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Tuesday, March 15, 2022 - 22:23

The people making the videos are responsible for determining if their use qualifies as Fair Use, not the developer of the game they're featuring in the videos. There are videos of every closed source commercial game on the market, but the creators of those videos aren't getting sued either, even though the license of the assets featured in the game are proprietary.

Many closed source games do have streaming/video policies. https://account.mojang.com/documents/commercial_guidelines

However, if you use CC assets or similarly licensed assets, you won't have the same level of control. You would have to make it clear which assets require attribution. If you're only using one, it's not that difficult. If you're using hundreds of assets, now it starts become harder for video creators to include all of the attributions.

Videos of GPL content, or MIT content, would be just as liable for failing to include a copy of the license text in their videos.

If it sounds like I'm picking on just CC, I'm not. The difference here is that MIT and GPL are usually only used for code. Likewise, CC is usually only used for textures and audio, not code. Because most videos about games won't show the code, that's why I'm more focused on the assets.

I'm surprised that Public Domain works are even used in games at all, even open source games because copyright trolls can release an asset as PD, wait for someone to use it, then remove the asset from whever they were sharing it and sue while pointing to the proprietary-licensed royalties-due copy they had posted elsewhere earlier. "prove you had permission to use this!"

People can sue for any reason. But this feels like a straw man argument. If you're concerned about a public domain work being turned against you, use services, like the Wayback Machine, to make a copy of the page. Use more than one service to have back ups to refer to. Make your own local copy and have links to the online archives as well. The point of my argument is that as a game developer using licenses with attributions might not be in your best interest if you want players to freely share videos. Some countries, like Japan, don't have fair use to fallback on as a safety net. Ironically, as a closed source propritary game you can actually provide more rights to users than what CC provides. Or the opposite end of the spectrum is to use public domain assets instead.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022 - 18:24

1. I wasn't sure if this should be it's own thread as the concerns are not about copyleft trolls going after developers. The concern is that even if you comply, your game community can still be affected. If you'd rather merge this topic with the other one, that's fine.

To be clear, I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is speculation about "side effects" of using Creative Commons licenses.

 

2. I hope I'm not the only one that finds this problematic. Here's an example. Minetest, an open source voxel game engine, by default comes with "Minetest Game." It's a basic voxel game. It's loaded with hundreds of textures with different creators. Many of them are under version 3.0 licenses due to the age of the project. All it takes is one of those people to become upset with the Minetest community and suddenly any video that shows their textures could have legal action taken? That's insane! There's thousands of videos about Minetest. 

I'm also not convinced that the version 4.0 licenses are much better either. Below is an exerpt from https://creativecommons.org/faq/:

"How can I lose my rights under a Creative Commons license? If that happens, how do I get them back?

All of the CC licenses terminate if you fail to follow the license conditions. If this happens, you no longer have a license to use the material.

In the 4.0 licenses, your rights under the license are automatically reinstated if you correct this failure within 30 days of discovering the violation (either on your own or because the licensor or someone else has told you). Under the 3.0 and earlier licenses, there is no automatic reinstatement.

If you have lost your rights under a CC license and are not entitled to automatic reinstatement, you may regain your rights under the license if the licensor expressly grants you permission. You cannot simply re-download the material to get a new license.

Note that you may still be liable for damages for copyright infringement for the period where you were not in compliance with the license."

So if someone fails to comply with the license conditions in 30 days, perhaps they recieve an email about it but haven't checked their email in awhile, you still lose all your rights to the material. You'll literally never be able to use the material again unless the licensor grants you permission. Even if you do comply, you still might be liable for damages for the period that you were not in compliance.

I'm surprised that the Creative Commons attribution licensing is even used in games at all, even open source games. Having people stream your game on Twitch, make videos on YouTube, etc are at this point to be expected. Many developers even want this to happen and encourage people to share videos. No open source game I've seen have ever mentioned you need to include the game asset credits or you can be sued when sharing video.

Monday, November 29, 2021 - 20:29

I don't know much about NTFs either, but some people have said NTFs don't actually sell the copyright. The only way to transfer copyrights is a seperate contract. NTFs remind me of those websites that let you "buy a star" and name it. The name obviously only appears on the website that is selling it" because your not actually buying it.

Sunday, November 21, 2021 - 22:00

For me, everything looks normal both logged in and logged out.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021 - 20:45

From your website:

What license does your music fall under?

My license is exactly the same as CC by Attribution 4.0 with one restriction: The use of my music in any media that violates Youtube community standards is prohibited. In other words, you can't use my music in obscene material. Please see my About page for the full license.

I understand you wanting to not have your work used in obscene material, but YouTube Community Standards is not a license. YouTube Community Standard can change at any time they want. And while I doubt you would take legal action against someone for a misunderstanding, this is a huge red flag. From a legal perspective, it would not be wise to use music with those kinds of terms and conditions.

Wednesday, December 23, 2020 - 09:49

I was just thinking that it might be easier than I thought and I could download every file from https://opengameart.org/sites/default/files/* via the Wayback Machine since it allows wildcards and listing every file/URL it knows with wildcards. It would be as easy as downloading every file from the list of URLs it gives. But then I realized that wouldn't get the licensing for the files. I would instead need to look at https://opengameart.org/content/* pages to get the licensing and then scan those for the file links.

I'm honestly not that great of a scripter. I was gifted a bunch of storage space and have been making backups of things that I think might get lost to time.

Tuesday, December 22, 2020 - 23:19

I suppose if I had to, I could download what archive.org has saved. That would obviously not be all the files, but it would be a start. The other hard part is downloading the licensing for each file. Not a lot of good having a back up if the you don't know the licensing to use it.

Monday, July 20, 2020 - 21:42

This one seems to have some good sounds. The first and third in particular might match what you want. https://opengameart.org/content/magic-spell-sfx

Monday, December 10, 2018 - 20:56

As others sort of mentioned, I would say the best way is to find an artist who has the style you like and look at their other work. I understand what you mean though. When I was creating a bunch of pixel art assets for one giant submission, I kept pushing myself to add as many useful things as I could. I wanted my submission to have enough art to get a person started on a game without having to look for more art assets. Some other people post art packs like that as well.

Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - 18:44

Here's an entry I quickly made. It supposed to be similar to the sound effect in Life is Strange when the character is reversing time. https://opengameart.org/content/reversing-time-stuck-in-time

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