Just a bit on copyright:You don't need to spend money to copyright something, as soon as you make it it's copyrighted. Copyright lasts 70 years after your death, you don't need to renew it. Registering a copyright doesn't mean it wasn't copyrighted before it was registered. Registering a copyright is just legally stating you made something. It's like a death certificate, people aren't magically alive until the certificate is printed out, it's just a legal reference document. It only cost $50 to register a copyright in the US. It's free in the UK last time I checked. You can retroactively take someone to court over infringing material if you register it within a few months of the crime being committed.It's a good idea to settle copyright infringement out of court. That's what the DMCA takedown notices on youtube, file deletions on rapidshare, etc, are all about. Court is expensive. Suing someone isn't worth it unless they made thousands of dollars off of selling your work. In most cases on this forum, content authors are giving their work away for free and so are potential infringers, the thought of going to court shouldn't even cross your mind. If someone is selling your work and you are particularly worried about it, the two best courses of action you can take are to (a) ask them yourself to take it down, and if they don't, just ignore it, we all know you made it, or (b) register your copyright if it means that much to you ($50) and email their server host and politely ask them to take it down. They will ask for proof that it's your work. You'll need your copyright registration and some form of identification, probably a scan of a photo id or something, ask them. Mediaifire, rapidshare, box.net, etc, aren't involved in this community and will want evidence. On RTB it's a little different, we usually know who made what mods or can find out fairly easily and can take things down without that stuff. Licensing a work sets up rules for how people can use and distribute your work. You are not required to license a work. It's nice to have one in some cases. If you're giving out your work for free, creative commons licenses are very commonly used and effective. In most cases just putting "You must include my name in the credits of your mod" in the mod description is good enough, and this is in fact technically a license. You don't have to go all out putting fancy licenses in every single thing you post, this isn't desirable and people here tend to think you're trying to show off when you do it.No work you produce belongs to Badspot. Very early versions of the EULA that you agreed to when you installed the game may have had a section in there that allowed Badspot to bundle your mod or builds with the game. This section isn't in there anymore. Badspot asks you first if he's going to include your content anyway, in fact, you have to submit it to him. That's been the case with the build and decal threads and it's been a while since he's asked for any content. Why this continues to confuse people to this day and how people who are too new to have even read the old EULA that had that bit in it come up with the astounding claim that "All your drawings are copyright of Badspot" baffles me.And to follow up on this mod:RTB doesn't have a straight policy on how we'll deal with this yet. On one hand I think letting people fork mods and do their own development on mods is cool if they give credit and have permission, on the other hand if the original authors says stop editing my work we should probably recognize that. Next time I get around to talking to Ephialtes I'll point out this thread to him.
Yes. If you draw something on somebody else's paper it's still your drawing, if you build something in someone else's server it's still your building.Taking screen shots of other people's buildings is a gray area. In the end it doesn't really matter in any case, no matter who has the copyright you can repost them under fair use.In this community it is generally accepted, in fact, encouraged that you use and build off of other people's builds. You don't need permission, just don't go around telling everyone you built beta city. Every kind of "save protection" method proposed has been shot down as going against the spirit of the community. Writing up some kind of magical DRM for your builds will probably get you in trouble with Badspot.We make community guidelines because copyright law is boring and not always easy to follow. I mean, theoretically, I suppose a forum member is entitled to take someone to court over infringement, if they could actually find a judge who would hear an infringement case with no monetary damages and could afford all of the court fees. It just doesn't happen though, that's not how the forums, real people, the law, or the Internet work.
win and why posting
I made this sticky.
This isn't a sticky.
