I posted this on the last thread.
Let me put things another way.
The problem as I see it is that any mod without a clear licence could be being misused. Without a clear licence we have no idea in what capacity the original creator of the asset wanted it used. People have pointed out that there are a large number of issues with assigning any kind of default licence for mods on HLP and for the most part I tend to agree with them. Assigning any kind of default licence ignores the wishes of the content creator and we're doing it all the time!
1) First, let's not get too comfortable on our high horses here. We're all on a website whose existence is based on a very loose reading of licensing and copyright laws. Have we got a licence which allows for the modification of stuff from FS1 or FS2? Or anything from the B5 or BSG universes? No we haven't. Maybe a few bits and pieces here and there, but the entire website would be dead if we had waited for everything we've modified. I once read a quite thought provoking book on media franchising which contained an interesting section on mods based on TV shows.
Despite both mods rejecting corporate proprietary control of cultural resources, they paradoxically insisted upon maintaining ownership and creative monopoly over their own production resources. Thus, a de facto system of authorship, ownership, and licensing emerged to limit open collaboration in the produsage networks of [Redacted name of a TV show] games, where single owners could govern the use of discrete 3D models, textures, and music.
So yes, pretty much every single piece of content on this forum (with the exception of things like Wings of Dawn) is entirely based on completely ignoring licensing. It's quite interesting that people would be livid if someone alters a forum members high-poly Sathanas without permission or credit but no one gives a stuff about altering the original Volition one.
But okay, lets pretend that licensing doesn't apply to big name corporations cause, you know, **** those guys.
2) We're pretty much doing the same thing within the community too. Very little has been released with any kind of proper licence. A hell of a lot of stuff comes from posts where all the creator said was "here's a link to the stuff I made" with no actual instructions on whether it could be modified or used. If we're lucky we get a "Use it however you want." but fairly often even that is missing. We still use that stuff though.
I'm sure at least a few high poly models and alterations of existing models also fall under this category - they were made to improve the quality of a mod in an existing campaign but I doubt we can say that the original creator of the asset was asked in every single case. I suspect fairly often if the original creator doesn't respond to emails, etc, people have just gone ahead and made the alterations and simply credited the original creator. Which basically is the same as assigning the asset a licence which allows modification.
Similarly we have situations where people use assets from big mods like Blue Planet, etc without checking back down the chain to see what licence Blue Planet got them under. The assumption is that "If they can use it, I can."
3) Why is this important? Well I can be fairly confident in saying I know the licence for at least 99% of the released or in development content of Diaspora. Even so there's still the chance I've missed something. I'm sure quite a few other hosted mods can't even say that. Which makes it much harder for them to come up for a licence for their releases without basically doing the same kind of relicensing that people have complained about. In fact I do have to wonder how many mods which have released under a "Use anything you want from our mod, but just give credit" have already done that.
So as you can see, issue here is not really about getting everything tied up in a legally binding fashion (If you can do that, excellent.) But for most of us, getting licensing to the point where it avoids arguments or wasting assets within the community is the desired goal. We already do licensing within the community. It's just that we do it in a rather haphazard, problematic way. We make assumptions about how we can use models, effects and missions released by people in the past all the time.
What I'm suggesting is that we don't change the basic way we work, I'm not suggesting that we can't use anything from the past as that would be crippling to the community. What I'm saying is that we make sure in the future we try to do things better. And we make sure that people who use our work 4-5 years from now don't have to make the assumptions we had to make.
So how does this apply to something like JAD (or BP even) where I can certainly license what would be termed "original content", but a lot of other content is previously released community things under no real licence.
Is it just a matter of "the following is released under Blahblah, the balance is under no licence".
And how does modified content work? Sometimes I need to tweak a ship to make it fit right. Does it become "my content" or does it remain under the previous (if any) licence.
Good question. I'd suggest we use the following rule of thumb.
1) If the work is 100% yours - give it whatever licence you wish.
2) If the work is from someone else - don't change the licence but simply give credit.
3) If you've modified something it doesn't automatically belong to you. If it already had a proper licence (even a vague "use it however you want, just credit me") then you're bound by that licence as to whether you can re-issue it. If not, credit it but state what licence your work falls under so that anyone who can find the original creator can get a proper licence sorted out.
The idea is to make sure that whoever uses your work has a clear idea of what risks they are taking. That someone won't crawl out of the woodwork 2-3 years from now and say "That model you're using, that's mine. Axem only modified it. Take it out of your mod."
I don't know if you remember back that far, but that's exactly what happened to DiamondGeezer's Space : Above and Beyond conversion. While this rule on HLP wouldn't have prevented it (Since he got the models from somewhere outside this community) it would prevent the same issue happening again within the community.
This is overhead that I know BP can't tackle now and may not be able to for months.
While I understand that going through the whole of BP and assigning every asset a licence would take a lot of effort, I don't think it would be too hard to assign one to everything which was 100% developed in-house. Literally all you have to do is talk internally and say "The BP team (or at least the part who are still active) decided that anything those of us present developed in-house is covered by [Name of licence]." That's a rather short discussion and even if you only do that much it is an improvement on what we have now.
The point is that people are already using those assets and taking the risk of your continued good will. Why subject them to that grey area when the solution is as quick as the one I mentioned.
If you have a little bit more time, something like this would be excellent.
BP assets you can use under [Licence]
list of ships 100% developed by the team members who responded.
In addition you may use any other assets 100% developed in house (to cover the little things you made).
BP assets modified by the team. You can use any of our modifications under [Licence] but since this is a modified asset, you are taking a chance that the original creator might be unhappy with its use
List of your modified assets
Everything else is use at your own risk
You could probably draw that up in an hour or so. And it would be very useful to anyone using Blue Planet assets in their mods.
I can see where this could be a major issue for the FreeSpace Campaign Restoration Project. I would like some information if possible on where this leaves projects that have been abandoned and how much of the campaign projects fall under the license. What limitations would this add to restoring a campaign?
Initially, none. This is kind of my main point above. We ignore licensing on a daily basis in this community. What I'm suggesting is not that we change current behaviour regarding older stuff, but that anything newer is dealt with in a more clear fashion. Working on FCRP you must have the constant worry that one day someone whose project you upgraded will return and start a "WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BABY!" style epic rant.
The changes detailed here won't prevent you from using older works, or upgrading them. It won't prevent the above from happening. But 5 years from now, you will quite clearly know some projects you can work on without fear. For instance you already know that Diaspora can be altered however you like since that is clearly stated in the licence it was released with.
