split from DB Passenger set (copyright discussion)

[Dextro]

Well it works quite well but only with certain languages like portugese-english.

cu, Spaceball

Nope that is one off the worst translations I've seen so far in babelfish LOOOL

PS: I'm from portugal so I know english to portuguese translation sucks

[ChrisCF]

[Note: I have no objections to any of this being split, on the strict condition that it remains in public view.]

Thank you Michael for finally making the effort to respond to the community, instead of simply making idle threats to Owen and ignoring any response. You seem to make some valid points, however, I can't say I agree with your reasoning in most cases, particularly as it places your own interests above the community, but mroe on that later. I'm not a lawyer, however I have consulted a law student predicted a first-class pass in their degree.

But that´s not because I am a "bad guy", it´s because that this forums is one of the places where people are a) notoriously ignorant of copyright issues and b) some others like to deny copyright at all.

OK, so your point here is that you're not a bad guy, but instead everyone on this forum is. Right. Great start there. Unless you actually care to back this up, do be aware that what you say here is actually libellous.

The DB Set as well as all other .grfs released by me (execept the very first TempSet and
ArcticSet which were under the GPL) are copyrighted, graphics as well as the code, as is the case with every computer program.

The "licence" for these sets allows using, copying and distribution. It does not allow modifying of any part of the .grfs nor including it into other software, e.g. other .grfs.

Software licences may grant rights above and beyond a user's normal rights, however, they may not take them away - they cannot specify that a user is not allowed to do something which they are perfectly entitled to do with property they have legally obtained. Note that anything in your licence which forbids people modifying them is technically unlawful (note that you don't have to pay money for a copy to own it when they're offered freely to you). I would ask that you at least afford people the respect to exercise their own legal rights, without "bullying" them (for want of a better word) into believing that they don't have them.

Please do inform yourself about international copyright law if you have lack of knowledge with regards to this.

Unfortunately, citing copyright law is all well and good when you don't actually have the necessary legal standing to enforce your position. To bring any action before a court, you must have the standing to do so. You may have standing if and only if:

1. There has been actual harm - that is to say, you have suffered physical injury or actual loss of earnings or physical property. Notional loss of earnings is not sufficient, neither is the loss of something still in your posession.
2. You are the one who has suffered actual harm (you can't bring a case for a third party)
3. The way in which you have suffered actual harm is a current offence in the jurisdiction of the court.
4. You are within the jurisdiction of the court.
5. Your target is within the jurisdiction of the court.

Since, in all of these cases there is no actual harm, and particularly in threatening Owen point 5 does not apply, you would not have a case even if you did take action.

OTOH, I´m working closely together with many other developers and there has never been any complaints about usage of my code or graphics.

This is certainly of dubious veracity, particularly since you have always worked outside what is perceived to be "the community".

But here we are again.

So what has happened? Some people want to build yet another "DB Set" and Saskia uploaded "work done so far". But this file didn´t contain "own work" only. It contained also *original graphics* derived from the DB Set, which is not allowed according to the DB Set licence and the aforementioned copyright laws.

Wrong again. This contained 40 sprites taken from the DB set. I am reliably informed that recent releases contain 4265 real sprites. 40 sprites is 0.93% of the total. The law as it applies to the server is that a "reasonable proportion" may be copied without clearance for purposes of research and studdy, or review and criticism. There is no question that the use here was for reviewing progress in this set, and neither can it be suggested that 0.93% is not a "reasonable proportion", hence what we have here is a case of fair dealing, which is *not* an infringement.

Most importantly, however, is that the author for the purposes of computer-generated works in international law is "the person who made the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work". Thus, the "authors" of any and all sets under UK law (being the law which governs not only TTD but also Owen, and therefore all activities on this server - there are no differences between English and Scottish law in this area) and as a result the "authors" to be recognised for the purposes international law are the entire patch team (due to the nature of the patch, this extends to anyone that has ever contributed any code to it), and you would need to obtain the permission of each and every one of them to transfer copyright to yourself.

The real problem is that the graphics from that file would have been included, possibly modified, into some other vehicle set just because other people wouldn´t know it´s original material from the DB Set. That´s why I asked Owen to remove that file.

Then I believe your responsibility is not to restrict the creative freedom of others to protect your own (something which I feel is not only unforgivable, but utterly reprehensible), but to ensure that people know that they are seeing your work. Would it be unreasonable of me to expect you to drop a polite message to *relevant* individuals saying "Hey, you've got some of my work in there. Can you at least make sure I'm credited?" - is that really too much?

So, the *legal case* is chrystal clear.

Indeed it is - you don't have one, and that is that.

An equally severe second point is that - as always! - those people who violate copyright and talk bad about the copyright holder when trapped, are finding again their cheap excuses: "case closed". That´s really "as always" and o/c that´s one of the reasons I prefer to not use this forum.

I think the reason people speak critically of you here is because they find your methods unreasonable, and disrespectful. After all, nothing in your work gives you the right to talk to people like sh*t for what ultimately are *innocent* mistakes. You give your time freely to work on these projects, much like the rest of us, however, you must earn respect from your users, rather than simply demanding it. You can't call credit against donations. You can't insist that somehow people owe you something in return for work you have done in your own time of your own will.

Saskia "never planned to officially release them" - but she did it right here! Another guy once did a screen-scrapping of some freight stations to be released by me - but "they should never leave my PC". Petr Vaneks CSD set was "never intended for release". And so on and on.

Again, you're not being reasonable here. Never treat as malice that which can be adequately attributed to stupidity. People make mistakes, and if someone sees that the rewawrd for making a small mistake is having you on your high horse complaining to them, threatening them with legal action, they'll be inclined to make fewer mistakes. However, the only way that they can reasonably be expected to make fewer mistakes is to do less work, and *that* is why your attitude is going to drive people away from the TTD modding community (one in which of your own admission you do not participate). There is a world of difference between positively contributing to the community, and dumping files with unlawful licences and expecting people to instantly have respect for you. That's not the way it works.

And I bet that there are still people here who think that Saskia did right and I did wrong.

As far as I'm concerned, Saskia may have done wrong, but you are definitely in the wrong here. Your behaviour is unacceptable, your attitude is unacceptable, and your excuses for said are unacceptable.

And o/c there would be future copyright violations just because new users arrive but "copyright" isn´t an issue on ttd-forums but something evil like M$.

Here's a suggestion for you, something that has worked for everyone else here much to the benefit of the end-users. How about you just stop caring about it? Some of us here are working on these projects because we genuinely want to improve the game experience, because modding can be fun, and because we're enjoying it. If you shared these motives, you'd understand. You would be grateful that someone thinks your work is good enough that they want to use it, and would not be standing in their way. This is not the first time you've made threats here which have turned out to be bogus. There was the infamous case where you complained that someone used work issued under the GPL in a way that was well within their rights to do, and now you're complaining that someone has engaged in fair dealing of your work. At this point, I'm *seriously* questioning whether you are working in good faith, and whether your continued association with TTDPatch isn't harming its reputation. You are not infalliable, and the universe does not revolve around you. Please grow up, cease and desist your ongoing campaign to eliminate any project you disagree with.

It is a known fact that none of these incidents are doing any harm to anyone. Your action is entirely counter-productive.

It´s simply like patchman said: "to take them first and hope for forgiveness later is rather rude" but there are people who *always* do it this way. I have a well-defined stand for these cases.

Unfortunately, your well-defined stand on this case is going to kill the whole graphics community, and drive people out of the public scene for fear of being slapped with an infringement notice by some self-righteous jerk on his high horse who has no respect for other people, the hard work they put in, and their fundamental rights. You can't ask people to respect you when you can't even find it in yourself to respect other people.

[Spaceball]

Well it works quite well but only with certain languages like portugese-english.

cu, Spaceball

Nope that is one off the worst translations I've seen so far in babelfish LOOOL

PS: I'm from portugal so I know english to portuguese translation sucks

When I let translate text rom french or portugese pages into english I can at least understand it. I would never try to translate the whole page. So I don't know if there is a difference. Certain textparts seems to be okay. I can't check it because I speak none of those languages but it seems to work.

cu, Spaceball

cu, Spaceball

[michael blunck]

[...]

Well ChrisCF, I don´t have the time to fight a fruitless discussion with a guy apparently prejudiced when it comes to copyright issues.

That´s why I´ll only make some short annotations to put some things right for the potential reader.

As usual, let´s begin with the personal imputations.

Unfortunately, your well-defined stand on this case is going to kill the whole graphics community, and drive people out of the public scene for fear of being slapped with an infringement notice by some self-righteous jerk on his high horse who has no respect for other people, the hard work they put in, and their fundamental rights. You can't ask people to respect you when you can't even find it in yourself to respect other people.

From your words I must admit that you´re one of those people seeing everything under your own selfish perspective. I don´t know you but you seem to know me too well to talk bad about me even in my absence, there are many examples to be found on this forums.

Well, let me tell you, it´s just the other way round:

I´m not "going to kill the whole graphics community", instead I have been the person which started that (ttd-related graphics) work at all and set the scene. I´ve "invented" most things now used by so many others and I advised the protagonists of ttd´s new graphics - things I did never heard from your side.

I don´t "drive people out of the public scene", instead I´ve encouraged many people to begin work with their own graphics projects and I always gave and give help whenever it was/is required.

I´m surely not a "self-righteous jerk on his high horse", but maybe this is a symbol which is most adequate for your own well-known behaviour?

You claim I have "no respect for other people, the hard work they put in, and their fundamental rights"? I tell you that there are hundreds of people out there which have high respect for me, the hard work I put in and o/c they´re respecting my fundamental rights. Except you, o/c.

And for sure, I always respect other people, but OTOH, it´s pretty much obvious that I also try to get them respect my copyright. It´s all easy, except for you, o/c.

Recurrencing to the copyright issue, I´d like to tell you that you´re wrong here too:

My work is initially released under the german "Urheberrecht" (UrhG) [1] which is in compliance with the EU Copyright Directive 2001/29 (EUCD) which the United Kingdom has implemented as well.

In contrast to your allegation, for a copyright issue it´s not essential to suffer "loss of earnings". That´s totally irrelevant, though a common myth.

As far as you´re referencing to "fair dealing", this concept is a rare exception to overall copyright which is quite restricted:

"Fair dealing with a work for the purpose of criticism or review, of that or another work or of a performance of a work, does not infringe any copyright in the work provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement." (30 (1) CDPA [2])

Well, you see, it´s not applicable here because

- the purpose wasn´t "criticism or review" but the intention was to modify the graphics
- the graphics weren´t accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement

And that´s exactly my point. If Saskia had posted those graphics with a proper acknowledgment for "criticism or review" I surely had not stepped in. I have more important things to do. Instead, by not labelling those graphics correctly, there was danger they would get lost "in the net" and later used/included by other people which would be clearly a copyright violation.

Apart from this, from a legal point it´s already an infringement of copyright to distribute only the graphics without the code and/or documentation. "Fair dealing" with respect to computer programs does cover only

"decompilation to [...] gain information vital to creating an independent program to interact with the decompiled program and provided that the information obtained by decompilation is not used for any other purpose." [3]

Which isn´t the case here, too.

HTH
EOD
Michael

[1] http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bundesrecht ... nhalt.html
[2] http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Uk ... htm#mdiv30
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_ ... base_Right
[/url]

[Hyronymus]

Chris, can you please stop generalizing to get your right? If Michael writes that there are people on this forums that neglect and/or reject copyright the conclusion can never be that EVERYONE on this forum supports the view as described by Michael. Read carefully, judge arguments from the other person's point of view too and try not to force you're right upon other people.

BTW: You aren't allowed to speak for me even though you're a moderator and I'm only a mortal. When I joined this forums I joined to share what I wanted to say, not to be told what I'm thinking. Not by anyone [and to clear things up: this is an extended explanation due to your generalizing tendancy].

[Born Acorn]

Yeah I agree. Michael is a pillar of the community and inspires new people to start GFX. If anything he is helping it grow, not killing it.

[Hyronymus]

I forgot to stress that in my earlier post. The Dutch Trainset was fully inspired by the DBset. I had (and still have) visions of the beautiful Dutch trains crashing into cars, eachother and also transporting passengers and cargo. I also got the courage to redesign the (ugly) TTD roads when I saw what the possibilities of grf-editing were. I owe A LOT to Josef and Michael, not just for helping me out of my self-made NFO errors but also for thinking along.

[Aegir]

I agree with everything in the four prior posts.

Go Michael!

[prissi]

I was quiet for a long time, since I do not think this task should degenerate into a copyright thread. But I want to support Michael. The current situation was probably a very bad constellation, since it was nothing ment to be released. It should teach us, to be a little more careful in future, was is public, and what is private.

And now my five cents:

Creating art and giving it away for free is a very noble thing to to. The only thing, you will get back is honour. To recieve that, the copyright needs to be obeyed. This is not only the law, this are essential human courtensy rules.

I maintain in the moment simutrans and some japanese graphic scenario there. I contacted the people before included their graphics. Nobody ever disagreed on the use, all artists just wanted to be credited. This crediting is crucial and best would be a solution, that would include such information into the (grf-)files. Until then, everybody should take care, because nothing spoils motivation as much as the free as in "I don't care" mentality.

[Saskia]

... - the purpose wasn´t "criticism or review" but the intention was to modify the graphics ...

The intention was to create completely new graphics, so that your copyright would NOT be violated But I already told you that more than one time. It's your problem if you don't believe me ...

And guys, please stop to tell me that I don't care about copyrights ... that's such a bulls***! Download the Transrapid package, and see the notes about Michael's copyright Or look at the BR 111 family picture ...

Back on topic: They look good, Spaceball If you are don't sure about the dimensions, use some public domain(!) passenger cars like purnos or mine as base

[Colonel Sheperd]

Oh f*cking hell, not another copyright war .

_____________________________________________

Anyways, i don't understand why you don't allow people to post their stuff, EVEN if they give YOU part of the credit. And the stuff about cornelius' freight stations, it was HIS work, you cant copyright an IDEA. If he had copied it from your screens, pasted it and recolored it, ok, he should gave you some credit. But that you want it COMPLETLY removed, i just can't understand. Make your licenses like this: You can only modify and/or include these graphics in a set if you drop me a line about it and give me credit.

Regards, simmer

[AndersI]

Sorry, but I just had to post on this...

I'm not a lawyer,...

and I think it shows...

Note that anything in your licence which forbids people modifying them is technically unlawful ...

Of course people can modify them as much as they want, for personal use, but there nothing to discuss when it comes to publishing modified works. You don't do it. Period.

This is certainly of dubious veracity, particularly since you have always worked outside what is perceived to be "the community".

What has this got to do with anything? Are yours the only ways of discussion and distribution? Michael is certainly *in* the community, he works *for* the community, in *his* way.

The law as it applies to the server is that a "reasonable proportion" may be copied without clearance for purposes of research and studdy, or review and criticism. There is no question that the use here was for reviewing progress in this set, and neither can it be suggested that 0.93% is not a "reasonable proportion", hence what we have here is a case of fair dealing, which is *not* an infringement.

Show me that law! If 108 people take your stance then 100% of "the works" could be placed here, right? Why should works that are not modifiable be shown "for review"?

Most importantly, however, is that the author for the purposes of computer-generated works in international law is "the person who made the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work". Thus, the "authors" of any and all sets under UK law (being the law which governs not only TTD but also Owen, and therefore all activities on this server - there are no differences between English and Scottish law in this area) and as a result the "authors" to be recognised for the purposes international law are the entire patch team (due to the nature of the patch, this extends to anyone that has ever contributed any code to it), and you would need to obtain the permission of each and every one of them to transfer copyright to yourself.

Nothing done by the patch or anything else on this server is needed to create graphics. Using your line of reasoning, you should ask Bill Gates before you post a message.

Then I believe your responsibility is not to restrict the creative freedom of others to protect your own (something which I feel is not only unforgivable, but utterly reprehensible)

And here's the central point - ChrisCF thinks he should have the right to do whatever he wants with whatever he finds. I'd say: Get down from your high horses, and let each one work in the way *he* (or she) wants. Stop pushing your own opinion onto everybody else.

Unfortunately, your well-defined stand on this case is going to kill the whole graphics community, and drive people out of the public scene

Actually I fear that your stand that "everything should be free" is equally effective in driving people away! You have to realize that people have *different* opinions, and no-one has a patentable thruth that can be pushed down others throats.

[Patchman]

I'll lock this now. It's getting pointless... make a new topic in the OT forum if you care to continue the discussion.