I need permissions for mod content
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The only really impressive thing I saw in the 10 minute video was the Cruise Charging bit and that they didn’t use a command in the chat box to activate (at least i don’t think they did) Anyone know how the Cruise Charging thing was achieved. Apart from that I’ve seen equally impressive effects and such from mods that are out in the open here.
Ozed.
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Me old chum Startrader is quite right, the copyright messages that people put into their mods aren’t worth a bag of cardamine. Get it through your heads people, Microsoft own the copyright to the code, doesn’t get any simpler than that. All we are doing is modifying the same code. They’ve already given permission for us to modify their code as long as we don’t sell it for profit, simple as that.
The only sticking point that i could see issues with is music content, especially stuff that’s already out there and covered by international copyright laws.
There’s nothing stopping Microsoft from coming along, grabbing Shattered Worlds as an example, and running off with it and releaseing it as FL2 should they wish. Wouldn’t be a thing you could do about it simply because it uses the FL base code to work.
As already mentioned here already, if using ships or other items, ask if you can, if not, simply credit the people involved and off you go. It’s as simple as that. The argument about intellectual copyright holds true for custom designed objects only up to a point, any judge with half a brain cell would throw it out of court anyway due to the fact they would need FL to run and we all know who owns that.
Anything you make for a mod needs to use the FL base code to work, try and understand this everyone before you start including worthless txt files threatening to sue anyone who rips off your stuff. Music aside, anything else is fair game.
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Yet remember that we’re living in an ecosystem with other people. It’s only basic respect to ask people if they don’t mind you using their work and in 99% of the time, they’ll gladly let you do so.
Crediting is good, but asking is best.
Also, on a slight tangent: content that appears extraordinary in a single mod will become bland if it’s used in every bloody mod in existence. For instance, Why’s missile trails are really becoming bland to me because EVERYONE uses them to hell and back. Build your own stuff, people! Get creativity flowing, stop being imitators because you can never hope to better or equal what you’re imitating. It’s not like there’s just one way to do everything, gosh.
/rant
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I’m glad some people have the sense to see through the pointless threats in some read me files. I can’t believe how seriously some people take themselves, forcing you to accept an agreement before you can install a mod? Absolutely insane, gamers hate that kind of thing and in the case of a mod it’s not worth one iota.
If you want to protect your artwork then you need to distribute it as a stand alone product, not as part of a mod for a game that already exists.
Modders and the mod community for this game are owed a great deal, time and time again they have injected new life into a very old game and their achievements are no small thing, but many have refused to share.
When a game has reached the point that freelancer has, the modders should fall back to the alamo and pool their resources into one last great effort. Between you their must be the potential for a mod to knock all others into the history books. The materials at your disposal must be massive by now and if you could find a way to put it all together then i can only imagine what you’re all capable of producing.
Enough of that anyway, you have my thanks and respect for all your efforts over the years, you’ve made an otherwise average game a legend.
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Hey! Ras!!!
Hold on, he’s only 51, younger than me!
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Wise words in here. I think the most important thing here is that we share our methods/tools of modding.
If something looks awesome, the question should be “how did you do that” instead of “can you give it to me”.
Of course its also very nice if somebody shares their artwork openly, like Why did. Though in doing so, the artwork loses its unique feel, as FriendlyFire said.
So maybe, instead of sharing effects, it may be more productive to write in-depth ALE tutorials, taking this as an example. -
It’s on my todo list, promise!
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StarTrader wrote:
Well Said!!This is an old and inflammatory argument, I’ve said this before in different words and I’ll just repeat myself…
I cannot see how any “copyright” by any modder of a mod can stand up in a court of law when it has itself already violated a real and registered Copyright of the original Freelancer game created (ok purchased together with all rights) by such a mighty force as Microsoft?
It cannot!
Many modders have threatened legal action against anyone who uses their mod work. But they cannot take any of their mod cases to a court of law, for the simple reason that they are already pirates themselves.
Silly billies. A thief threatens legal action to another thief who might steal from him something he has himself stolen? Ha ha.
Have you also considered this…
If the engine code includes and allows it, how can any use of the same command and parameter used in a mod to achieve the same effect, be considered piracy of someone else’s work? It’s not like building a progam using a programming language where you need to design the entire work line by line, and so many alternatives are available and so the program can be different but achieve the same effect. In FL it cannot, the available commands and acceptable parameters are very limited and so it must inherently be identical, and the only legal copyright owners are those who built the engine and incorporated the commands used in the .ini files.
We should merely respect the work of others.
So CC and others, including myself - no matter how much it hurts, we who designed (or rather discovered) anything unique in the way of mod coding & ini changes in FL are pirates in the first instance. So get real. Unless you created new commands, or added new functionality, you did not invent anything, you used existing functionality already built into FL. The only possible exceptions are ships and other models which are really unique design. But if the ship is a model of one used in a TV show or movie, how on earth can that be copyrighted since the original ship design is not theirs?
And even if unique models, since even those also modify a copyrighted work, by being incorporated into FL, those too are not legally supportable.
In reality, others of us refrain from using other modders’ work just out of respect and decency, but none of you have any right to forbid by law.
And since you have released a mod, how can you insist on it not being used by the community for which it was made? That’s churlish! If that’s the way you feel, don’t release it at all, instead of releasing it just for praise and self-inflation!
Why can’t you lot understand this and just shut up, and be kind to fellow modders? On both sides. Creators should release their work for all to use, or not release a mod at all. Withholding your permission is ridiculous. At the same time, Wannabees should not use others’ work without permission, out of respect. You are just breaking up the small community that is left, for self-promotion and self-esteem or mere bloody-mindedness only.
Reconsider, all of you. Take leads from those pillars among us who have donated so much and so freely, too many to name and give credit to.
Wow well said!
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What would be your take on writing a whole new story and universe and then use that for a mod? Would the story be your intellectual property or will you basically forfeit your ideas because you use this medium? Just wondering what you think about that.
Ozed.
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It doesn’t matter if a mod was based on the teletubbies, as long as its’ based on FL code, Microsoft own the copyright.
Only way to get round it like Lancer Solarus is doing is to make your own game engine or licence an existing one and then go from there. Least that way you own everything.
Why do i know quite a lot about this? Simple, i’ve worked in the music business for over 20yrs and released albums all over the place, so i’m a bit clued up on all this.
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i think i have to disagree slightly. i did write 6 thn’s, without replacing archetypes like the most of us did. i built them from scratch, every line (the shortest has 311 of those, the longest 3546, decrypted). three of them do not even work without other content of my mod. though i used parameters defined in the freelancer engine and values, too, though i used numerous floats and integers i read in other thn’s, it have been my fingers that entered them to the file, it were my eyes that tested if it worked, it was my computer that calculated the vectors and my love to detail that decided wether it is enough for certain parts of the mentioned screenviews.
another example: let’s not talk about microsoft freelancer, let’s talk about some other creation, for instance mozilla firefox and websites. once you copied an html or php code and made your homepage look like one that was created by someone with enough power you have broken their rights and are able to be judged in court. its the same case: html codes would be worth nothing without the browsers of microsoft, mozilla and apple that made it possible to read them. actually all website creators have created nothing but used parameteres introduced by the browser engines. also, mozilla created several browser applications with programming languages they have not invented. also these codes would be nothing without operating systems that can execute them properly, likely the ones from microsoft, linux and apple.
i think we all have rights for any file that is created by ourselves entirely, just like the models we used just like the sounds we recorded, just like the storyline we had our ideas for. what we do not have rights for are the code parts that were made by microsoft and digital anvil, that we have not deleted from our mod archives. we have no rights for copies of the engines or configurations, and no rights to use names from the game or any tv-show as names of e.g. starships we enter additionally. but for anything we created ourselves the rights are ours without we have broken any law but with anyone who uses the files without our permissions has broken the law. the point that the usage of our files is possible with a foreign program is not relevant as nearly all files today are made with editors. even if those are created by the creator, they need operative systems to work and in fact this is the same as our usage of "LODranges = " in an configuration file of one of our mods.
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It’s actually a middle ground here.
IANAL, but what I gathered was that should you create an entirely original mod, you would retain ownership of the story, the universe and anything entirely custom like ships or stations.
However, you would not keep ownership of anything that is written using Freelancer’s code. This means that you would keep ownership of the ships, but not of the ships stored as CMPs. Microsoft could decide to use the CMPs and you would have near to no legal grounds (although Freelancer itself MAY infringe on other copyrights, so the possibility of this happening is nil), but they would not be allowed to modify the model in any way. I believe the texture would be your own, too, since that uses standard formats which are merely stored in the MAT format (which is based on the standard UTF format, not related to Microsoft in particular). You would not however have any ownership on things like weapons, effects, systems, etc.
The point here though is that FL is way too obscure as far as legal issues go for it to be possible to sue on copyright infringement. Mod makers should be mature enough to be able to resolve conflicts by themselves without the need to use the legal system for it.
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It’s like I pointed out earlier, you can protect your artwork, but you have to release it as a stand alone product, you can’t protect it if you release it as part of a mod.
If you make a piece of artwork, distribute it as a piece of artwork, otherwise it’s something else.
Artwork would be a model released in a 3d file format, a model only, not a ready to fly model configured for a game engine such as freelancer. It then becomes a mod or addon.
To protect code or a program, it needs to be released as stand alone code or a program, otherwise it’s something else.
A mod is a mod, you can’t protect it, but you might want to include some form of disclaimer just in case it breaks something!
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@FF
I have to agree wholeheartedly with you, almost like a judges summing up really. That about covers it.
As i mentioned earlier, music is a different kettle of fish entirely, especially if it’s already in the public domain, (on an album, used in a commercial etc), then you have to be careful. M$ not being totally stupid would ask for it’s removal or have to licence it from the author.
I keep stressing the music side of things because of what i do, plus if it’s already out there, then it’s probably covered by PRS or some other agency and they take great pains to nail you to a cross for copyright infringement.
Artwork as already mentioned is another thing that as long as it’s already in the public domain, (on a postcard, hanging in the Louvre) then you have grounds for a lawsuit.
Fact is, very few would even try as the costs involved are astronomical, trust me on this. Like FF said, most of us who live on the TSP are reasonable fellows and nearly everything can be sorted either on the forums or via PM. It’s only when idiots from some strange community wander in, claiming this and that, then issues arise.
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sure, me either think that this little discussions and codework are not worth of getting in trouble with the law though we are balancing ourselves on the edges of legality. i just meant, that if it would come out to the very primitive rules and who’s right, who isn’t, than the answers would be simple like this. i got myself informed just today further: dunno about international rights, at least in german law it depends on wether you have put in your own ideas to the result, if you can have some rights on them. as long as you did not try recreations of what you have seen somewhere (sci-fi show?) but initiated the visualities yourself you have entire rights for any code even if a certain program not created by you is needed to use them. this is irrelevant as there are much more usual analogous cases (mentioned: html and browser program) that behave just the same. also the ready-to-fly models are entirely ours as long as theire entirely customly shaped, because it were our community’s cmp exporters and our community’s UTF-Editors we used to compile our own shapes to a format that can be used by a certain program called “Freelancer” by Microsoft Game Studios and Digital Anvil.
ofc we are sensible enough not to need any lawyers to stop some stupid mod thieves from using our mods under other names for their own little community without our permission. we can handle it ourselves. also we are not stupid enough to sell our mods without the permission of Microsoft though in some cases we would have rights to do so - however: Microsoft has more money for good lawyers than us, they would win any process against us. but this is not even needed to be imagined as nothing of this will happen. all of these are just thoughts about right and wrong, noth more. -
FriendlyFire wrote:
① For instance, Why’s missile trails are really becoming bland to me because EVERYONE uses them to hell and back.
② Build your own stuff, people! Get creativity flowing, stop being imitators because you can never hope to better or equal what you’re imitating. It’s not like there’s just one way to do everything, gosh.
/rant
After few weeks of FF’s rant….
Point 1, Yes indeed at all. I don’t know why some people use new resource crazy no matter if that really becoming to be use there. As I, I’m tried to make ALE few month ago, and I can sure i can make my own rough effects bases-on the original ALE code LOL.
Point 2 (Actually that is point 1 too), I’m agree with it, but you know, there may have a large community behind some modders. I mean, maybe some community member/others still urge modders to complete theirs mod, That may why you will see same ships in different mod with different setting and different name.
I’m very lucky because i just interest in make mod, and not live or make mod for any gamer community, that made me have lot of time to play with mod LOL.
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I’m a loner, but it doesn’t stop me from making things like this in a single afternoon. If I can, anyone can.
Peer pressure shouldn’t affect quality, nor should head count.
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FriendlyFire wrote:
I’m a loner, but it doesn’t stop me from making things like this in a single afternoon. If I can, anyone can.Peer pressure shouldn’t affect quality, nor should head count.
WOW, Big one and Good Job. Mmmmm…… Can i make something like that? <= LOL
