I need to make some things about copyright clear to you:
Using a similar palette to something else is not a copyright violation.
Using a similar style to something else is not a copyright violation.
It's only a copyright violation if there was actual copying, which clearly did not happen here.
Contrary to what you appear to be telling the world, we take allegations of copyright infringement very seriously here, and we appreciate reports of actual copyright infringement when it takes place.
Some of your allegations of infringement have been correct, and as I said, I appreciate your reports (the offending content has been taken down). Even though you've been exceptionally rude, I'm looking into all of them. However, I have made it clear in another comment that taking inspiration from something isn't a violation of copyright law, even if the source of that inspiration is obvious.
You can't copy a specific character, but it's perfectly legal to have generic humans, orcs, dwarves, and undead, even if they're in a style that's obviously inspired by Warcraft.
So, I'd like to ask a few things of you:
In the future, when you claim that there's a violation of copyright, don't be rude and sarcastic about it. Nastiness isn't something that this community needs.
Don't make claims about copyright violations if there's no copyright violation going on.
Provide links with real evidence.
Again, to reiterate, I take all of these claims seriously. There is no "clique" or other type of conspiracy here on OGA to allow unlicensed art to be posted here; in fact, it's very important to me that game developers are safe using the assets they get from here, and that means I need to take these reports seriously regardless of who they came from or who they are against.
In conclusion: Neither I nor the community in general have any desire to be your adversary about any of this stuff. If you want to sift through the archives and look for copyright issues, I would be extremely grateful for that; however, you need to be aware that I can't just take things down unless you give me enough evidence to look into it myself. I would also appreciate it if you stopped assuming malice every time you see a potential issue. Just report the issue without being rude about it, and let me dig into it. Note that if I don't respond to you, I am not deliberately ignoring you; sometimes I just don't see messages. Feel free to send me an admin message, catch me on IRC, post to the forums, talk to another admin, or do anything you need to to get my attention. I hope that you're willing to work with us.
One other thing, if someone is rude to you personally, I would prefer that in the future you take it up with me rather than deleting all of your art, then taking your ball and going home. I would rather deal with rudeness directly than have someone delete all their art assets and walk off without ever letting me know that there was a problem. Unfortunately, I can't personally police all of the comments on the site, but I'm more than willing to deal with issues if I'm made aware of them.
Yeah, I'm still planning on it, although it should be noted that I'm only planning on an OGA-BY at this time.
I understand that we may want to avoid the appearance that OGA endorses this particular license over other ones, so if someone has any suggestions for names, I'm happy to listen.
Note that the name will need to sound reasonable and also make it clear that it's analogous to CC-BY. That is, the name should be in the form of ____-BY. If I don't get any good ones, I'm just going to go with OGA-BY.
Just wanted to let you know that I support this project. I've got a couple of notes:
Your license on the website is CC-BY-SA, but you say to contact you for commercial use. Just so you're aware, CC-BY-SA explicitly allows commercial use. (You may already know that -- it's fine to ask people to contact you, and most people will, but you can't actually require it and still have the license be CC-BY-SA.)
Back when we did the Liberated Pixel Cup, we had a lot of luck when we put together a style guide and a color palette. The LPC art set is very consistent, especially given how many people contributed to it. For best results, I'd suggest making a style guide. :)
Sorry, it's an old joke. Back in the 90s, there was this ad campaign for a shoe company (don't remember which), and the tagline was "The Revolution will not be televised."
Regarding copyright (note that I am not a lawyer, but since I run this site I've spent a lot of time gaining an understanding of copyright):
Legally, there's a difference between "copying" something and taking inspiration from something. Spiky blond hair isn't something that can be copyrighted. What you can copyright are individual instances of spiky blond hair -- for instance, if someone lifted the hair verbatim from a DBZ sprite, then that would be a violation of copyright. Since this is an original creation, though, it's not an issue, even if it's clearly reminiscent of DBZ.
TL;DR: There are no copyright issues here, as far as I can tell. :)
When we get into the big improvements to searching and curation (which seem likely to happen in a few months, at this rate), the color palette is something that I think would be a good candidate to include in search metadata. This means that we might want to have some option for people to upload palettes (it would be particularly cool if we could accept palette files in whatever format people use to upload them, then convert them automatically to all of the popular palette file formats, since converting them manually for different art programs can be kind of a pain).
If we do this, it'll have to be separate from the normal art upload process, as I wouldn't want people putting licenses on palettes other than CC0 (I'm not sure you can even copyright them, since they're just a list of colors, and if you can, Pantone has shown that no good can come of it).
Anyway, it's something to think about. This isn't something I'm going to pursue until we hit our next funding goal, so now is a great time to talk about it. :)
@undesired: It looks to me like qubodup answered you and then you ignored him. The game labels here are obviously meant to be similar to the real thing, but that in itself doesn't necessarily constitute a derivative work. In fact, you can see the exact same thing on TV shows (for instance, someone drinking from a red can of "Cola" that's clearly meant to look like Coke, but isn't).
I don't belive these constitute a derivative work.
@undesired: I need you to be specific about what you're talking about. Because right now it seems to me like Sound Ideas and qubodup may have gotten the explosion sound from the same public domain video. Is that possible, or am I misunderstanding something?
@undesired
I need to make some things about copyright clear to you:
Contrary to what you appear to be telling the world, we take allegations of copyright infringement very seriously here, and we appreciate reports of actual copyright infringement when it takes place.
Some of your allegations of infringement have been correct, and as I said, I appreciate your reports (the offending content has been taken down). Even though you've been exceptionally rude, I'm looking into all of them. However, I have made it clear in another comment that taking inspiration from something isn't a violation of copyright law, even if the source of that inspiration is obvious.
You can't copy a specific character, but it's perfectly legal to have generic humans, orcs, dwarves, and undead, even if they're in a style that's obviously inspired by Warcraft.
So, I'd like to ask a few things of you:
Again, to reiterate, I take all of these claims seriously. There is no "clique" or other type of conspiracy here on OGA to allow unlicensed art to be posted here; in fact, it's very important to me that game developers are safe using the assets they get from here, and that means I need to take these reports seriously regardless of who they came from or who they are against.
In conclusion: Neither I nor the community in general have any desire to be your adversary about any of this stuff. If you want to sift through the archives and look for copyright issues, I would be extremely grateful for that; however, you need to be aware that I can't just take things down unless you give me enough evidence to look into it myself. I would also appreciate it if you stopped assuming malice every time you see a potential issue. Just report the issue without being rude about it, and let me dig into it. Note that if I don't respond to you, I am not deliberately ignoring you; sometimes I just don't see messages. Feel free to send me an admin message, catch me on IRC, post to the forums, talk to another admin, or do anything you need to to get my attention. I hope that you're willing to work with us.
One other thing, if someone is rude to you personally, I would prefer that in the future you take it up with me rather than deleting all of your art, then taking your ball and going home. I would rather deal with rudeness directly than have someone delete all their art assets and walk off without ever letting me know that there was a problem. Unfortunately, I can't personally police all of the comments on the site, but I'm more than willing to deal with issues if I'm made aware of them.
P.S. I'm sorry for hijacking this thread.
Yeah, I'm still planning on it, although it should be noted that I'm only planning on an OGA-BY at this time.
I understand that we may want to avoid the appearance that OGA endorses this particular license over other ones, so if someone has any suggestions for names, I'm happy to listen.
Note that the name will need to sound reasonable and also make it clear that it's analogous to CC-BY. That is, the name should be in the form of ____-BY. If I don't get any good ones, I'm just going to go with OGA-BY.
You don't have to comply with all the licenses -- just the one that fits your needs the best.
Greets!
Just wanted to let you know that I support this project. I've got a couple of notes:
Best of luck with your project!
Bart
Sorry, it's an old joke. Back in the 90s, there was this ad campaign for a shoe company (don't remember which), and the tagline was "The Revolution will not be televised."
Regarding copyright (note that I am not a lawyer, but since I run this site I've spent a lot of time gaining an understanding of copyright):
Legally, there's a difference between "copying" something and taking inspiration from something. Spiky blond hair isn't something that can be copyrighted. What you can copyright are individual instances of spiky blond hair -- for instance, if someone lifted the hair verbatim from a DBZ sprite, then that would be a violation of copyright. Since this is an original creation, though, it's not an issue, even if it's clearly reminiscent of DBZ.
TL;DR: There are no copyright issues here, as far as I can tell. :)
So I have some thoughts on this:
When we get into the big improvements to searching and curation (which seem likely to happen in a few months, at this rate), the color palette is something that I think would be a good candidate to include in search metadata. This means that we might want to have some option for people to upload palettes (it would be particularly cool if we could accept palette files in whatever format people use to upload them, then convert them automatically to all of the popular palette file formats, since converting them manually for different art programs can be kind of a pain).
If we do this, it'll have to be separate from the normal art upload process, as I wouldn't want people putting licenses on palettes other than CC0 (I'm not sure you can even copyright them, since they're just a list of colors, and if you can, Pantone has shown that no good can come of it).
Anyway, it's something to think about. This isn't something I'm going to pursue until we hit our next funding goal, so now is a great time to talk about it. :)
I need links that provide evidence of infringement. I still don't know what video you're referring to.
@undesired: It looks to me like qubodup answered you and then you ignored him. The game labels here are obviously meant to be similar to the real thing, but that in itself doesn't necessarily constitute a derivative work. In fact, you can see the exact same thing on TV shows (for instance, someone drinking from a red can of "Cola" that's clearly meant to look like Coke, but isn't).
I don't belive these constitute a derivative work.
@undesired: I need you to be specific about what you're talking about. Because right now it seems to me like Sound Ideas and qubodup may have gotten the explosion sound from the same public domain video. Is that possible, or am I misunderstanding something?
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