The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Game legitly Question
Rhino
TheRhinLOLRegistered User regular
TheRhinLOLRegistered User regular
First question. Should this be posted in G&T?
I'm writing a video game, few questions about the Legality [SP?] of it all.
First off, fucking midi files. Can I use these in my game? If someone does a Metallica song in midi; can I use it in my video game? Metallica owns the song, but do they own the remix of it in midi?
I'll respect there work if they own 100% of it and all derivatives, but don't know how all that works out? I don't want to steal or rip off any works.
Second, where can I get some media that is under CC copyright? I'm looking for fucking tanks and bullets and god dam war machines. I also need music and explosions and shit. I don't want to do anyone wrong, so I want something that is loose on the copyright if you know what I mean.
If someone is all tight on their IP rights, then I'm ok with that. I don't want to use that; I respect the artist and their rights, but I'm trying to find stuff that I can use that the authors will be cool with, both personal and copyright wise.
Some people do that shit, you know; give that shit away for "free"
I'm writing a video game, few questions about the Legality [SP?] of it all.
First off, fucking midi files. Can I use these in my game? If someone does a Metallica song in midi; can I use it in my video game? Metallica owns the song, but do they own the remix of it in midi?
I'll respect there work if they own 100% of it and all derivatives, but don't know how all that works out? I don't want to steal or rip off any works.
Second, where can I get some media that is under CC copyright? I'm looking for fucking tanks and bullets and god dam war machines. I also need music and explosions and shit. I don't want to do anyone wrong, so I want something that is loose on the copyright if you know what I mean.
If someone is all tight on their IP rights, then I'm ok with that. I don't want to use that; I respect the artist and their rights, but I'm trying to find stuff that I can use that the authors will be cool with, both personal and copyright wise.
Some people do that shit, you know; give that shit away for "free"
Rhino on
0
Posts
Technically, it doesn't matter if it were free or being sold, but really, it does make a big difference. For example, take Limbo of the Lost on one hand and I Wanna Be the Guy on the other. Both games have assets taken from commercial games. LotL was released commercially, sparked a huge backlash, and the developer was flamed off the internet and probably sued out of the business. I'll eat my shoe if IWBtG (or any of the other numerous freeware games that do the same thing) ever gets a cease and desist order, and the only backlash is because that damn cherry falls up.
As for CC media, try google - there's several repositories and search engines of various media offered under creative commons. There's also developer forums, usually based around freeware engines or game makers, where people regularly post content this way.
thanks.
I lol'd really hard at this.
I'm not sure, but you should be able to find places with "stock" sounds that aren't copyrighted. You could always make them yourself (the music that is). Have any friends that are musical?
At first I plan to release it as a Free [over the intertron], you can play it without paying as much as you want [but without source code] and then for the second version, considering taking on funding and/or taking out loans to develop a second "pay to play" game (provide people found the fist version fun).
The other model I was thinking was to release [the second version] it via the 'interwebs' and sale the 'google ads' on the page to raise some money.
Or something like 'don't want to link, popular internet web game site' where I would be making some (not a lot) of money off of it.
Freesound.org Most notably, this here. <- sounds with "sound-effect" tag
There's a lot, yeah. Graphics will be hard to find, as almost all of that is copyrighted to some extent. If/when you are looking for visuals, I'd recommend hitting up GameDev.net's Wanted forum and ask around. It shouldn't take long to get some responses.
Steam ID - BewilderedRonin
Thanks. There is a lot of "free midi" sites out there (and some would make GREAT music for 8/16-bit games), but don't know how they get away with it and won't touch it since I don't want to be unfairly taking any ones works.
I checked out freesounds, they have some nice stuff there. Sounds effects mostly. Still need to find music and graphics.
Also, this is very, very, very important. Much of the material I linked to has various forms of CC licensing. Some may be used as long as the end-product is made publicly available with no monetary charge. Others may be used regardless of whether you plan to charge for the compositional media in which they were used, as long as you are not attempting to resell the individual material. The vast majority falls into the "you cannot charge money" category.
Steam ID - BewilderedRonin
Don't know much about copyright, so whether or not you'd be able to use any of these is unknown to me.
For music and graphics, the best bet is to go over GameDev.net's Wanted forum and ask over there. You should be able to get a response fairly quickly and you won't have to worry about licensing issues as long as you don't plan to charge money for the end-product.
Steam ID - BewilderedRonin
Though if a CC licence allows you to use the music in a free version of the game, You could still negotiate an additional licence with the owner for a pay version of the game (should you decide to make one) if the owner of the music is willing.
So you might be able to use cc music for your free game and either change the music or obtain an additional licence from the creator should you decide to make it commercial.
No. First off, Metallica doesn't "own" the song. Somebody holds the copyright(s) on the song. In general, with songs, two copyrights are in play: the copyright on the composition and the copyright on a specific sound recording (e.g., the composition Enter Sandman and the specific performance of the song that appears on the CD). Sometimes, these copyrights are held by different agencies. Other times, they will be held by the same agency, but certain rights within those are sold or licensed to others.
One of the exclusive rights granted by copyright law in the U.S. (and it's similar in other countries) is the ability to create a derivative work. A MIDI file of a composition, even if it's slightly different, is still pretty obviously a derivative work of that composition. Even if you change a few notes or do it in a different key, you've still derived the MIDI from the original composition. To do this legally, you need to get a license from whomever has the rights to the composition. If you wanted to include an actual sample of the album version of the song, you'd likely have to license the composition and the recording. This has been a big issue with bands that sample other people's work; in general, the composition and the recording are both licensed just to be safe.
There is no such thing as "CC copyright." Copyright is a specific legal concept, and is likely retained by the creator of the work. Creative Commons is a family of licenses enabled by copyright. Copyright gives a work's copyright-holder the exclusive ability to do a number of things, and Creative Commons is a way for copyright holders to transfer those rights broadly to other people. CC-licensed media is a good place to start (note that, as others have pointed out, there are variants of the CC license. Some permit commercial use, others don't. Some require attribution, others don't. Check what kind of CC license is in use before using some media). Note that, since time immemorial, companies have sold "royalty-free" compilations of sound effects, musical tracks, and so on. You can find places that sell these on the Internet. Agreements vary, but in general once you pay a one-time fee for the collection, you're free to use the sound effects or music tracks in it to make your own works. An example of royalty-free sound effects.
Another set of magic words you want to look for is public domain. Public domain works basically have no copyright whatsoever. Either they never had a copyright, their copyright expired, or their creators/copyright holders explicitly put them into public domain, in effect abandoning the copyright. Note that any work created since the 1970s gets copyrighted automatically upon creation, and copyright notices are not required, so unless you have good evidence that the item's creator had the rights and THEN put the item into the public domain, it's probably not.
Also, don't confuse "hasn't gotten sued yet" for "this is OK legally." A lot of the "free MIDI" sites out there are just too much of a pain in the ass for copyright holders to sue, so they continue to exist. Somewhat surprisingly, guitar tab sites have fought a battle against rightsholders for years. Rarely, an unspoken gentleman's agreement exists. For example, Lucasfilm has a sort of unspoken policy that they will not sue people who make Star Wars fan-films as long as they're non-commercial and, presumably, non-offensive. This, however, does not mean that George Lucas couldn't wake up tomorrow and send his Stormtrooper Lawyer army out on the march to eradicate fan-films from the Internet like so many rogue Jedi.
You will likely earn bugger-all doing this. I stuck google ads on my site for a week around when I was on slashdot, digg, kotaku and joystiq. I earned $10.
It's a waste of time
Far better to make a really decent game, spend some money, then sell it to people.
You'd still have to make your own recording; it's an interesting, and unknown to me, question of whether, once you obtain a compulsory mechanical license, you can use a MIDI recording which was created without a license. My suspicion is no.
And that's why I've been hearing the door opening sounds from Doom and X-Com everywhere in the last 15 years.