License for SuperTux videos?

License for SuperTux videos?

Postby MCMic » 29 Mar 2016, 16:56

Hello,

Since I’m speedrunning SuperTux, I find myself uploading lots of SuperTux videos to prove my times.
I was wondering under which license should these videos be?
Is there a copyleft license for all supertux data which applies in this case?
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Hume2 » 29 Mar 2016, 17:09

You have my word that I won't complain if you do anything with that.

SuperTux is covered by the license GPL CC-BY-SA-3.0. I'm not a lawyer, so don't ask me about details. And I advertize you to not ask two lawyers, because they will have another opinion :) .
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby brmbrmcar » 29 Mar 2016, 17:43

Just keep them under the CC-BY-SA. Makes things easier. And also, the team cannot complain then. :D
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby onpon4 » 29 Mar 2016, 18:06

I don't know where you live, but gameplay videos are well-established to be fair use in the U.S.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Hume2 » 29 Mar 2016, 19:18

If you want to put them on YouTube, I think you're fine. Even if it was a bit illegal, noone will notice :) .

EDIT: Just don't mention the legality at all and tell those annoying people that you are allowed to share those videos.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby brmbrmcar » 29 Mar 2016, 19:22

I just put them in Creative Commons, but I haven't seen anyone else do so with SuperTux videos. They all seem fine.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Akien » 29 Mar 2016, 19:38

Hume2 {l Wrote}:EDIT: Just don't mention the legality at all and tell those annoying people that you are allowed to share those videos.


Sure... Let's do that with SuperTux too and distribute it without license.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby brmbrmcar » 29 Mar 2016, 19:44

Akien {l Wrote}:
Hume2 {l Wrote}:EDIT: Just don't mention the legality at all and tell those annoying people that you are allowed to share those videos.


Sure... Let's do that with SuperTux too and distribute it without license.

I don't think it was meant like that.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby onpon4 » 30 Mar 2016, 00:30

On YouTube, there's no question about it: U.S. copyright law applies there (since YouTube is hosted in the U.S.), and fair use applies. Gameplay videos constitute fair use. No copyright restrictions at all can be imposed on them, which means no license restrictions can be, either. So there's no obligation for you to put the video under any particular license. But really, you ought to put all of your videos under a libre license (e.g. CC BY or CC BY-SA).
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Hume2 » 30 Mar 2016, 06:20

Akien {l Wrote}:
Hume2 {l Wrote}:EDIT: Just don't mention the legality at all and tell those annoying people that you are allowed to share those videos.


Sure... Let's do that with SuperTux too and distribute it without license.


I personally would release SuperTux under the CC0 license, that means that anyone could do anything with it. (I can't change it, it's just my opinion.) Ruling with tons of laws is useless. I guess that noone has time to control people whether they obey this license, so I'd say that SuperTux is totally free, altrough it's not written anywhere.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Akien » 30 Mar 2016, 08:10

onpon4 {l Wrote}:On YouTube, there's no question about it: U.S. copyright law applies there (since YouTube is hosted in the U.S.), and fair use applies. Gameplay videos constitute fair use. No copyright restrictions at all can be imposed on them, which means no license restrictions can be, either. So there's no obligation for you to put the video under any particular license. But really, you ought to put all of your videos under a libre license (e.g. CC BY or CC BY-SA).


That's actually a question I've been asking myself lately, and I could find very little legal guidance about it. Say that I make a video of some nonfree game and want to put the video under CC BY-SA:
- Am I allowed to do so (let's say according to US copyright laws)?
- If I am, what does it mean for the video's contents? If someone takes a screenshot of the video, it's still CC BY-SA. So then we have a CC BY-SA screenshot of a nonfree game, and we'll get another troll like we had last year to extract all the sprites they can from the screenshot and distribute them under CC BY-SA too as libre assets.

Or is there a fault in my reasoning? We had a lengthy discussion about this stuff for a Godot video trailer (https://github.com/godotengine/godot/is ... -197811117), but as we're all clueless in the end we're likely going to use CC BY-ND + get approval from each game developer/publisher for using gameplay footages of their games so that we can't do anything wrong.

I wish there were some good precedents on this matter which clear explanations of what can be done and what can't when it comes to video. Creative Commons itself is sadly not very explicit on what is implied by licensing a video under CC.

BTW the Youtube policy for CC BY content is also relatively strict: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Akien » 30 Mar 2016, 08:13

Hume2 {l Wrote}:
Akien {l Wrote}:Sure... Let's do that with SuperTux too and distribute it without license.

Ruling with tons of laws is useless. I guess that noone has time to control people whether they obey this license, so I'd say that SuperTux is totally free, altrough it's not written anywhere.

Sorry for my pedantic tone, I was a bit tired yesterday I guess ;)

I understand your opinion, and in the case of SuperTux it's true that it's not a big matter, but as my above answer shows, it's a relatively complex topic that it very much worth discussing. Yeah, that's boring legal stuff that nobody cares about... but some people still do, and it's annoying to get your legit video taken down by Youtube for some silly copyright claims, or having trolls reusing nonfree assets in their own games because you thought you were allowed to license your gameplay video as CC BY-SA (note that it applies for SuperTux though, so I'm slightly off topic).
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Akien » 30 Mar 2016, 08:19

(if we're to continue the discussion about this legal topic, maybe it should be moved to the legal subforum in the general category as it's finally not really SuperTux specific?)
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby onpon4 » 30 Mar 2016, 13:21

With the obligatory "I am not a lawyer" disclaimer:

Akien {l Wrote}:- Am I allowed to do so (let's say according to US copyright laws)?

There is no law that forbids placing a license on your work in any circumstance. A license is permission you grant to others. I am really annoyed that some people believe, for no legitimate reason, that they aren't "allowed" to give people permission to redistribute their work just because it has some sort of relation to a proprietary work.

Of course, fair use is U.S.-specific. So for example, if you make a gameplay video of a proprietary game in the U.S., while of course you can put CC BY-SA on your work, it may still be illegal for people in other countries to distribute it, depending on whether their countries' "fair use" or "fair dealing" laws consider your use to be fair.

Akien {l Wrote}:- If I am, what does it mean for the video's contents? If someone takes a screenshot of the video, it's still CC BY-SA. So then we have a CC BY-SA screenshot of a nonfree game, and we'll get another troll like we had last year to extract all the sprites they can from the screenshot and distribute them under CC BY-SA too as libre assets.

Your work is the video, not the components of SuperTux within the video. So, for example, if you were to choose CC0 as your video's license, it would not be legal for someone to isolate the Tux sprites and distribute them under CC0, because those pieces are copyrighted by someone else and copylefted.

Akien {l Wrote}:Or is there a fault in my reasoning? We had a lengthy discussion about this stuff for a Godot video trailer (https://github.com/godotengine/godot/is ... -197811117), but as we're all clueless in the end we're likely going to use CC BY-ND + get approval from each game developer/publisher for using gameplay footages of their games so that we can't do anything wrong.

You can't get into trouble by choosing a libre license for your work. If someone tries to use your license as an excuse to extract works contained within that were copyrighted but fair use, that's their legal problem; the copyright holder of the work you are making fair use of would have to sue that person, not you. It would also be exactly the same if your license was proprietary, because your work isn't even involved at that point.

Akien {l Wrote}:BTW the Youtube policy for CC BY content is also relatively strict: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en

You don't need to use YouTube's license field. Just mentioning the license in the description is sufficient. Though really, the best thing to do is to mention the license directly in the video.


EDIT: This might be useful for someone, so here is the statement related to fair use I made for a fangame I made recently:

README.txt of Kitten Command {l Wrote}:COPYRIGHT AND FAIR USE NOTICE

This game makes use of certain copyrighted works without the permission
of their copyright holders. These are small components of Super Mario
Bros 3, Super Mario Bros, the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2, and the NES
port of Contra; as well as the Mario Techno Remix by Paul Soh. More
details about these works can be found in data/LICENSES.

United States copyright law includes the doctrine of "fair use", which
allows use of copyrighted works without permission of the copyright
holders. See 17 U.S.C. § 107 for details. Unfortunately, fangames have
not been specifically tested in court, but it is my firm belief that my
use of these copyrighted works is fair use, based on the following
points:

1. Kitten Command is distributed entirely non-commercially. To be
perfectly clear, this is not a primary foundation for my claim of
fair use. I believe the use would still be fair use if it was
commercial. Nonetheless, the fact that the use is non-commercial is
worth mentioning.

2. The purpose of Kitten Command, as a whole, is entirely different from
the purposes of the copyrighted works being used. Put another way,
the use is transformative. As a result, the use does not diminish the
potential market for or value of any of the copyrighted works used in
any way. Kitten Command is not a replacement for any of these works.

3. Only the portions of the copyrighted works needed for Kitten Command
are included in this distribution. The total amount of Super Mario
Bros 3, Super Mario Bros, the Japanese Super Mario Bros 2, and the
NES port of Contra used is small compared to the whole of the
respective works.

4. The copyrighted works used are only small portions of Kitten Command
as a whole.

Anyone wishing to redistribute Kitten Command has my permission to do
so; you will find that all of my work is released under libre licenses.
However, if you live outside of the United States, please check up on
the laws of your country regarding things like fair use and/or fair
dealing, as different jurisdictions have different rules regarding this.
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby Akien » 30 Mar 2016, 13:42

Thanks a lot for those explanations onpon4, it makes a lot of sense.

What I find hard to define myself is what *is* a video. If I use e.g. copylefted images in my video (say CC By-SA), doesn't it mean that the video itself would have to be CC By-SA or similar to comply with the SA clause? Doesn't a video constitute a derivative work of other works (and thus must comply with the license of each of them)?

I find personally that this whole "derivative work" concept is very hard to grasp, IIRC a few months ago we had someone struggling with the idea that MegaGlest mods would have to be CC By-SA if they used CC By-SA contents, etc.

Where would be the limit between a copylefted video (which is a stream of static images and sound) and the static pieces that compose it and might have other license permissions? From what you're saying, I gather that licensing my video under CC By-SA can be done regardless of its contents, and just implies that the *editing* work that was done to make this stream of images and sound is copylefted.

That goes back to my earlier example: can one distribute a screenshot from a CC By-SA video under the same license? What about the screenshot's contents? I'd suppose that cropping a sprite out of it would be a derivative work, so would be CC By-SA too *as per my license claim*. Wouldn't that constitute a proof by contradiction that I was not allowed to distribute my video under CC By-SA in the first place if I don't own the copyright or permissive licenses for what is shown in the video?
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby brmbrmcar » 30 Mar 2016, 13:56

To what extent does "share-alike" go? If you add your own additions to it, does that have to be under the same license?
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Re: License for SuperTux videos?

Postby onpon4 » 30 Mar 2016, 17:04

Akien {l Wrote}:If I use e.g. copylefted images in my video (say CC By-SA), doesn't it mean that the video itself would have to be CC By-SA or similar to comply with the SA clause? Doesn't a video constitute a derivative work of other works (and thus must comply with the license of each of them)?

It's a derivative work, but fair use doctrine permits you to make certain kinds of derivative works without permission. CC BY-SA is nothing more than a limited permission grant; if you can do something without permission at all, you of course don't need to follow the conditions of a permission grant.

Akien {l Wrote}:Where would be the limit between a copylefted video (which is a stream of static images and sound) and the static pieces that compose it and might have other license permissions? From what you're saying, I gather that licensing my video under CC By-SA can be done regardless of its contents, and just implies that the *editing* work that was done to make this stream of images and sound is copylefted.

It's something you have to look at a specific case to determine.

If someone takes a screenshot of a frame of your video, it's a portion of your video and subject to whatever copyright terms your video is under. But at some point, cutting out pieces of your video will result in your creative effort being lost. This happens if, for example, you extract an image of Tux from the rest of the graphics shown in the video.

This ultimately doesn't matter, though. In either case, portions of the game are being used, and either permission or fair use is required. If your work is intact, then your work is still making fair use of the game's assets, so by extension, the person distributing your work is also making fair use of the game's assets (unless they don't have fair use rights in their jurisdiction). Otherwise, a new justification for the fair use defense in using the game's assets has to be found. If the use can't be justified in that way, they have to get permission from the copyright holder of that image.

This is why I included a disclaimer in the readme of my recent fangame that people outside of the U.S. might not have a right to redistribute it, despite the fact that all of my work is libre and my use of copyrighted works without permission is probably fair use. The code of the game in question is under the GNU GPL. But I, not holding the copyright to the assets I'm making fair use of, cannot grant anyone permission to distribute those assets under the GNU GPL. Anyone redistributing the game has to depend on fair use just as much as I do.
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