Character/identity rights

[Lyberta]

So I'm in the process of creating my fursona and I came to the most important part: rights.

I noticed that most people have "You may not draw my fursona without my permission" on their FurAffinity page and that screams "proprietary" to me. But what would be a legal contract/license for Free Culture fursona?

I thought about that and decided that I want anyone to be able to draw my fursona without permission but they have to put "This usage of <Lyberta's fursona> is not authorized by Lyberta" somewhere. I think it's not unreasonable and is similar to requirement put "This software uses <whatever>" in some free software licenses. But... What about the legal side of things? Most people just appeal to copyright but in the case of fursona I identify as I think I also have personality rights. Is there any lawyer or someone who dealt with this? I want to put a full legally sound (at least in US) legal contract on my FA page before I publish any art of my fursona.

[Julius]

Hmm, yes interesting thought. In a way this foreshadows similar discussions broader society will have soon about VR avatars.

There are already youtubers who have build quite a "personality cult" around a specific (usually female looking anime) VR character doing for example Beat Saber dancing. And similar to Instagram "influencers" they will probably try to protect that from copycats.

On the one hand you could look at this via trademarks and copyright i.e the avatar can be seen as a sort of "character brand" (similar to Mickey Mouse) separate from the person, but on the other hand I think most people will consider it more akin to personality rights on photos of their biological face like Lyberta has already mentioned.

As for the legalities around it: I doubt personality rights can be applied to this legally for the foreseeable future. Hence similar to copyleft one would probably have to come up with a clever "license hack".

[GunChleoc]

Looks like you need something similar to CC-B_SA, only that the "By" requirement needs to be replaced/amended by some legalese requiring "This usage of <Lyberta's fursona> is not authorized by Lyberta" instead of the usual author attribution.

[Danimal]

Im a bit surprised, Lyberta, werent you a defender of total freedom on the internet? this goes fully against what you have been preaching for years now on this forum.

[Lyberta]

Im a bit surprised, Lyberta, werent you a defender of total freedom on the internet? this goes fully against what you have been preaching for years now on this forum.

Great catch! First, I invite you to read the entirety of this thread.

When my parents were alive, I was living in prison. The only relatively safe space I had was my computer. So, of course, while having almost zero freedom I would protect the very last bits of freedom I had with utmost zeal. Of course I would defend the total freedom on the Internet, because I had no freedoms outside of Internet. I was severely abused and tried to ignore reality as hard as I could. I couldn't kill my parents, I couldn't run away from my parents. So I sat in front of my computer and waited. I waited for 28 years. And I won. They're dead now and I'm free. I have never had so much freedom in my life. Now I can do whatever. I can hate programming, I can drink, smoke, do drugs, get addicted to self-harm, anything goes. Nobody's gonna abuse me and control me anymore.

So... free software, free culture are way less important to me right now. They are good things to have but there are many other things I find more important in my life now. Like having a sustainable income so I earn more money than I spend to buy food. That would be nice. But I'm way off on that front.

...and hey, check out what I recently bought for almost $100:

[DrAltaica]

Lybertax
independently organized Lyberta depiction.

Sorry I've been benging TED talks.

[Wuzzy]

The real question is: Why do you want to add such a clause in the first place? Why do you think it will benefit you? I mean, what is your plan with this? This is what I always wonder when artists want to apply restrictive clauses, especially when there's not even an expectation of money.
Is it personal pride? Or is it because you would feel 'robbed'? Or is it something else. Seriously, unironically, I just want to know. I saw so many artists having this mindset, but I never understood it. Maybe I'm just bad at empathy or something. But if you do not want to answer this, eh, whatever. It's not that important.

Anyway, I don't know if I can actually help you answer to your actual question (not a lawyer), whether the "this thing was not approved by me" sentence is still compatible with FOSS or not, I'm not sure. This idea that it is somewhat comparable with the attribution clause sounds reasonable on surface, but I don't know if it would be techically inompatible with FOSS.
Actually, when I think about it, thinking about FOSS licenses is the wrong approach, it's better to look at the Definition of Free Cultural Works

The interesting part is that it includes a section called "permissible restrictions". It looks like what you want would fall under a "No Endorement" rule:

https://freedomdefined.org/Permissible_ ... ndorsement

Attribution protects the integrity of an original work, and provides credit and recognition for authors. A license may therefore require attribution of the author or authors, provided such attribution does not impede normal use of the work. For example, it would not be acceptable for the license to require a significantly more cumbersome method of attribution when a modified version of the licensed text is distributed.

Such an attribution should not imply an endorsement by the original authors of changes made by others. Licenses may place restrictions on the use of one author's trademarks in versions of the work which have been modified by others.

IIRC, the "BY" (Attribution) clause in the Creative Commons license also ALWAYS implies that the license grant itself is NEVER an official endorsement of the artist. E.g. just becaue you grant someone to use your work under CC BY 4.0, does not mean you also officially endorse the things whatever other people do.

As for my personal, layperson, not-a-lawyer opinion: I feel like this condition you like to add is not really that big of a deal. It's basically just a single sentence that would amount to about the same work as the usual attribution requirement that we all are used to anyway. So, in my opinion, it seems not an unreasonable request. But I would say it more depends on how practical it is to implement. If your request would be a ton of work to honor, that might be a little problem. You weren't very specfic here so far.
However, one practical problem I see is that there does not seem to be a ready-made license for your very specific usecase. In general, the recommendation is to only use licenses that have stood the test of time. And writing your own license is BAD (law is complex, the chance that you screw up as a layperon is high).

Off-topic:

That macOS thing: Heh. I'm not judging. As you (and everyone else in this forum, I hope) probably know, I am a big FOSS zealot. But I think it is not wrong if you use proprietary systems for yourself. Nowadays, I see using proprietary software for yourself kind of a "bad habit", as smoking, i.e. you harm yourself but not neccessarily others (Unless you're pregnant, OK, the analogy is not perfect! I know.). Just be aware that Apple, Inc. is a BIG enemy of user freedom (much worse than Microsoft, actually), as documented here or here. The problem are the big MegaCorps that abuse their users and workers, not the users themselves, after all.
There's a reason why I'm in that FOSS game. It's not just because. I think FOSS is ultimately beneficial to society as a whole, while proprietary software primarily only benefits its legal owners / copyright holders and is, overall, harmful because of built-in control mechanisms, lock-in, legal threats, dominating the competition, and all that. FOSS is stll the underdog, but I am still convinced things can change to the better, but it is still a long struggle.


Also: Trans people are valid. Took me long enough to say that, and I feel like a little shit for not saying it earlier. In the last months, I have learned a lot about trans issues, and I completely underestimated the constant discrimination from basically everywhere. Like, holy shit. I recommend everyone who reads this to up their knowledge about "transgender" as well, there is SO much misinformation about this topic (esp. from conservatives, they are FULL OF SHIT). I don't know what I should link, so I just link Wikipedia.

[Lyberta]

The real question is: Why do you want to add such a clause in the first place? Why do you think it will benefit you? I mean, what is your plan with this? This is what I always wonder when artists want to apply restrictive clauses, especially when there's not even an expectation of money.
Is it personal pride? Or is it because you would feel 'robbed'? Or is it something else. Seriously, unironically, I just want to know. I saw so many artists having this mindset, but I never understood it. Maybe I'm just bad at empathy or something. But if you do not want to answer this, eh, whatever. It's not that important.

Control. Nobody dares to touch my work without my permission. My work is mine and only mine. And freedom is antithesis to control.

Anyway, since I made the original post I deleted almost all of my code from the Internet and put all my music under "All rights reserved. 100% proprietary" conditions. I will think about a license when I will have a reason.

That macOS thing: Heh. I'm not judging.

Actually, I don't plan to use it. Yet, anyway. This is a purely collectible item intended to never be opened and be displayed somewhere in my room for my own comfort. And the whole thing about it is that my fursona is a snow leopard and I distinctly remember images of snow leopards in news articles related to Mac OS X from 2009 resonating with me. And if I want to try the actual software, I have a second unwrapped copy. The thing is, I bought a copy domestically for dirt cheap, but it wasn't the standalone retail thing intended for regular people (it's difficult to find an unopened retail copy of 2009 software in 2020) and it didn't have an artwork of snow leopard on it - completely useless to me since I was going for the artwork. And I only got to see how exactly it was packaged when I got the delivery. So then I started searching internationally for a full-blown retail copy with all the fancy artwork and imported it.

Also: Trans people are valid. Took me long enough to say that, and I feel like a little shit for not saying it earlier. In the last months, I have learned a lot about trans issues, and I completely underestimated the constant discrimination from basically everywhere. Like, holy shit. I recommend everyone who reads this to up their knowledge about "transgender" as well, there is SO much misinformation about this topic (esp. from conservatives, they are FULL OF SHIT). I don't know what I should link, so I just link Wikipedia.

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you.