Transport Tycoon Forums

I decided to open this topic to keep the main OpenGFX thread henceforth clean of copyright discussion on the aforementioned subject.

This should be what has been said so far:

FooBar wrote:The good thing about the screenshot below is that it's 100% [0] copyright free!

Roujin wrote:Actually the red silhouettes of the original sprites might make it non-copyright-free because they're derivative works, but I'm not an expert on that...

AndersI wrote:Sorry for butting in, but I marvel at the thought that the graphics would be copyright OK just because they are redrawn. Normally it is *not* OK even to have seen the originals, and then drawing the same thing yourself. You have to have a 'clean room' approach to actually stand a chance in court. And then there's the 'look and feel' which is very hard to keep, and still not infringe...

OTOH, I doubt that OTTD will go to court, and I applaud the effort - but don't go around believing that OTTD will suddenly be OK by the law just because of this...

michael blunck wrote:Indeed, from a legal POV, this is a more than dubious project.

Quote:

don't go around believing that OTTD will suddenly be OK by the law just because of this...

When reading the forums, one gets the strong impression that even developers (and other "high-ranking" forum members) are putting high expectations in this undertaking.

FooBar wrote:Why wouldn't they? From a legal point of view, I think this project is not less legal than OpenTTD or TTDPatch. Let's not dicuss the legal status of OpenTTD or TTDPatch here, as that has been discussed many times in the past.

So if Atari doesn't care about a TTD clone being out there, it very most likely wouldn't care about a graphics clone with more that 50% of the graphics not even being clones, but completely drawn from scratch and looking very differently.

GeekToo wrote:michael blunck wrote:

Indeed, from a legal POV, this is a more than dubious project.

No, it's not. It may be true that the end result is not completely legal, but at least it moves the legal status of the graphics from a plain copy to 50% original sprites and 50% derivative work, and 0% plain copies. So any project that tries to divert from the original graphics is not dubious imo, but should be encouraged. It's just not the final project.

Back to the graphics: I tried the subtropic base graphics FooBar posted, and it's really goodlooking! Congratulations to all of the contributors, I'm never going to use the original tropical grf again, I think. (and maybe you should mention that it only works if you move all the obg files but the opengfx.obg file out of the data directory )

peter1138 wrote:FooBar wrote:

completely drawn from scratch and looking very differently.

Doesn't look much different to me. It doesn't have to be pixel for pixel the same to be a copy.

Remember, 2 rights makes 1 wrong, or something like that...

athanasios wrote:Wait to see the full product first.
Also the original graphics were meant to display at 640x480. So any comparison should be made on the same resolution.

And I think some people are getting jealous...

DaleStan wrote:AndersI wrote:

Sorry for butting in, but I marvel at the thought that the graphics would be copyright OK just because they are redrawn. Normally it is *not* OK even to have seen the originals, and then drawing the same thing yourself. You have to have a 'clean room' approach to actually stand a chance in court.

Sorta like ludde's 'clean room' implementation of OpenTTD 0.1, right?

*hides*

CommanderZ wrote:Quote:

And I think some people are getting jealous...

It is not only now, I bet it could be tracked at least several months back, if not longer (I don't mean only OpenGFX).

FooBar wrote:peter1138 wrote:

Doesn't look much different to me.

Feel free to remain using the original TTD graphics then.
I don't consider OpenGFX a copy as in the definition of copy. It's even less of a copy than the Chinese starbucks implementation I saw a while ago in the funny pictures section (or was that engrish.com, anyways...). It's not even a derived work, because no single group of pixels [0] has been reused.
I agree that it's a similar work, but take the grass for instance. Is that similar to the TTD grass, or similar to the grass outside your window, with some gridlines added? [1]

Maybe we should get Atari's official statement on the new graphics. If it's something like "do whatever you like, we're not interested in TTD any more", we're completely off the hook. Forever. Or I could just buy the rights to TTD: "Whose baby is that", "What's your angle" and "I'll buy that".


[0]If you look at single pixels, you'll probably find 100% of them reused, but that due to the limited palette colours.
[1]See [2].
[2]Other examples might be more similar to TTD graphics than real world equivalents, but that's the other 50% I talked about earlier.

The copyright objectives of OpenGFX are simple; the rights conferred to the owner of copyright artwork are control of distribution, modification, export of that artwork. Most importantly the owner of the copyright also gives the right to give these right to other people - which is the principle of open source. Therefore the aim of OpenGFX is to create a set of graphical works - sprites - where the copyright owners - the artists - are willing to donate these rights to others by publishing under an open licence.

Artwork copyright works like this: A piece of artwork is copyright by the artist or the employer of the artist if the artist created the artwork as part of their work. Artwork must be creative to be copyrightable.

Making an open version of artwork therefore requires that a similar but original version is made. Original meaning not a derivative work.
To be an original piece of work the artwork cannot (a) include portions of the original or (b) be drawn from direct reference to the original.

In terms of OpenGFX this means:
(a) Don't copy and paste
(b) Don't trace
(b) Don't draw on principles like "I need a building 48 pixels tall with 6 storeys and walls 4 windows wide, just like the original".
The result of your drawing could be identical to the original but so long as it is not a derivative work you would hold the copyright.

OpenGFX is further confused by technical limitations, the result required for function is 8bpp sprites of a specific size, however these are not creative parts of the original design, therefore not copyrightable.

Maybe you should create a tracking table for all the sprites, and have the artists state for either all of their contributions or for specific sprites that they were created without copy-pasting, tracing, and optical copying (looking at the old sprite, then trying to create something similar).

e.g.

I hereby state that the sprites I have contributed to OpenGFX (toyland tree, modified by LordAzamath) are original artwork by me, without any copying, tracing, or creating after the original sprites.

Roujin wrote:...optical copying ...

For instance, if I'd visit the Louvre museum in paris, sit down in front of the Mona Lisa and start painting a painting of that painting. Would that be illegal (given that the museum has no objection to me doing so, and given that Leonardo da Vinci still holds the copyright)?

Now back to OpenGFX.
I've recently drawn the fountain. Because I wanted it to be in the style of the TTD graphics, I had a look at the original first. After that I drew a circle from scratch and worked from there to get a similar, but distinct fountain. The total process with a the original as comparison in the upper left corner is attached below. Would that qualify as "optical copying"?

Since openTTD doesn't make any profit from creating the game. Wouldn't be a waste of money to go to court about artwork that may or may not be derivative, about which it is unsure how many people are using the graphics?

[edit]

AndersI wrote:Sorry for butting in, but I marvel at the thought that the graphics would be copyright OK just because they are redrawn. Normally it is *not* OK even to have seen the originals, and then drawing the same thing yourself. You have to have a 'clean room' approach to actually stand a chance in court. And then there's the 'look and feel' which is very hard to keep, and still not infringe...

OTOH, I doubt that OTTD will go to court, and I applaud the effort - but don't go around believing that OTTD will suddenly be OK by the law just because of this...

Wouldn't this also mean that everyone that has made a (new)grf is likely to have infringmented the copyright?
[/edit]

In my opinion, from years of work in photography, coping with the issues of copyright is:

Optical copying is the process of referring to the detailed position of elements in the original, and making the new version match those positions. Thus, you can look at a fountain sprite, and go draw a fountain with a pond below. The idea of a fountain with a pond below is not copyright, and as long as no effort was made to make the new one look like the old, it should not be a derivative work.

Having said that, without your documented stages, the work is suspicious. A better solution would be to find real life photos of fountains, and draw a sprite based on one of those. In particular, there is no need to have a circular base to our fountain; and that difference would be different enough to show it is a new development.

Just my opinion of course...

NukeBuster wrote:Since openTTD doesn't make any profit from creating the game. Wouldn't be a waste of money to go to court about artwork that may or may not be derivative, about which it is unsure how many people are using the graphics?

If it can push people into buying original graphics from the current TTD owner, then why not?

Maybe we should spend some money on hiring somebody that can figure these things out once and for all?
We can discuss and argue until hell freezes over, but it isn't making much progress on finding the answers imho.

Doesn't this copyright stuff depend on the country that the material is distributed from?

NukeBuster wrote:Doesn't this copyright stuff depend on the country that the material is distributed from?

Not really, no. Almost all countries (including all the ex-USSR ones) are signatories to the Berne Convention which sets out the basis for copyright laws that each local government then implements with its own law that conforms. Some countries go further (eg. USA adds a registration system) but the fundamentals are common to all signatory countries, and are enforceable across international boundaries.

It comes down to a matter of judgement. You have sat down and drawn a fountain, the only input from the original it that it should have a round pool at the bottom. You haven't attempted to copy it entirely. The problem is it is a massive sliding scale and the scale massively limits what can be illustrated.
Eg. the statue - a man on a horse (I think) a redraw could look exactly the same, but supposed to be a lion!

Trivial things cannot be copyrighted. For instance, you cannot successfully claim copyright on a png-image of a black square on a white background, since this is trivial. Or the contents of this forum message, to give another example.
But the problem is: What is trivial? For instance, that fountain may be just a generic fountain, and then there is no copyright. But someone else can argue that it is a specific fountain, and then there would be copyright.

Wikipedia wrote: Threshold of originality is a limit in copyright law which separates copyrightable works from non-copyrightable works based on the principle that only original works could qualify as intellectual property. [...] The meaning of "originality" in that context may be misleading and needs to be clarified: in that case, it is no "never having occurred or existed before" (which would amount to the protection of something new, like in patent protection), but "coming from someone as the originator / author" (insofar as it somehow reflects this author's personality).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_of_originality

As always, the English entry seems to be written by some Americans. In any way, the German article is far more detailed:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schöpfungshöhe

regards
Michael

@michael

It seems you know of some sprites that in your opinnion are derivate works of the original graphics, could you please point them out so others can see if they agree with you and there is a posibility to replace those sprites.

Please stop that pointless discussion about the fountain. Most fountains are round...

it seems to me that some people have an urge to discuss, just for the discussion. People draw inspiration from things all the time, and if something is made from scratch, id say it's an original. Even tho one had a glimse at some others first it's still an original.

Take for example "my" Chimaera. It's looking a bit similar to the official(TTDX official graphics) one, just so that people can understand what it is. But it's still original drawings. Id say the point here must be that people didnt copy/paste pixels from the official sprite, but we may have gotten inspiered by it. Afterall, it's really small scale things with a rather limited palette.

The tiny scale has a massive distortion on what may be regarded as the same. Look at the following, the second and third Google images result for "fountain" - they are clearly different. Resize them to TTD scale - all detail is lost and they are essentially indistinguishable.

With small scale graphics the way the threshold of originality should not change but the understanding of technical limitations due to size must prevail.

ie. all the graphics I have seen are legal - I have taken care to always make sure people have not traced or copy/pasted and the result is suitably distinct from the original given the scale and technical limitations.

gpl the entire project and the problem is solved!

I was more thinking of Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial...

A open license doesn't solve the discussion of certain sprites being illegal.
While I don't think that there are sprites that are illegal due to copyright on the original graphics, others still do.
You can't license work that you shouldn't have created in the first place...

I was more thinking of Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial...

Oh no, please don't select licence that is not dfsg-free. To me that would destroy most of the point in OpenGFX.

Ehm, the point of OpenGFX is not making it possible to include OpenTTD in Debian. While that might be a convenient side-effect for some, the main point is to make it possible to distribute a complete working version of OTTD which doesn't rely on the original graphics.

Besides, I don't see anything in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Fre ... Guidelines which would render the CC BY-NC license DFSG-incompliant. Note that I did not opt for the Share-Alike variant of the CC license.
CC BY-NC pretty much stand for "do whatever you like, as long as you credit me as the author of the original work and don't use the work for commercial purposes".

I definately don't like the GPL, because that allows for "others to make a profit out of what I did for free". CC allows to prohibit this.

Please let me know if I missed the point in the DFSG, so I can have another look at it.