Creative Commons clarification

[Midgardsormr]

We have placed a Creative Commons license on the CWBP and have asked that each image submitted to it likewise use the same NC-BY-SA license, although I'm not sure if that's every been stated clearly either here or on the wiki. (We should think about a FAQ.)

Many of the maps we have made thus far have been derived directly from the original FT world, and even the local maps have been extensively collaborative, such that very few of them are wholly the work of a single individual.

So, given that the NC clause of the project governs most of the maps created for it (i.e., those maps are derivative works), what if someone wishes to sell prints of a map they created? Who is authorized to give permission? If I were to look just at my Tawaren Basin map, NeonKnight created the original FT file, RedRobes (I think) made the heightmap I used, and I owe many placenames and features to Torq, Clercon, Gamerprinter, and Su Liam. It's a bit of a tangled web of copyrights.

My opinion is that we should find a way to relax the NC portion of the license a bit. Perhaps a standard waiver that submitters implicitly agree to which allows a cartographer freedom to profit from their own work if the opportunity arises.

The opportunity hasn't arisen for me yet, but I'm putting together a web gallery of my work, and the CWBP maps are going into it. I'd like to be prepared to answer if some hypothetical person is daft enough to want a print of one of them.

[Redrobes]

I believe as copyright holder the originator of the work can do what they like to it. What the CC license says is that the image that has been posted is CC licensed for all people to use under that restriction. As originator you can license it in different and multiple ways though a user can choose which one he would like to use. I.e. you could publish two images, one high res with an NC and a lower res version with commercial permissions. Only if you disclaim copyright and make the image public domain do you lose any control over the image. What a CC license does is grant permissions so that any user can use it in that way without needing to ask for copyright holders specific permission. What CC also does is prevent the originator from prosecuting for a users use of the file if he uses it within the terms. And if those terms include a redistribution clause - the SA bit - then it serves as a protection for people using the image when posting it up on a web site. A CC license is still just a license. You still own the original and are free to license it under any terms you feel like.

[Midgardsormr]

And that's perfectly fine if we're dealing with an image that we've created from scratch. However, every CWBP map is a derivative work, and the ShareAlike element of the license on the original work--NeonKnight's FT map, for instance--states that any derivative works are bound by the same or a similar license. That is, the Non-Commercial element applies to all of the CWBP maps, no matter who made them.

From the Creative Commons FAQ, http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Freq...vative_work.3F

The one big caveat is for Creative Commons licenses that contain the ShareAlike license element (ie. Attribution-ShareAlike, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). These licenses require derivative works (ie. the result of two combined works) to be licensed under the same license elements.

I may be misunderstanding things, but I want to be sure that we're all in the clear, just in case something funky happens. All we really need to do, as I understand it, is place a notice in whatever documentation we develop for the project that states something along the lines of "content creators are free to relicense their own work for other purposes, so long as all work submitted to the CWBP also retains the NC-BY-SA license. A creator's submission of work to the CWBP constitutes acceptance of this waiver of rights."

This way, the copyright owner (all of us collectively) can permit uses beyond what the license explicitly allows without someone having to come here and receive permission from every affected contributor individually.

We might have to give some thought to exactly how we word things so that someone can't come in, change the name of the continent, then start selling it as their own work, though.

[Redrobes]

Yes, your right. From the point of view that we have all used Neons CC-NC-SA work as a base then its true that you would need permission from Neon to use his world beyond the scope of the publicly stated consent.

I have to say that I would resist changing my works license. If Neon makes it available under additional terms for just the base map then that's fine by me tho.

[Redrobes]

Actually it does throw up an interesting point. If somebody then mapped out an area using Neons original map bypassing the tiled maps we have created then they could make them copyright and restricted. You could get a situation where another clone of Ansium is done and sold with those people referencing these free additional mapped bits for it. Personally I would have no problem with that but its basically forking the art into two separate licensing models. I doubt it would happen because anyone could bypass paying for content by going here and getting our free one but its a thought to keep in mind. Also, what your asking for is a special case for just tier 1 maps. If somebody took one of my Thrub maps and made some more stuff for it then they couldn't sell it either.

[Midgardsormr]

If somebody took one of my Thrub maps and made some more stuff for it then they couldn't sell it either.

Right. And another corner case: Suppose 12rounds wanted to collect all of those character illustrations and tokens into a book and make that available on Lulu or RPGNow. Since most of the characters that have been posted here are based on information created for the CWBP, they also are bound by the NC-BY-SA license. I don't think any of us would begrudge 12rounds the right to distribute that work in such a way, but legally speaking, it would require getting individual permission from everyone who wrote source material in order to free it from the NC portion of the original license.

I don't anticipate that anyone here would prosecute over this matter, but we cannot foresee the future. Forewarned is forearmed.

Concerning the FT line of discussion: FT's license, along with the other ProFantasy products I have looked at, clearly states that maps created with the software are the sole property of the creator. ProFantasy makes no claim of ownership to anything except the art assets, which may be redistributed only in the form of a "finalized" image from which the symbols cannot be extracted. So that's not really an issue here--my concern is with the additional restrictions we placed on ourselves with the CC license.

[RobA]

Does that really make sense?

My understanding is that a base FT map can be recreated with the appropriate seed values. So anyone with the same seed valued can "create" the same map. That means that the rendered image of the map can have licensing rights imposed on it, but one made with the same seed numbers by someone else wouldn't... AFAIK, you can't license seed numbers!

-Rob A>

[Sigurd]

Seed values do not a world make.

I agree that its a weird situation. Perhaps Joe Slayton has thought this through before?

I really imagine that Fantasy Terrains would be considered an 'editor' and its creations are the works of whoever owns and uses the programs although I could be wrong. I don't know if there is a clarification from Profantasy but I think this idea falls in line with the industry. Certainly, by the time they are unrecognizable as products of FT...

Yes the worlds are generated from numbers but so are cad drawings. Anything on a computer that is visually chosen, selected, or 'written' has a generated element.

Are we going to take every graphic artist that uses 'render-clouds' in photoshop and share their copyright with Adobe?


I think its all sophistry, but its a curious question.

[NeonKnight]

Seeing as how ultimately it appears I am the 'grand-pooh-bah' of this thing, I hereby give my permission

[Sigurd]

NeonKnight for "Community Poo-Bah"!


Sigurd