.e.: you're uploading assets to shutterstock or other image hosting sites), that would still be ok as long as the asset is being redistributed under the same licensing terms and giving proper attribution. If you take a GPL asset from OGA, for example, then upload it to Textures.com and share it as a royalty-free license claiming someone other than the author created the asset, yes that would definitely be a copyright violation, but that's a pretty extreme example and is easy to avoid by simply sticking to the licensing terms and giving proper credit.
TL;DR: If you're talking about something from OGA, you've got nothing to worry about. Just be sure to stick to the license conditions. Let us know if you have more questions. :)
<standard disclaimer>I am not a lawyer. This should not be taken as legal advice. Licensing concerns are not subject to generalization. If legal concerns should last longer than 4 hours, consult your attorney.</standard disclaimer>
--Medicine Storm
Thanks for your detailed reply, I also thought that would be the case, just suddenly got anxious, as such thoughts come to my mind when I was organizing my downloaded assets.
As we all know, legal matter doesn't always go with the flow of logic...and certainly ignorance and neglecting are not acceptable defense. So better ask people here that are in this industry far longer than I am for a second opinion :)
Much appreciated!
Paul