Copyleft trolls and videos of games?
Monday, March 14, 2022 - 18:14
After reading about copyleft trolls, I'm curious how this would affect videos of content that uses Creative Commons licensed content (except CC0). Let's say I make a game. I use some music under the CC-BY 3.0 license. I properly credit the assets. Fans of the game post videos of it. The videos don't credit the CC-BY 3.0 music. Would that open up the potential for a copyleft troll? In countires that have "fair use," it would probably count, but you still have to go to court to prove it. In some countries, there is no fair use. Rather than copyleft trolls attacking game creators, could they find games that use their assets and then look for videos that don't credit them?
Hmm... Maybe. I think that there's a clause in CC licenses that allows fair use internationally though, not sure.
--Medicine Storm1. 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.
yeah, totally. cc0. cc0. cc0.
cc0.
That would be insane. Why would the let's-players get in trouble? Let's-play videos are (generally) under Fair Use and are (generally) not considered derivatives. I wasn't saying Fair Use doesn't apply to any content using CC licenses. I was saying Fair Use has nothing to do with CC licenses. They are two entirely separate things. 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. That is to say, if what they're doing is Fair Use, they wouldn't be liable at all.
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. Blizzard isn't suing the makers of the Leeroy Jenkins video even though it consists entirely of uncredited World of Warcraft intellectual property.
Substitute any license into that sentence and it still holds the same weight. Because the issue is not the license, it's copyright trolls. Observe:
--Medicine StormMany 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.
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.
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.
True, but I think that suggests a solution to your concern. Make a streaming policy for Minetest. Perhaps I don't understand the concern, though.
You have to do that anyway. That's a requirement of CC-BY. If Minetest uses CC-BY assest, then it must make clear that those assets require attribution... by way of indicating the license and giving attribution. I do see your point about streamers not bothering to scour the credits page for that kind of thing, but a streaming policy would resolve that if the goal is to encourage (safe) streaming of Minetest. Again, the streamers only have to be concerned with that if they aren't protected by Fair Use for some reason. Regardless, a URL to a credits page in the video description is considered acceptable attribution. If a troll wants to belabor that point, I submit the issue is not any license you could use, attribution or otherwise, it is trusting assets from a troll... which I am constantly on guard for anyone doing that here.
That certainly wasn't my intent. If I am arguing against a position that doesn't exist, it is only because I am misunderstanding your position. To be honest, suggesting that streamers will get sued over video of a community-supported game that uses CC-BY assets seems like a straw man argument as well. Though my goal is not to argue against you, only to assuage any concern you may have over the use of any specific open source licenses; because I believe it really is both low risk and not the root of the problem.
--Medicine StormI think let's play videos are different kind of beast. They are technically advertisements, and in the EU soon they will have to be marked as such (as well as all influencer videos). If anybody is about to sue, then that should be the streamer suing the game maker for not paying properly for the created ad.
Also, a let's play video isn't a derivative, that's true, but if it's made after a game using CC assets, then most likely it's legally a collective work of those assets. But the legal status is not clear in this case.
Cheers,
bzt