Hey guys, we have been receiving a lot of concern for our project over copyright and
what it means for us as we get further into development. We listen to feedback, and we
wanted to address these issues openly with the community and provide an outlook on how
fan-made projects like us; can deal with these rising issues.
The scope of this video will be covering the controversial subject at large:
Copyright and Trademark and how it may affect your fan-made project. We'll be looking at international
copyright treaties, and a little of U.S and Canadian copyright law.
The reason being is that there are myths and misleading information surrounding the fandom
when dealing with these issues. Such fear mongering only stagnates the fandom's growth
as a whole.
Before we get into that, I'm Airplay: the lead programmer at The Overmare Studios. Better
known for working on the game, Fallout: Equestria. Copyright and trademark have always been big
issues that lingered in the background before I jumped on this project. A few years back,
I started developing a distribution protocol. It quickly evolved into a piece of commercial
software that was used in thousands of servers across the globe. It was my first business
venture, and a successful one. I had to ask myself lots of copyright infringement questions.
Such as, as a developer, how much responsibility do I carry for infringers who utilize this
protocol? Do I have to monitor activity? And many other questions. All of these I eventually
found answers to.
I have composed this information from publicly available sources, experience, and consulted
with a practicing lawyer on the matter. As a disclaimer, while such advice should never
be taken as absolute or without professional consultation, it should give you a better
understanding of copyright and trademark. I am still sure to receive a ton of hate mail,
but somepony has to touch on the issue at this point.
Let's start off simple, what exactly is a copyright? In short, It is exclusive ownership
granted to the creator. Basically enabling them to do whatever they want with whatever
they made.
The biggest myth I've heard is copyright protects ideas. This is incorrect. Copyright protects
expression, not ideas. While still implied in the U.S., Canada extends this notation
that a copyright must have a well defined fixation. While the two may seem similar,
it is important to distinguish the two. Otherwise, every movie scene or independent film featuring
the protagonist walking off into the sunset would be infringement.
Let's now look at what fandom projects are: Usually they borrow characters, settings,
or plot from some popular medium and project it onto a blank canvas with new ideas injected.
Either for creative expression or those that do it solely for self-interest.
Let's look at an example, let's say you took an entire season of MLP and ported it into 3D.
You then posted those on the internet to share with everyone. You say to yourself,
this is original work, copyright need not apply. This is entirely untrue. This falls
under a derivative work. Transferring mediums does not grant immunity from copyright infringement.
This is exactly what fandom projects are, even fan art, derivative works. Not in whole
all the time, but at least in part. However, do keep in mind that in no case does copyright
protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system,
method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which
it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work. Ugh, that's a real mouthful.
But that appears like a hardly accurate portrayal of the current situation. If there is anything
this fandom has, it is some amazing user created content, not just fan-art. Josh Wattles, advisor
in chief to Deviant Art, makes a decent talk about fan-art. However, is ambiguous about
it at times.
Even Tommy Oliver touches on copyright when defending fandoms.
Both of these videos can be found in the description below.
What is the difference between fan art, animations, and games. Nothing. All are forms of expression,
different mediums don't differentiate between each other when it comes to copyright. When
projects like MLP: Online and Mane6 shift their goals or shut down, there will always
be a huge controversy. It could be argued games have a bigger impact on the original
work given their size and popularity. However, it is still the exclusive right of the copyright
holder to respond to any derived work, so it quickly becomes misrepresentation of information
among the fandom when interpreting fan made projects like our own.
Let's shift gears a bit, I want to introduce you to Canadian copyright law. Depending on
the font and format you may receive the bill in, it spans roughly one hundred and seventy
six pages including both English and French,.
We have international intellectual property treaties such as the Berne Convention, UCC
Geneva, UCC Paris, TRIPS, and WCT. While there is some harmonization, what is interesting
about these international agreements is that they do have some exemptions to copyright
to allow things like fair use, and we can expand on those exemptions. And that is exactly
what Canada did. To bring its Copyright Act into the 21st century, Bill C-11 was made,
passed and royal assented by the governor general on June 29th, 2012.
What is so nice about this bill? While fair use is fine and all, an exception was added
specifically for non-commercial user-generated content. Generally coined as the "mashup provision".
Like the fair dealing, this exception is subject to several conditions, namely that the user
identifies the source of the original work, that the underlying work copied was legally
acquired and, that the use did not have a substantial adverse effect on the commercial
exploitation of the underlying work.
This is helpful for any fan made project to say, yes, we are legal. At least if you live
and have your infrastructure based in Canada like us. However, that doesn't always stop
cease and desists from coming in. Cease and desists are fired at everyone and everything.
I mean Google got a DMCA takedown notice from Microsoft for its Gmail services.
An honest mistake, but they can get pretty ridiculous and are used as a scare tactic.
There are resources that can help you and it won't cost you either. When receiving a
cease and desist, submit it to the Clearinghouse. You can find both of these links in the description as well.
While they cannot provide legal advice, they can annotate it with questions and answers
and provide you some helpful resources for you to understand what you are dealing with.
A lot of the scare tactics employed come from when the affected company would likely try
and claim statutory damages. This is what hits everyone hard. Being noncommercial reduces
any potential statutory damages significantly if you find yourself in a tight spot. However,
you should never be manipulated into submission to begin with.
Moving on to trademarks, I'd only like to touch lightly on the issue. A trade-mark is
a word (or words), a design, or a combination of these, used to identify the goods or services
of one person or organization and to distinguish these goods or services from those of others
in the marketplace. However, two products can exist in a marketplace with the same registered
trademark, but different scopes. A trademark's scope must be defined at registration and
cannot be modified at a later date. Now, Fallout registered by Bethesda Softworks, in the Canadian
scope does not cover "downloadable computer game software."
Their newer title, Fallout: New Vegas does mention that though. Since we don't fall under
the context of the wares scope for Fallout, we can use it, and you can check the description for links again
On a broader subject of trademark, such names like the six main characters in My Little Pony
only have their scope limited to toy ponies, and for some reason, Fluttershy was
abandoned. Yes, her trademark was abandoned. While this doesn't exclude the character from
copyright, it was an interesting find.
So, with that all cleared up, I got a game to get back to making. Cya.