Copyrights, rights and similar things
Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 11:17 pm
Hi everyone. Tonight I'd like to ask your opinion about something.
I have recently witnessed a sad discussion in a Spanish forum about the copyrights of old QL software. The thing is that somebody has the rights of a huge amount of old QL software and is forbidding any kind of distribution, as he from time to time sells packs with this software in his website.
I do not care if people do this kind of things. It’s perfectly understandable and licit, and I don’t criticize (why should I?) this point of view. Even if I may not fully agree.
However, I asked someone who knows a bit about the regulations and legislation of rights and warned me that, as an example, it was possible that somebody could get any of the soft in defence-force (including sources), make a small adaptation (a translation or some variation) and sell it and it would be quite difficult to prevent this, as it states the soft is free (which could be understood as public domain).
And that is another completely different story.
I would be very upset if I find someone in ebay or a similar site selling a physical edition of my games or a version of Space:1999 for another computer, for instance.
I have never been worried at all about this kind of issues. Who would be interested in doing such a thing for the Oric with my games after all? But I received several requests lately to port games such as Space:1999 to other platforms and also somebody asked about the possibility of having some kind of physical edition of these games or disks containing collections of games. Even some suggested such collections could be sold even if it were just to cover costs and inconveniences
So I wonder if it could be possible to add a Creative Commons license to Defence-Force’s software. Maybe using the creative commons website (http://creativecommons.org/) to create one with rights of free distribution but never with commercial purposes?
I would even say that we forbid adaptations unless they are distributed with the same rights as the original, giving full credit to us (with links to the originals too) and maybe even with permission. Of course any derived work should be also fully compatible with all the original IP rights: Stormlord, Skooldaze, Mission Impossible, Space: 1999, Blake 7, etc... are all based on intellectual properties we do not own.
What do you think?
I have recently witnessed a sad discussion in a Spanish forum about the copyrights of old QL software. The thing is that somebody has the rights of a huge amount of old QL software and is forbidding any kind of distribution, as he from time to time sells packs with this software in his website.
I do not care if people do this kind of things. It’s perfectly understandable and licit, and I don’t criticize (why should I?) this point of view. Even if I may not fully agree.
However, I asked someone who knows a bit about the regulations and legislation of rights and warned me that, as an example, it was possible that somebody could get any of the soft in defence-force (including sources), make a small adaptation (a translation or some variation) and sell it and it would be quite difficult to prevent this, as it states the soft is free (which could be understood as public domain).
And that is another completely different story.
I would be very upset if I find someone in ebay or a similar site selling a physical edition of my games or a version of Space:1999 for another computer, for instance.
I have never been worried at all about this kind of issues. Who would be interested in doing such a thing for the Oric with my games after all? But I received several requests lately to port games such as Space:1999 to other platforms and also somebody asked about the possibility of having some kind of physical edition of these games or disks containing collections of games. Even some suggested such collections could be sold even if it were just to cover costs and inconveniences
So I wonder if it could be possible to add a Creative Commons license to Defence-Force’s software. Maybe using the creative commons website (http://creativecommons.org/) to create one with rights of free distribution but never with commercial purposes?
I would even say that we forbid adaptations unless they are distributed with the same rights as the original, giving full credit to us (with links to the originals too) and maybe even with permission. Of course any derived work should be also fully compatible with all the original IP rights: Stormlord, Skooldaze, Mission Impossible, Space: 1999, Blake 7, etc... are all based on intellectual properties we do not own.
What do you think?