Bay 12 Games Forum
Dwarf Fortress => DF General Discussion => Topic started by: MrWiggles on April 24, 2012, 02:15:10 am
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Its an interesting find. Seems to be paid for tutorial for DF.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/guide-to-dwarf-fortress/id458124964?mt=8
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Seems like they stole some artwork there?
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Yeah it seems likely, one of those is clearlyfrom that one boatmurdered pic. The guide might still be usable though.
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also the let's plays look familiar
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Seems like it's on a bit sketchy legal ground, particularly considering it's apparently sold for profit.
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hard to say what profit is, considering the 99$ investment up front you have to pay to put it on the app store
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Email ToadyOne about it?
Suppose he hasnt imposed on ToadyOne IP, but those from LPs, and tutorials.
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Email ToadyOne about it?
Suppose he hasnt imposed on ToadyOne IP, but those from LPs, and tutorials.
Legally, there's nothing Toady can do about it, unless the book is stealing artwork FROM Toady without his permission.
The guy has every right to write a tutorial and sell it, it's things like pictures that could fall under creative commons/copyright that can get him in biiiig trouble.
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He is in trouble only if the original authors of the pictures decide to sue. That is likely a big investment on lawyer time for.
Most easily someone could report him to Apple (maybe even a DMCA notice) to take it down. I bet that if he is using unauthorized images he copied free tutorials too.
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Most easily someone could report him to Apple (maybe even a DMCA notice) to take it down. I bet that if he is using unauthorized images he copied free tutorials too.
Does apple care about DMCA notices that don't come from viacomm?
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Hate to break it to you guys but this has already (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex/dp/1449314945) been done before. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102853.0)
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Yeah, but that ones by the person who made those 40d tutorials
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Hate to break it to you guys but this has already (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex/dp/1449314945) been done before. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102853.0)
That guy used his own writing, not copyrighted stuff.
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I love how its rated 9+ for infrequent/mild/ violence, horror, and suggestive themes
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Who would honestly give money for a guide to a game that isn't even finished? Remember how much of a change happened to farming in 2010 when EVERYTHING needed to be muddied first? Or the Military Screen? Or Animal Training? I feel sorry for everyone who parts money for this.
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I would pay for the TinyPirate one, if only because it's illustrated by the Bronzemurder dude.
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I would pay for the TinyPirate one, if only because it's illustrated by the Bronzemurder dude.
And it's a real book. 8)
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Hate to break it to you guys but this has already (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Started-Dwarf-Fortress-complex/dp/1449314945) been done before. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102853.0)
That guy used his own writing, not copyrighted stuff.
Whole e-books built off of wikipedia are pretty common right now.
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If it's actually using material from the older Let's Play games such as Boatmurdered, there might (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42561.0) be some trouble (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=42561.msg817720#msg817720)...
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Boatmurdered reserved their copyright? Awesome. Smart move I guess, since it probably introduced half of people to DF for the first time.
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Who would honestly give money for a guide to a game that isn't even finished? Remember how much of a change happened to farming in 2010 when EVERYTHING needed to be muddied first? Or the Military Screen? Or Animal Training? I feel sorry for everyone who parts money for this.
TinyPirate's book will be updated along with DF changes.
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Tinypirate's awesome book aside, I'd take the view of this one as nothing mpre than a little free publicity for toady. Sure, mildly exploitative publicity, but publicity nonetheless.
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Tinypirate's awesome book aside, I'd take the view of this one as nothing mpre than a little free publicity for toady. Sure, mildly exploitative publicity, but publicity nonetheless.
To be honest, if someone was selling a book with my artwork in it without my consent, you can bet your sweet posterior I'd be taking up arms against him.
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Sure, that'd be straight up infringement of your intellectual property. But my understanding of this is that it doesn't have any of Toady's art. Is this actually correct? I think I need some hard facts on this one. Because there really is a difference between skirting around the edges of copyright law and straight up breaking it. I still think that any publicity is good publicity, but if someone is reproducing your stuffz without permission (as opposed to just writing about it) then, IMHO, its time to break out the lawyers letters/savage beating by gangsters.
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Tinypirate's awesome book aside, I'd take the view of this one as nothing mpre than a little free publicity for toady. Sure, mildly exploitative publicity, but publicity nonetheless.
I doubt anyone will be drawn to the game because they saw a guide for it for sale on itunes. This seems to be aimed more at people who are trying to play dwarf fortress, and haven't discovered the wiki yet.
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*finally notices the thread regarding Sankis when looking at all the above Boatmurdered comments and links* Holy -crap- what a <censored>. Not much understanding of the law, either. Still, while I disagree with him, I have sympathy for Mike Mayday (or anyone else so affected), and think that -charging- for a DF book is a bit of a sleazy move. Even so, however...
No, Boatmurdered hasn't reserved a copyright. To make things more complicated, its not clear (under the US or UK) laws whether or not a forum poster or a forum owner actually owns a forum post; there is no clear legal consensus yet as it has never been seriously tested. Even more unfortunately, even if it was copyrighted, intellectual property rights vanish without enforcement. As it has been posted in many places on the internet and redistributed, and neither Something Awful's terms and conditions nor the forum post itself have a policy on that, all of the authors (all of them) involved in the original boatmurdered would have to send c&d notices (or Something Awful, LLC) as well as make good faith legal efforts to ensure such notices were complied with to maintain it. An even bigger issue is that U.S. Law generally only recognizes original and joint works and not 'communal' works. It might actually be that the Toady one has the only -real- claim on Boatmurdered.
That being said, its a bit sleazy. You shouldn't make money off of this stuff. And I'd be annoyed if I was Mayday or someone else.
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Something Awful's Let's Play forum has a terms of service that makes whatever is created there the IP of the LP'ers, as I recall. Or something like that. I haven't read it myself. That's why that topic devolved into a legal contest, really.
I also like how two of the preview pictures I notice on this have been posted on this forum as fanart by certain folks, so yeah, I'm pretty sure this fellow copy+pasted all sorts of junk. And it's a bit annoying that someone would try to make money for themselves by 'teaching' while Toady lives off of donations. Also there's that super neat wiki, which I've been using since day one for no charge.
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No, Boatmurdered hasn't reserved a copyright. To make things more complicated, its not clear (under the US or UK) laws whether or not a forum poster or a forum owner actually owns a forum post; there is no clear legal consensus yet as it has never been seriously tested. Even more unfortunately, even if it was copyrighted, intellectual property rights vanish without enforcement. As it has been posted in many places on the internet and redistributed, and neither Something Awful's terms and conditions nor the forum post itself have a policy on that, all of the authors (all of them) involved in the original boatmurdered would have to send c&d notices (or Something Awful, LLC) as well as make good faith legal efforts to ensure such notices were complied with to maintain it. An even bigger issue is that U.S. Law generally only recognizes original and joint works and not 'communal' works. It might actually be that the Toady one has the only -real- claim on Boatmurdered.
That being said, its a bit sleazy. You shouldn't make money off of this stuff. And I'd be annoyed if I was Mayday or someone else.
Copyright is implicit in any creative work. Sorry dude, but you legally need to have permission to take something someone else wrote and sell it, even if it's something someone wrote on a forum. For example, about a year or two ago I would compose the occasional post in the form of a zen koan- were someone to repackage these as an ebook, I would have total legal justification to sue them. I don't know why you think it has anything to do with SA's terms and conditions or whatever, but reposting is a different thing entirely than Selling For A Profit. As for "joint works" vs "communal works", that's a pretty hazy distinction, especially in a pay-only forum, in an opt-in thread with only a handful of active contributors. It's not like we're talking about an open air freestyle rap contest or something here. So yes, just because it exists in a freely viewable archive, does not make it free-to-resell.
(As an aside, I have permission from all of the original Boatmurdered crew that could be contacted, to bestow permission for such a thing, provided it is handled well and sold solely for the benefit of the Bay12 community.)
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Tinypirate's awesome book aside, I'd take the view of this one as nothing mpre than a little free publicity for toady. Sure, mildly exploitative publicity, but publicity nonetheless.
To be honest, if someone was selling a book with my artwork in it without my consent, you can bet your sweet posterior I'd be taking up arms against him.
I was referring to the iTunes eBook. Apologies for lack of clarity.
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No, Boatmurdered hasn't reserved a copyright.
You do realize that in the US at least, all works are automatically copyrighted upon creation. You do not have to go and officially get something copyrighted. You also do not have to show the (C) trademark for it to be copyrighted.
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(Vherid) - it is my understanding that applies to original and not derivative works. The point that I was trying to make was that, as an arguably derivative work, it is possible that Toady actually would have the best claim on it. Failing that, the law as I understand it is that it fits with the terms and conditions of the forum it is posted on. If the forum notes it has IP rights, it has IP rights. If it notes the end-users have them, the end-users have them. If it notes nothing...there actually hasn't been a legal precedent for that yet, which is why I was babbling about terms and conditions.
HOWEVER, this is all a moot point. I read SA's terms and conditions, but not the individual Let's Play boards. If it notes the users have IP rights, then they have the IP rights. (Unless they don't.) ....I guess I'm getting a bit too in-depth for this forum. Sorry.
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A derivative work, as my understanding goes, would be a work 'derived' from DF itself- ie, a game with backwards engineered code or similar.
The thing with the Boatmurdered LP as an ebook is that the copyright would be on par with selling a fanfic of your D&D game. You wouldn't be able to invoke DF's trademarks or whatever, but you could sell the actual written work itself. Likewise, just because Toady owns DF's trademarks, that does not give him rights over Boatmurdered as an LP, with regard to the written portions. It's a tricky edge case scenario.
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Tinypirate's awesome book aside, I'd take the view of this one as nothing mpre than a little free publicity for toady. Sure, mildly exploitative publicity, but publicity nonetheless.
To be honest, if someone was selling a book with my artwork in it without my consent, you can bet your sweet posterior I'd be taking up arms against him.
I was referring to the iTunes eBook. Apologies for lack of clarity.
So was I! It contains artwork from numerous sources, so many that it's almost certain the author didn't bother to ask for permission from their creators (because that would mean that either most of them agreed for the artwork to be used without compensation or that the author is an extremely patient man to sign deals with all of them).
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I was referring to the iTunes eBook. Apologies for lack of clarity.
So was I! It contains artwork from numerous sources, so many that it's almost certain the author didn't bother to ask for permission from their creators (because that would mean that either most of them agreed for the artwork to be used without compensation or that the author is an extremely patient man to sign deals with all of them).
You can tell I hadn't had my coffee. I meant to quote Deon;
Who would honestly give money for a guide to a game that isn't even finished? Remember how much of a change happened to farming in 2010 when EVERYTHING needed to be muddied first? Or the Military Screen? Or Animal Training? I feel sorry for everyone who parts money for this.
TinyPirate's book will be updated along with DF changes.
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Yeah, I was a bit confused with that quote. Carry on then!
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Thanks Capntastic. That clears things up for me.