deqer wrote:Fair enough.
I understand it's wrong, and yes I would be frustrated if someone did it with my work. I guess I may not mind if 1) they don't make money from it, and 2) they credited me in their product.
I feel much the same about my (non-commercial) projects. If someone took something I made and did something cool with it, I'd probably be flattered rather than angered. It depends on what was used to do what in what manner, though. And getting the credit for my work is important too.
Before not too long, I usually didn't credit people I used assets from either (I did make sure they were released under a proper license though), but nowadays I try to be more explicit about crediting people for their work as well. I tend to include a list of credits in a readme.txt or a credits.txt with stuff I release that contains media I've taken (licensed) from others. Such credits would contain the name of the author and, if possible, references to the specific assets. I also try to include an URL to where I got the original asset from and a mention of the license I licensed it under. This is usually a CC license. Most commonly are variants of the the CC-BY license which require attribution in this way.
I think it's important to do so, because if someone releases an asset under a CC-BY license and sees his work being used and properly attributed in another (high quality) project, then I believe that person might be encouraged to release more assets in the same manner, which can only benefit others, if not myself.
deqer wrote:
But, on the other hand, I would mind it if my work was used in a poorly manner. I can see how that would also be a reason for copyright infringement being "just wrong" because of mis-use/mis-presentation of the assets being stolen. I can see how the original artist would be like "wtf, such an awful use of my assets in his product. my assets were not made for that shit."
Yeah this is a very important aspect of copyright infringement that a lot of people simply don't think about. I was pleasantly surprised to see you bring it up. Besides all the legal hubbub, a commercial company is simply afraid that their product is being misrepresented by someone. And that's not just qualitywise, but also contextually. I don't think the creators of My Little Pony are happy if someone used My Little Pony assets in a violent, bloodsoaked piece of media.
deqer wrote:I did not want to spend the time to become a musician and create that exact music myself, nor want to spend money on a map that would be free.
Something like that is understandable and probably not that big a deal, but do realize that it does come with legal implications. You did something that, by law, is defined as something illegal. Does this also mean that in practice, you'll be punished for it? Probably not. Sometimes people judge the legality of something by how big the practical implication is, rather than the legal implication of it.
You might want to know that there's actually quite a broad selection of music available for free, released under CC licenses. In my
Testing Procedures map I've used a CC-BY licensed song as well, as well as taking
CC-BY licensed sound effects to create the ambient music that starts playing after the trash compactor sequence. All I can say is search the Internet and be creative and it'll be much more rewarding in the end, I'm sure.
deqer wrote:
I guess I was just mad that Obsidian didn't give a lot of props to the guy for at least trying and at least putting in an effort. I felt that Obsidian should first give props and compliment the work done so far, and "then" lecture him about copyright infringement at the end of your post. I would also like to see the lecture text be smaller/shorter than the props text.
Just my 2cents.
I guess obsidian is more a "criticism is more useful than credits" type of person. (Constructive) criticism will help you become better at something, while getting props for something (flawed) won't get you anywhere other than feeling good about yourself. And he's sort of right there from a technical point of view. But I can understand where you're coming from as well. Everyone needs a bit of credit and a pat on the back once in a while. It helps most of us to keep going. Slavishly working on something for weeks and then getting nothing but criticism and complaints isn't always a big motivator. The trick is to take the criticism and improve things and see how you can deliver something better in the end. And
that transformation (into something better) is going to get you a lot more credit I guess, even from obsidian
