Please clarify no_copyright.txt

Turnipseed · 2019-03-08 15:23:01

I think jason's point is do what you want with his stuff. Just dont tell people his stuff is yours. Its a pretty simple concept. Im failing to see where all the confusion is coming from here

ryanb · 2019-03-08 15:30:00

Turnipseed wrote:

I think jason's point is do what you want with his stuff. Just dont tell people his stuff is yours. Its a pretty simple concept. Im failing to see where all the confusion is coming from here

If that is the case then that should be the statement written. The confusion is placing it in the public domain means it is owned by the public, not by Jason. At least that is my interpretation and why I am asking for clarification.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-08 16:56:23

Eddie:

What is lawful and what actually happens, practically speaking, are two different things. What is happening in China is illegal in China. That doesn't mean it won't create absurdly difficult barriers for me (or anyone else who wants to use the public domain work) in the future in China. TapTap is a gatekeeper. The Chinese government is a gatekeeper over paid apps in China. They demand proof of "genuine" status from publishers. False proof was provided. If I don't fight against that now, it will be even harder for me (or anyone else) to fight against that in the distant future. After the Chinese app becomes entrenched for years as the official version in China, if I come along later, they'll be like, "Now who's this guy?" They pretty much said that to me just now, when I emailed them. "As far as we're aware, the publisher has full, exclusive rights to publish the genuine version of this game in China."

Saying "yeahbut, you'll eventually win in court, so don't worry about it," is no comfort. I don't want to have to win in court in China, thank you. And even if it came to that, me "doing nothing" for years after false claims were staked would weaken my case.

And ESPECIALLY as far as trademark is concerned, jeeze. Isn't that clear to you? If a competing business makes huge inroads using that mark, and registers the mark to boot, I "fall by the wayside" legally, as far as trademark is concerned, even if I coined the phrase in question, because they have established priority, at least in China. So the only way to prevent this from happening is to fight it, now. Not later.

I.e., I definitely won't win in court, and will be forbidden from using my own game's name in China, if I just ignore the current situation.

Lion:

I'm looking at the actual license, not the Wiki. What does this clause mean, then?

No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The actual license text clarifies this point thus:

If You Share Adapted Material You produce, the Adapter's License You apply must not prevent recipients of the Adapted Material from complying with this Public License.

What that means isn't 100% clear. It could be interpreted as infectious, or not.

Mikekchar:

I have read up extensively on moral rights, and that's pretty much what I'm talking about here, although there is very little precedent for it in the US, and some case law that says that no rights at all apply for public domain work (though the case law is muddied by other factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dastar_Co … ilm_Corp.). Still, the US apparently handles it this way:

When the United States acceded to the Berne Convention, it stipulated that the Convention's "moral rights" provisions were addressed sufficiently by other statutes, such as laws covering slander and libel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rig … ted_States

Which is again what I'm claiming here. It is a libel issue, when you claim sole authorship over my work. That is a false claim that directly affects my reputation.

But for what it's worth, moral rights are apparently perpetual in China---they never expire, no matter how long the creator has been dead.

And other folks:

YES, a public domain work is "owned" by the public. But that doesn't change the facts of authorship, or rewrite history. The public doesn't suddenly "become the author" of the original work.

Furthermore, in terms of there being no "public domain" cops who protect public domain works from copyfraud... there are no copyright cops either. There could be class-actions or individual actions brought against a company that was committing (and trying to enforce) copyfraud, though.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-08 18:02:40

Ryanb:

In your thought experiment, A is the author (though a company can't be an author---the whole thing is really a work for hire situation). Anyway, say Acme hires PERSON A to write a song (a work for hire), so Acme "owns" the song as far as copyright is concerned. Then Person B licenses the song from Acme. And Person A licenses it too. Both A and B use the song to make a music video, but the B video becomes more popular.

Does B publicly claim sole authorship of the song?

As you can see, these things aren't really a licensing issue. B has license to use the song. The (false) claim of authorship is a completely separate issue. There is no "license" that would permit that. It's just not possible. The facts are the facts. The lie would still be a lie. Even if a license "allowed" the lie, the lie would not become the truth. Now, maybe the original author could sign a contract where they promise to never tell the truth. But if the truth became known by others, there would be no legal way to stifle it, and someone (though maybe not the author) could bring a fraud action (if they could demonstrate that being mislead about the authorship brought them measurable personal harm). Imagine a song widely publicized by MLK as being written by MLK, while the truth was that it was written by a grand dragon of the KKK. If a civil rights group was misled to the point of adopting that song as their anthem and using it for years, and the truth became known, I think they would probably have a case against MLK for lying to them.

I suspect that this is why, in countries that uphold moral rights, the rights cannot be waived by the author. How can you waive the truth? Likewise, moral rights do not expire, because the truth does not expire.

(And the "work for hire" scenario really muddies the waters. How much of an authorship claim the true author can have is governed by their work contract, and they definitely have no copyright claim, but they may still have moral right claim. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire )

lionon · 2019-03-08 18:36:46

jasonrohrer wrote:

I'm looking at the actual license, not the Wiki. What does this clause mean, then?
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The actual license text clarifies this point thus:
If You Share Adapted Material You produce, the Adapter's License You apply must not prevent recipients of the Adapted Material from complying with this Public License.
What that means isn't 100% clear. It could be interpreted as infectious, or not.

It means you must not prohibit by legal or technical means the reuse of the CC-BY licensed material. It does not extend to other stuff you bundle or mix it with. It is not infectious. And certainly a large legal body like Creative Commons Organization explicitly designs an "infectious" variant with SA addition, and is also the mostly used open license, you can pretty much rely on that their non SA variant is not "infectious".

In practical means for example, if you make a sound track of you telling a story and use CC-BY licensed sound effects, you must not forbid people to extract and sample that sound effects. But the license doesn't "infect" your story.

Also regarding pushing work public domain I recommend looking a CC0. As this provides fallbacks for people living countries that don't allow waiving into public domain. https://creativecommons.org/share-your- … omain/cc0/

PS: Yes there are not "copyright cops", but copyright holders that can enforce their rights. This doesn't apply to stuff in public domain.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-08 18:39:59

Eddie, if it's not fair of me to ask ryanb for help with wording, given that he's an interested party, why don't you take a crack at it?

You're essentially challenging me to be the RMS of the public domain world---an inventive wielder of copyright to achieve my wildest dreams. The problem, for me, is that I don't believe in copyright. I don't believe it's a right. It may be a law, but it's one of the many places where the law has diverged from true, underlying rights.

I personally violate copyright all the time, on a daily basis, and gave it absolutely no consideration when making OHOL, or any of my other games.

But I don't generally lie, and I don't generally mislead people, and I don't make false claims of authorship over the work of other people.

"Futura Bold -- a font by Jason Rohrer"

I wouldn't do that, but I would use the font in my game and in my logos, and I would give Paul Renner appropriate credit (it's just a font, and one small part of what I'm doing, so he's on the Credits page.... it would not be appropriate to proclaim his name in an overly-conspicuous way, and not proclaiming it conspicuously does not mislead people, because it's expected that I didn't create my own font from scratch, and it's a recognizable font, and it also doesn't detract from my 100% handmade claim, because no reasonable person would include typefaces in that 100%---heck, I made the claim, in my trailer, using Futura Bold).

And four years from now, when Futura Bold falls into the public domain, my behavior won't change at all. I'll still use it, and still give Paul Renner credit in an appropriate way, and I won't suddenly start claiming that I authored it.

If there's case law saying that I can claim false authorship over public domain works (Dastar), that case law is wrong on that particular point, and just waiting to be overturned by a future case with slightly more clear facts.

The one time I did collaborate with someone else, it was a work-for-hire situation, so I "owned" the copyright, but that didn't stop me from putting the author's name right on the cover along with mine, and his face right on the back, given that the music he created was such a major component of the work:

a5269ca544e5b336838368ebcd407b09_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&w=680&fit=max&v=1381415146&auto=format&gif-q=50&q=92&s=b6deb1f4fe3495f986ee8ad924fd91d8

And I think that's Helvetica, but I don't remember. I don't think the Helvetica folks have any reasonable claim or right over what I do with their font, commercial or not, though I think they do have a rightful claim of authorship, which I would never undermine. (Which would also prevent me from releasing exactly the same font under a different name.)

The point:

You're telling me that I can wield copyright to prevent people from lying about my work, just like RMS could wield copyright to prevent other people from modifying his work without releasing the source code.

I believe you. I could wield copyright to achieve such aims. I just don't believe it is right. I also think that RMS is wrong to try to force other people to release their modifications to his source code. He has no fundamental right to make that demand.

lionon · 2019-03-08 18:40:11

PS: While it is true that only the license is the license and not other explanatory material, it is exactly my point that practically speaking for the widely used licenses you can rely on the fact that the public and common interpretations of them is correct.... across the world.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-08 18:56:08

But Lionon, even for established licenses, they kind of throw their hands in the air over specific issues:

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Actual text:

Moral rights, such as the right of integrity, are not licensed under this Public License, nor are publicity, privacy, and/or other similar personality rights; however, to the extent possible, the Licensor waives and/or agrees not to assert any such rights held by the Licensor to the limited extent necessary to allow You to exercise the Licensed Rights, but not otherwise.

"but not otherwise"... dun dun DUN!

And what counts as appropriate attribution?

3(a)(1) identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material and any others designated to receive attribution, in any reasonable manner requested by the Licensor
....
....
You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information.

Reasonable manner isn't defined, what the licensor is allowed to request isn't defined. It all depends on the medium, means, and context of the usage.

In other words, when push comes to shove, it will be settled in court.

You credit me in a way you think is reasonable (say fine print in the app store when you make a direct clone of my CC BY OHOL), I say it's not reasonable and demand more reasonable credit, you refuse, and then there we sit.

zed · 2019-03-08 19:18:18

jasonrohrer wrote:

--The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3).
the whole notion of Copyleft is a direct violation of freedom 3.

Only if you read "freedom" much more broadly than intended. It isn't the
freedom to distribute modified copies *however you like*. Rather, it's the
freedom to distribute modified copies in a way which grants the same freedoms
to those you distribute them to.

I like to think of copyleft as a hack which uses copyright to prevent the
worst consequences of copyright. If OHOL (OneLifeData included) had been
copylefted, it's unlikely that we'd be seeing in-client advertising - the
freedom to fork (or just its threat) tends to prevent such user-abuse.

More generally, using a permissive licence means anyone using your work to
compete against you can have a competitive advantage over you, by releasing
their versions as proprietary software and using the various unpleasant
money-making schemes this makes possible (adware, spyware, crypto-mining,
restricting distribution and selling copies of the client...).

Last edited by zed (2019-03-08 19:21:05)

lionon · 2019-03-08 19:27:06

jasonrohrer wrote:

"but not otherwise"... dun dun DUN!

Where is this any worse than your no_copyright waiver? One may assume that copyright is no an issue... yet there may other laws come into effect. You use the stuff as "One Hour One Life"... than the original author claims a trademark on it and asks you to write "unofficial" in big letters all over the place.

Reasonable manner isn't defined, what the licensor is allowed to request isn't defined. It all depends on the medium, means, and context of the usage.
In other words, when push comes to shove, it will be settled in court.
You credit me in a way you think is reasonable (say fine print in the app store when you make a direct clone of my CC BY OHOL), I say it's not reasonable and demand more reasonable credit, you refuse, and then there we sit.

Yes, if we can't agree on what reasonable is, we got to have an impartial party decide it. I mean this is the way law from start to buttom, you can't specify everything in the latest detail. Albeit I certainly do agree that lawmakers (or licenses writers) should be as concrete as possible. I remember the classical examples from my philosphy of law courses. "If a shop forbids dogs, does this apply to trained dance bears?" or "If architectural control forbids you windows at a certain place, does this apply to transparent bricks?". etc.

There is certainly a green area of okay, there is certainly a red area of not okay (say font size="1pt" textcolor="#fef" on #fff background, there is a gray area.

Christoffer · 2019-03-08 19:37:46

Jason, just trying to save you some time and irritation here (again, so that we might move on)

jasonrohrer wrote:

No, what's going on here is that the Chinese publisher has misrepresented the work as being entirely copyrighted by them

They demand proof of "genuine" status from publishers. False proof was provided.

No, what they have said is
1. The code of the apk is from us
2. The other assets in the apk are within our rights to use

We have a speech filter component in there, among other components. We bought a license for it, so we are within our rights to use it. That doesn't mean that the author of that component can't sell it in China, or that someone else (you, in your example) is prohibited from using the same component in your own apk, provided you get a license too.

I think that you have already agreed that at the time this was done in China, we were authorised to use your assets, so their claim was true.
When you say "entirely copyrighted", you are misunderstanding what the copyright is. There is nothing entire about it.

jasonrohrer wrote:

forbidden from using my own game's name in China

Your game's name is "One Hour One Life" and no-one has trade-marked that except you, and you are free to use it in China too. But regarding the trademark issue of the Chinese title, I can repeat again what I have already told you: The publisher has submitted documentation to withdraw their claim to the trademark. Since we are switching names anyway, there will be neither an unregistered trademark in use (within a week or two), nor any registered trademark lying lurking somewhere, when you make your hypothetical release in China.

In conclusion: You can absolutely release your game on mobile in China, under the name you wish. Nothing in the current situation is stopping you now or in the future.

Further, you declared that you had withdrawn your take-down requests, and we responded with an action plan which you accepted (and pushed quite a bit further, which we accepted). But in your thread about TapTap, you now mention that your take-down request discussion is still being pressed forward with employees at TapTap!

If you do agree on the plan, then please drop your takedown discussion with TapTap at this point. You can't have both an agreement with us and continue campaigning against us at the same time.

jasonrohrer · 2019-03-08 21:25:05

First of all, the discussion here is based on hypotheticals and what happened at one time (trademark registration in China), and what might happen in the future. We are discussing better wording for the future to prevent such things from ever happening.

I don't know how it wasn't clear that you shouldn't trademark "One Hour Life" in China. Why did I have to tell you? I thought it went without saying. Apparently, it did not. Now I'm figuring out exactly what wording would help in the future.

The discussion I'm having with TapTap is no longer a "take-down discussion". I had already canceled my take-down request with them. They wrote back, and I explained the situation to them, as I understood it. Your plan will take a long time to implement (months) before it eliminates confusion. There is still immediate confusion, and new details of that confusion being revealed every day. Oh, you can watch video ads in exchange for food in the mobile version? Sheesh... imagine if someone believed I approved that!

If TapTap can help me in the short term, by clearing up the confusion, then that is good. I also want to make sure that THEY are aware of the situation here, regarding the public domain. It is an unusual situation.

I would still LOVE it if you put "Unofficial" in your title, and included the text that I requested (in the app store and app itself), as a place-holder until you implement the changes that you plan to implement.

Otherwise, thousands of Chinese people continue to be confused and misled. Maybe I am asking them to watch ads in exchange for food. Maybe this is Official gameplay.

One Hour One Life Forums

#26 2019-03-08 15:23:01

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#27 2019-03-08 15:30:00

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#28 2019-03-08 16:56:23

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#29 2019-03-08 18:02:40

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#30 2019-03-08 18:36:46

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#31 2019-03-08 18:39:59

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#32 2019-03-08 18:40:11

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#33 2019-03-08 18:56:08

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#34 2019-03-08 19:18:18

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#35 2019-03-08 19:27:06

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#36 2019-03-08 19:37:46

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

#37 2019-03-08 21:25:05

Re: Please clarify no_copyright.txt

Board footer