I mistakenly posted this earlier on the EV Board, but meant it for the Dev Corner:

This question is inspired by a couple of recent posts involving long-ago plugs. The plugs are available here at EV Add-ons, but are no longer supported: the designers have vanished into "EV retirement" and cannot be located. The person writing the posts would like to use graphic elements from the plugs in a project of his own.

What do you folks think? If you make an honest effort to locate and contact the authors of a plug, and can neither locate them or elicit a response from them, and so reasonably assume that they are beyond caring about the plug...is it ethical to use portions of the plug in your own work (assuming proper accreditation, of course)? Or not? Or do other factors apply: for example, what if the plug is "off-market" (no longer widely available for download)?

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PlanetPhil
i'm only one man

Quote

Originally posted by PlanetPhil:
**I mistakenly posted this earlier on the EV Board, but meant it for the Dev Corner:

This question is inspired by a couple of recent posts involving long-ago plugs. The plugs are available here at EV Add-ons, but are no longer supported: the designers have vanished into "EV retirement" and cannot be located. The person writing the posts would like to use graphic elements from the plugs in a project of his own.

What do you folks think? If you make an honest effort to locate and contact the authors of a plug, and can neither locate them or elicit a response from them, and so reasonably assume that they are beyond caring about the plug...is it ethical to use portions of the plug in your own work (assuming proper accreditation, of course)? Or not? Or do other factors apply: for example, what if the plug is "off-market" (no longer widely available for download)?
**

I dunno...

what if the author comes back, full of rage?

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Check out the EV:Nova Planetarion Alliance! #ev3 on irc.planetarion.com **
(url="http://"http://www.drippingchipmunk.com")DrippingChipmunk.com(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.downwithbush.net")DOWNWITHBUSH.NET(/url)
(url="http://"http://www.geocities.com/octoberfost")OctoberDevelopment(/url)**

glad to see it got moved, PlanetPhil. Don't forget to check the EV one every once in a while; you never know if people will still post to it or not.

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- Corey, the true master of all things Pokémon and EV
better dead than confed!!
long live the rebellion!!

I wouldn't steal anything from a plug if I were you. If you can't contact the authors, then forget about it. In case you care for some reason, I made the Teckktra Plugs.

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I know Kung Fu.~Keanu Reeves
~Nick

the following information is offered for highly generalized information only, and is not to be interpreted as providing legal assistance or creating an attorney/client relationship:

whenever anyone posts a plug-in, it is entitled to copyright protection, whether the author says so or not. this means that anyone using any part of it is technically infringing. but there are some exceptions. see if the readme file says something like "feel free to use, so long as you give me credit" or any other language suggesting you might have a right to use it. also, technically, a person making a "raiders" plug is infringing on the movie's copyright.
but apart from those legal technicalities, i believe you are safe just giving credit to the author and making the attempt to contact, particularly given the free nature of plug-in development for ev/evo. but if the author does get in touch with you and asks you to stop, you should stop.

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Impeach Scalia!

If I ever use someone elses PICTs, I usually modify them a bit. Then, they are not all his/hers. A good example is in Ambrosia 1.0.1 (availible at the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/ev/addons.html")EV Addons Page(/url) and should be on page 2). In that plug, I made a new ship, the Terminator. I looked like a Rebel Destroyer, but had green wings instead of red ones.

My overral opinion, however, is that if you can help it, don't use other peoples PICTs. Make your own.

Just my opinion.

P.S. Yay!! Over 1000 posts!!! Yahoo!

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To Escape Velocity: Nova and Beyond!
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Millennium. Its coming, prepare for it.
Coming to the (url="http://"http://www.ambrosiaSW.com/games/ev/chronicles.html")EV Chronicles(/url).

Quote

Originally posted by astro:
**whenever anyone posts a plug-in, it is entitled to copyright protection, whether the author says so or not.... also, technically, a person making a "raiders" plug is infringing on the movie's copyright.
but apart from those legal technicalities, i believe you are safe just giving credit to the author and making the attempt to contact, particularly given the free nature of plug-in development for ev/evo. but if the author does get in touch with you and asks you to stop, you should stop.
**

You have good points. Maybe it would be to everyone's benefit if Ambrosia could lay out some guidelines on the "How to submit a plugin page" suggesting that the author should say whether the project is copyrighted or copylefted.

On a related note, the mere creation of something like a plugin does give the creator copyright, but that also means that "fair use" is allowed. The concept of fair use was laid out in Folsom v. Marsh (Massachusetts, 1841) and is currently embodied in section 107 of the copyright act. Basically there are four criteria which are used when determining fair use. It's not necessary to meet all four criteria, only a majority of them. They are:

"In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include -
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."
-Section 107 Copyright Act

I would argue that since 99% of plugins are free, criteria 1 is met. Criteria 2 is almost universily failed by deravitive works since they are based on a work which has a copyright. Section 3 is an important one in this case. I think it speaks for itself. And item four is especially important, as courts have focused on this one alot. If your plugin builds off of the work of others in another plugin, chances are the player will need the original plugin to use your new one. If this is the case, demand for the original plugin actually increases.

Fair use is tricky, and I'm not familiar with the details of how it would apply to software. I know about the written word because of my time as an editor for a weekly pub and, more recently, as a "Friend of the Court", writing something up to help defend my old publication from accusations of plagarism. If anyone is interested on how to take an issue apart and determine if something is fair use, see (url="http://"http://phair.rit.edu/hell/gdt/misc/FairUse.doc")http://phair.rit.edu...isc/FairUse.doc(/url)

Even though using elements from another plugin might be legal, it doesn't mean it is ethical. If you can't contact the original author, make damned sure you give them all kinds of credit. After all, what good is the law when you pick up karma?

-STH

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Wouldn't a Rebel Destroyer™ with green wings be an Argosy™?

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I probably should put some witty remark here. But I won't.

I would have thought even someone wanting to use your graphics in their plug would be a great honour!

As far as I see it, using someones graphics who is long gone is bestowing much honour upon them!

Go ahead and use 'em. Just give the credits, and the name of the plug they came from, and possibly a përs resource or a reason you like them.

Majordomo
Captain of the Guard

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Speaking as a plug developer who has almost vanished into "EVO retirement", I would be very annoyed if I came back to these boards some day and found that someone were using my graphics without my permission. "Slightly altered", "unable to contact", and "I gave you credit" are not, IMHO, valid excuses for using my hard work without permission. If you can't contact someone, I think that you would be much better to assume that they didn't give you permission rather than that they did. Flame off.

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“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?” - T.H. Huxley

I agree.

Somebody did actually release a plugin using my graphics, and I asked them to withdraw it (which they did).

If somebody who was way out of my league did something based on my work, and gave me thorough credit for it, I would probably feel quite honoured (although I would almost certainly want my copyright protected and a big cheque for it). So, if anyone out there wants to make a feature film, or a TV series, or even a PlayStation game based on my stuff, I would love to talk to them.

However, my guess is that most people who want to 'borrow' work do so because they are not up to making it themselves. If someone released a plugin substantially based on my work, but full of spelling and grammatical errors, maybe changing the nature of my universe, or doing things with the characters which are incompatible with my vision, I would actually feel disappointed and offended.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

I think FH would make a good movie.

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I probably should put some witty remark here. But I won't.

Quote

Originally posted by Arada Pilot:
**I think FH would make a good movie.

**

yea. the storyline was great. if someone bothered to alter it a little.. maybe 10years into the future ASW will be extended to the movie market and they'll make a Frozen Heart movie :)</rant>

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a meteor, a momentary flare of brilliance.. like all life, Nothing really, in the sweep of time. But everything in the Force.

Okay, my two cents. I wouldn't take content from someone else's plugin. Period. Even if they don't respond, it's still theirs.

/Me agrees.
The only graphics which are free to edit and reuse are the original ambrosia ones.

s

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I doubt if, supposing I did release one of my plugs, someone would try to take my graphics. From the other point of view, for the person playing the game seeing graphics used from one plug applied to another very different plug looks A) cheesy and cheap. It is not only offensive to the person who made the original plug, but degrades the appearence of your plug.

BTW, I think that EVN would make an awesome Playstation 2 game....
and FH would make a cool movie...

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"I want Karma!" "I want karma!" "I want Karma!" "I want karma!"

Quote

Originally posted by J.Ace21:
**yea. the storyline was great. if someone bothered to alter it a little.. maybe 10years into the future ASW will be extended to the movie market and they'll make a Frozen Heart movie:) </rant>
**

Ambrosia Software, Inc. has nothing to do with the Frozen Heart, so they wouldn't be the ones who made the movie...

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I did in fact have my own mind made up on this topic before I posted it, but thought a public discussion would be useful, especially for those members who are in fact trying to contact long-vanished authors of plugs. If I were in charge of drafting ethics guidelines re the use of other people's work, I'd pay close attention to:

1: The opinions of actual plug designers. They've put in the time and produced the work, and so what they think of people who copy their efforts without asking should weigh heavily here. Glenn (author of 'Secession,') nwa728 (who wrote the Teckktra plugs), and Martin Turner (creator of 'Frozen Heart' and 'Femme Fatale') all pretty much agree: without express permission from them, they don't care to have their work copied—indeed, they would consider such 'imitation to be theft. Doesn't matter how old the plug is, or whether the author is 'retired.' No permission, no use. It follows that if the author cannot be reached , and so cannot give permission, using material from his/her plug would be unethical.

2: Some elements of actual law: astro is absolutely correct—a plug-in is entitled to copyright protection, whether the author says so or not. Therefore, using any part of a given plug (without permission) is an infringement. seant goes a step further and provides us with challenging info on the 'fair use' concept. As I understand the four criteria used when determining fair use, then a plug that makes non-permitted use of someone else's work clearly fails criterion #2 ('the nature of the copyrighted work'—see astro's argument above) and criterion #4, which is 'the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.' I think it fails #4 because the only value of any given plug is that it differ —graphically or narratively or functionally—from another plug or from the stock EV/O game itself. The value lies in the difference, and to make non-permitted use of a plug's elements is to adversely affect the value of that plug. seant informs us that to pass the fair use test, a majority of the four criteria must be met. Copying from a plug without permission meets only two of those criteria, and that is not a majority.

So "raiding" someone else's plug without gaining the author's permission is both unethical and illegal, based on what we have here. I don't know if ASW would ever want to make policy on this—policing the activities of plug designers probably isn't what Andrew dreamed of doing when he was younger—but I thought it was worth talking about.

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PlanetPhil
lousy weather, friendly natives

I transferred the other topic before I noticed this one, so then I deleted it from the Dev board (it's still on the EV board, but closed).

I do landing picts for EV/O and put them on my website for anyone making freeware EV/O plugs to use. I ask that they give me credit and that they notify me. BUT, I have no way of knowing if people are using my artwork without letting me know.

Keep in mind that the artwork may have been used from EV/O artists' websites without the plug-maker giving the artists' credit in the plug. Therefore, even if you do get permission from the plug-maker, you may be using artwork without giving proper credit, and unless you see the art elsewhere by chance, you cannot know it. Something to think about.
Jude

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