Plagiates and legal issues
Usually if the game is free and it's assets are based on non-free or unlicenced assets most authors doesn't seem to care, but still this doesn't prevent from legal consequences. I've read about stories where wrong asset licensing lead to immensely high compensation payments, even for non commercial use.
Keeping that in mind, in order to prevent that: if using other peoples art/sounds/music an important step before releasing anything would be a plagiate check. Given the current legal status in Germany and mostly rest of Europe (and I suspect US too, but I'm not sure) the responsibility of checking whether used assets are plagiates or not lies at the creator of the derived content (in my case game). This is true even if it comes from a source that wrongly tagged the art under a wrong license. If sued it is expected to sue the person who wrongly granted the permission of use.
Content providing sites as OpenGameArt or DeviantArt definitely have problems with edited, wrongly tagged or rereleased content. (on DeviantArt there is so much of such content that I'd hesitate using anyithing from there). From what I've seen the community here seems to prevent such cases, still it is not perfect. The "legal solution" of a "sueing chain" also seems inapplicable on the internet.
Communication between the developer and artist seems to be key here. But often unexperienced artists are not aware what a plagiate is and asking stuff such as "Are you 100% sure you did not use even parts of other peoples work or if you did, are they aware of that or you are legally alowed to do so" seems rude and cumbersome. Also many creators are inactive or ignore messages.
How do others handle this? Am I giving this too much thought?
I think if you download something here under a particular license then you have to agree to that license, if the file has a different license elsewhere then it is usually picked up and removed for licensing issues, however the odd one may slip the net. As long as you can prove the file you use is accompanied by the license and you adhere to the license you haven't done anything wrong really, however the author of the file, or user that submitted the file in the first place may have committed an licensing offence, so it should be taken up with them for legalities.
Example: if you have 2 of the same artwork, one is public domain and one is protected.
you download the public domain and use, that's fine, hey it's public domain right?, but someone has recognised that it's there work and is protected, so they jump up and down on you, you say hey but I got this here with this license, they say ok, we must investigate this, so you have to take down you project whilst we find out who uploaded the original artwork. Then they should be liable really I think, so you have to find something else to use, complete bummer. Not sure what happens though if the uploader Cannot be found, long as you can prove the license you got with the file.
thats my understanding anyway, anyone feel free to correct my opinion.:)
Chasersgaming | Support | Monstropolis |
You're overthinking it. Unless you have evidence of plagiarism or copyright infringement, you can make the fair assumption that what something appears to be is what it really is. To do otherwise will put you (and any company) into constant paralysis over legal paranoia.
The "stories" you've heard are almost certainly only that -- fiction. "Immensely high" compensation over non-commercial use is incredibly rare. I'd be shocked if you could offer even one verifiable example of that.
Further, everything is derivative of something (even if only the natural world). Copyright is obsessed with dichotomies like "idea versus expression" and "original versus derivative", but the reality is that all dichotomies are oversimplifications at best and outright false at worst. That's why asking a question like "are you really sure you didn't copy anything" is utterly pointless. Everyone copies, always, all the time, whether they realize it or not. That's the very nature of information.
Assuming you have actual serious questions about copyright or IP law generally, ask a lawyer (preferably in meat space). The internet is one of the worst places to gather information about serious topics like law or medicine, and it gets worse about that with every passing year due to ever-increasing homogenization and commercialization. (See also the thread at http://opengameart.org/forumtopic/fan-based-games where I just posted a rebuttal to a long stream of nonsense.)
Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify the "stories" are actual newspaper articles i've read. Only recently a case of a german law firm became public that used webcrawlers and systematically sent cease and desist letters for bloggers and webadmins. They claimed sums between 500 and 5000€, which might not be much for a company but certainly it is for indie devs, thats what I meant by "immensely high".
"The internet is one of the worst places to gather information about serious topics like law or medicine"
You're right there that's because people seem to know very little about those topics (or even worse half truths or nonsense), copyright law is a prime example, that's why I posted here in the first place. Judging on the number of sprite-rips that get released on the internet mostly using a wrong license or using sentences like "feel free to use this" I would argue that one can not make a fair assumption that the artist indeed knows copyright law and has done everything right.
Even on OGA various non-free material was released without anyone noticing for months. I found this: http://opengameart.org/content/random-spritesheets and found some issues (see my comment there) that initially made me think about the topic.
The best I can do is leave a "flame" comment because I don't have a "Flag for copyright violation" button. All I can do is either that or report spam. The only times they actually get dealt with is if said plagiarist has a temper tantrum for the staff to notice there's something wrong with the asset, or if Snabisch doens't bury the recent post history with sugar filler to every submission, congratulating even 3d models submitted as only picture files. Many obvious infractions i've pointed out months and years ago are still here, including the Earthbound and DragonballZ characters
Relatedly in the context of Free content development, version control systems don't work in favor of removing infractions, because it'll be in the history, and revising hsitory to cleanse copyrighted material is a big no-no to "Freedom", etc. I had to retract a big release in the past because some mapper insisted some textures were Free but were really NC from CGtextures. Since then i've had a steady stream of sexist/racist slurs, "feminazi", etc. headed my way and no more contributors.
Cleared long tangent copyright discussion from years ago.
Click "Report spam". I actually do review those. It is the preferred way to draw attention to assets with copyright issues. It helps if you comment with details of the infringement, too, but just a comment alone often goes unnoticed. When I say a comment is helpful, I mean something more than just "this is suspiciously similar to a copyrighted work". Give details, evidence, screenshots, links, comparisons, something. I don't know everything about every IP, so it helps having all you-guys's expertise added in. :)
There is a lot of older stuff that I don't know about that I'm sure people have drawn attention to, but I'm a relatively new moderator, so I wouldn't have seen those complaints at the time. For others, the potential infringement is unclear or borderline, not obvious. For example http://opengameart.org/content/elbaun has some substantial difference and little indication of adaptation from the Ness character beyond the clothing coloring, so I decided to leave it alone until someone could provide more information.
That's true. Sometimes stuff gets missed. Don't be afraid to draw attention to it. Mark it as spam so the moderators notice it. It doesn't guarantee it will get removed, though. Sometimes a moderator decides it isn't a violation. Other times they just continue to miss it. If you think something isn't getting the attention it needs even after marking it, PM me about it.
Yup. Report spam. :)
REPORT SPAM!
CLICK IT!
--Medicine Storm