CC0 assets should be safe to use anywhere or re-license anyway. It's not that the EULA supersedes the CC0 license, it's just that the CC0 asset is being delivered with a different license, which can never supersede a previous license. Once a work has been legally licensed CC0, that is irrevocable.
This becomes trickier with CC-BY(-SA) which specifically contain a clause prohibiting distributing the assets with technological or legal restrictions prohibiting end-users from exercising the full rights laid out by CC (commonly referred to as the anti-DRM clause). This is a problem, for instance, with distributing apps that use CC-BY(-SA) assets on the Apple iOS store, which imposes an end user license violating this clause.
Because CC0 (and OGA-BY) do not have an anti-DRM clause, then restrictive EULAs just serve as another license. However anyone may still refer to the original CC0 or OGA-BY licenses and safely disregard the EULA terms (regarding those assets).
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
I interpret this as saying that the derived product only must attribute the original in the form of this disclaimer, which includes the original copyright notice. I can't see how a copyleft license would work WITHOUT requiring inclusion of a disclaimer, and the copyright notice does not seem particularly intrusive (compared with the disclaimer without the copyright). Also, I think inclusion of the copyright line clearly establishes an interested party who may then have legal ground to fight violations of the license terms.
As more people contribute, I believe that you would just list all their names in the <copyright holders> line, which may get long, but is not really up-front in your face.
Wow, that is some seriously high quality stuff! Very generous of you to share with the community. Do you have any plans to upload it here? I'm definitely bookmarking your page either way.
I am not a lawyer, but I think that the interpretation of -SA varies wildly. In this case, there is a clause in the text of -SA which applies here:
When You Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work, You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License.
Therefore, making it technologically (or legally) challenging for end users to use your adapted versions is a violation of -SA (to my understanding).
Definitely not, you would have no legal standing, and yes that would be very selfish. Artists here work hard to produce content that they are choosing to share with the community. The entire purpose would be lost if someone could come and literally snatch that work out from the community. Consider the original artist - would THEY still be able to use their own work, after you have copyrighted it (which again, you cannot do)?
If you want artwork that nobody else can copy from your original game, then you must create it yourself or negotiate a deal with an artist to create it for you. Note there are several highly talented artists here who advertise their services for fees, and a whole commissions forum devoted to connecting artists with developers http://opengameart.org/forums/open-commissions
As long as you follow the license of the art you should be fine. I would stay away from CC-BY-SA or GPL licensed assets for this project. CC-BY may give you problems, if there is some kind of DRM in the Sega Master System on Steam. You would want to figure that out.
But OGA-BY or CC0 licensed assets should be fine, just make sure you include attribution for OGA-BY.
If something has multiple licenses, (e.g. it lists both CC-BY-SA and OGA-BY), you can pick one license and ignore the rest. So in this example, you could use it under the terms of OGA-BY.
Unfortunately it's not entirely that straightforward. The question (with CC-BY-SA) is whether or not the game itself is a derivative of the artwork, and there is no clear answer, including when Capbros actually contacted the folks at CC. I think the consensus is you should err on the side of caution, and if you really want to useable asset, you should contact it's original author to ask what kind of use they are okay with, and try to respect that. I have seen some authors explicitly state that they only want it used in a game which is released under a comparable free license, and others that take Kemono's interpretation.
The one area the license is clear is that if you synchronize a -SA asset with something else, the combination counts as a derivative and must be released -SA as well. So -SA sound effects which accompany animations (like a sword slash) would fall under this.
Regarding LPC, there is no feasible way to relicense that whole atlas, as it has several authors that would have to agree. For what it's worth, I know at least Sharm lets people use her LPC assets under CC-BY, and she has made fantastic time sets.
I also got flagged by Mollom, tyring to point out a new asset in the comments section under a collection page. I just directly messaged the currator instead, but still it seems weird to not be able to comment. For reference, here is the comment (plus many close variations on the same theme) that was rejected:
CC0 assets should be safe to use anywhere or re-license anyway. It's not that the EULA supersedes the CC0 license, it's just that the CC0 asset is being delivered with a different license, which can never supersede a previous license. Once a work has been legally licensed CC0, that is irrevocable.
This becomes trickier with CC-BY(-SA) which specifically contain a clause prohibiting distributing the assets with technological or legal restrictions prohibiting end-users from exercising the full rights laid out by CC (commonly referred to as the anti-DRM clause). This is a problem, for instance, with distributing apps that use CC-BY(-SA) assets on the Apple iOS store, which imposes an end user license violating this clause.
Because CC0 (and OGA-BY) do not have an anti-DRM clause, then restrictive EULAs just serve as another license. However anyone may still refer to the original CC0 or OGA-BY licenses and safely disregard the EULA terms (regarding those assets).
Surely it's time to lock this thread. The question of why MikeeUSA's profile was shut down has been answered.
For instance, the MIT license says:
I interpret this as saying that the derived product only must attribute the original in the form of this disclaimer, which includes the original copyright notice. I can't see how a copyleft license would work WITHOUT requiring inclusion of a disclaimer, and the copyright notice does not seem particularly intrusive (compared with the disclaimer without the copyright). Also, I think inclusion of the copyright line clearly establishes an interested party who may then have legal ground to fight violations of the license terms.
As more people contribute, I believe that you would just list all their names in the <copyright holders> line, which may get long, but is not really up-front in your face.
Wow, that is some seriously high quality stuff! Very generous of you to share with the community. Do you have any plans to upload it here? I'm definitely bookmarking your page either way.
I am not a lawyer, but I think that the interpretation of -SA varies wildly. In this case, there is a clause in the text of -SA which applies here:
Therefore, making it technologically (or legally) challenging for end users to use your adapted versions is a violation of -SA (to my understanding).
Definitely not, you would have no legal standing, and yes that would be very selfish. Artists here work hard to produce content that they are choosing to share with the community. The entire purpose would be lost if someone could come and literally snatch that work out from the community. Consider the original artist - would THEY still be able to use their own work, after you have copyrighted it (which again, you cannot do)?
If you want artwork that nobody else can copy from your original game, then you must create it yourself or negotiate a deal with an artist to create it for you. Note there are several highly talented artists here who advertise their services for fees, and a whole commissions forum devoted to connecting artists with developers http://opengameart.org/forums/open-commissions
There are a few great full soundtracks I've seen here. 2 that might serve your purpose that I can remember right now:
http://opengameart.org/content/war-of-the-arcane-18-rpg-tracks
http://opengameart.org/content/generic-8-bit-jrpg-soundtrack
As long as you follow the license of the art you should be fine. I would stay away from CC-BY-SA or GPL licensed assets for this project. CC-BY may give you problems, if there is some kind of DRM in the Sega Master System on Steam. You would want to figure that out.
But OGA-BY or CC0 licensed assets should be fine, just make sure you include attribution for OGA-BY.
If something has multiple licenses, (e.g. it lists both CC-BY-SA and OGA-BY), you can pick one license and ignore the rest. So in this example, you could use it under the terms of OGA-BY.
Unfortunately it's not entirely that straightforward. The question (with CC-BY-SA) is whether or not the game itself is a derivative of the artwork, and there is no clear answer, including when Capbros actually contacted the folks at CC. I think the consensus is you should err on the side of caution, and if you really want to useable asset, you should contact it's original author to ask what kind of use they are okay with, and try to respect that. I have seen some authors explicitly state that they only want it used in a game which is released under a comparable free license, and others that take Kemono's interpretation.
The one area the license is clear is that if you synchronize a -SA asset with something else, the combination counts as a derivative and must be released -SA as well. So -SA sound effects which accompany animations (like a sword slash) would fall under this.
Regarding LPC, there is no feasible way to relicense that whole atlas, as it has several authors that would have to agree. For what it's worth, I know at least Sharm lets people use her LPC assets under CC-BY, and she has made fantastic time sets.
I also got flagged by Mollom, tyring to point out a new asset in the comments section under a collection page. I just directly messaged the currator instead, but still it seems weird to not be able to comment. For reference, here is the comment (plus many close variations on the same theme) that was rejected:
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