I'm as sure as I can get that Paramount or whoever is the copyright holder for those books has licensed them.
How topical! I was just reading about this the other day... http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/31/media/star-trek-axanar-cbs-paramount/ A fan-film maker is being sued by the copyright holders - the filmmaker is trying to say it's not commercial use b/c he doesn't intend to make a profit. The case hasn't gone to court yet, but... yikes. And I just looked up a Star Trek book on Amazon - it's being published by Pocket Books, and I can pretty much guarantee that Simon & Schuster aren't publishing unauthorized fanfic! It'll be licensed, I'm sure.
That's interesting. I'm startled at the article's implication that the filmmaker thinks--falsely--that commercial profit is the only factor for fair use. I wonder if the issue is much more complicated and the reporter just didn't get the nuance.
Or possibly the filmmaker is just that naive. I mean, he's put a lot of time and effort into something that anyone who knows the law would know is likely to get shut down, so I'm not sure I'd trust him to not just be overly optimistic in general...
Hi, That's my point. Star Trek is licensed allowing others to publish with certain restrictions. So are the Warhammer books and so many others. This is licensed too - with no restrictions unless it requires acknowledgement. So there's nothing stopping a publisher from publishing a book set in this world build since the license specifically allows it. So really the only thing that the OP is worried about is whether or not the publisher of his work will be put off by being unable to copyright all aspects of the book. But really this is simply a clause in a contract thing. If the work's good the publisher won't care. They'll simply say something like - "this work of fiction is based in part on the world of etc etc. All other parts are the exclusive copyright of this publisher." Piece of piss really. And I'm sure they'll have the exact clauses already worked out. But again - not a lawyer. Cheers, Greg.
Um... publishers don't usually hold copyright. It's generally a sign of a scam if the publisher tries to claim it. That's just a detail, though. You're essentially saying that publishers are used to dealing with slightly complicated copyright issues. I see what you're saying, but I think it's a bit different when the complication is connected to the right to publish books from the Star Trek universe - just about guaranteed to have solid sales. Taking a chance on a new author and a complicated copyright issue? I'm not saying they wouldn't ever do it, but it would be one more thing to deal with, and they might just not think it was worth the bother, not for a new author. Not unless they really, really want the book! So you better get working, Lemming!
The Paramount scenario is different in at least two ways that I can see: - With the Paramount scenario, you have a known set of copyright holders who can negotiate with each other. This means that you can write a specific contract that can be enforced--for example, if the book publisher writes a novel about the hereditary rules of Fooland, then a contract can specify that Paramount won't license any other books on that topic. With the wiki's "anything can do anything" license, you don't have that ability. - More importantly, the wiki has the risk of contaminating the new work with the license of the old work. As discussed above, this won't happen if Author A is only reusing the work created by Author A. But if Author A uses his own work AND the work of authors B, C, D, and E, then suddenly Author A's new novel may be contaminated with the license of the wiki, so that he has no exclusive copyright rights over any of it.
@Steerpike do you think you could post to that page that debunked all of the copyright disclaimers on youtube.com? Edited to add: Basically it made the point that putting disclaimer on a copyrighted piece did not magically make it non-infringing. Nor does it protect anyone from legal action on the behalf of the copyright holder.
Yeah. I don't think I've ever signed a publishing contract that didn't have some sort of clause in which I had to assert full ownership of the material being submitted and indemnifying the publisher from any claims arising from copyright issues. It'd be pretty hard for me to sign any of those contracts in this situation, unless I was very sure I'd only used my own work from the original project.
They those disclaimers are BS. Don't mean anything. Could potentially make it worse if the content owner wanted to pursue a willful infringement claim, because you're admitting that you know the material is under copyright.
17 USC: 2) In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000
Here's an interesting response to that http://dearrichblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-do-i-word-copyright-disclaimer-for.html I'll quote what the writer advised as a "disclaimer" As the writer says, it won't stop a lawsuit, but it'll make your case seem a little stronger in court.
I didn't read it as "a little strongrer", but instead that it might increase the odds of mercy in terms of penalties when you inevitably lose.
Hi, Lost a little in the thread of responces. However we are talking about a CC by share alike licence aren't we? That's the one that seems to be mentioned. And from CC we get this explanation of the license: "This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use." So what exactly do people imagine the original publisher who got the licence for the work is going to sue you for? The publisher of the OP's work can do practically anything he wants with the work as long as it's correctly attributed and any parts of the new work that seem to be bits of the stuff taken from the original one that has been retweaked etc, are not claimed as being other than the property of the original publisher. They don't even need to ask for permission. Again not a lawyer, but it seems fairly straight forwards. And if the OP's work is good and commercial why would a new publisher turn it away because some of it is licensed to someone else. You just write your clause attributing what needs to be attributed, and you're fairly much done. This is a hundred times easier than going to Paramount and saying I have a Trek book I want to publish, can you approve it, and then waiting for their legal people and bible readers to assess the request. But publishers still do that. I assume it's the same for Warhammer and so many others. Once more, not a lawyer. But I can't see what I'm missing here. Cheers, Greg.
Maybe you're missing the "license their new creations under the identical terms" line? Most publishers don't want to publish things under a Creative Commons license. So licensing under identical terms probably wouldn't work for them.
I don't think it helps. If you post a song on YouTube it's clearly not fair use. The court will look at whether your belief it was fair use is reasonable.
The issue is that the final work may not have any enforceable copyright. If I write a book, and a publisher gives me money for the book, and then invests money in publishing that book, and puts that book up for sale, and then learns that absolutely anyone can legally make copies of that book and give them away for free, and the publisher has no recourse...the publisher will be annoyed. They might well sue me for the money they lost. In theory, that could happen if the book contains material that I got from a source using the license in question. Not only that material, but the ENTIRE BOOK could have no enforceable copyright protection. The lesson remains: ask a lawyer.
Your publishing contract will probably contain a warranty by you, as the author, that you own all the rights to the work free and clear.
Hi, Bayview, I don't see it I'm afraid. It's talking about modding their work. Writing a story which is unique, is not modding their work. Only the part where you actually take the world build in this case and mod it. So if the OP takes the world - this people and gives them some new cultural feature - yeah that's not copyrightable. But if he writes story about an MC called Soandso battling aliens in this world - that's not part of what the original stuff was so I can't see that the CC license applies to it. Again not a lawyer. Cheers, Greg.
Would be interesting to see where you could draw that line if it came to a fight. The license itself days that if you use the material, even if you're building original material onto it, then the license applies to what you're doing and you have to allow your work to have the same licensing terms. So if you're taking a world created under the license and setting a story there, to the extent you're incorporating other people's material via your right as a licensee I think you'd have a problem. Including licensed material encumbers your work.
Hi, Yeah I agree. It would be tricky to draw that line. But you don't have to. The CC license allows the publication for no fees and only attribution. So your OP's publisher has no issue with that. He just wants to sell the book and make lots of money. His concern is with other people taking his author's work and publishing it. Ie a third party. Now the third party would have a right to use what was essentially copyrighted under the CC licence as long as he attributed it. But not the rest. And there can be no doubt that some of the work is the OP's property and some is the CC license's. It doesn't matter where the line is, only that the OP's publisher can establish that some of what they have rights to was republished by said third party. And after that they have all the normal rights to issue cease and desists, sue etc. The third parties only extra defence would be to try and claim that the entire work is the property of the CC licensee. That doesn't seem like a winning case to me. As always, not a lawyer. Cheers, Greg.
In the scenario we're talking about, there absolutely is doubt. That's the whole point. Are you not understanding the explanation of that? Scenario: Work A contains items A1, A2, and A3. Work A has a license that says, "You can use anything from this work in your own work! But if you do, you have to apply this same license to your work--ALL OF IT!" Joe creates Work B. It contains items A1, A2, and A3. It also contains items B1, B2, B3, B4, and B5. Fred comes along and creates Work C. It contains items B1, B4, B5, and also items C1, C2, and C3. Joe tells Fred, "Hey! B1, B4, and B5 are mine! Stop selling Work C!" Fred shrugs and keeps on selling Work C. Joe sues. A judge says, "Uh, no. Joe, did you read the original license for Work A? Fred's not doing anything illegal. Go away and stop bothering me."
When something is written, it is the property of the person who wrote it. No one has the right to use it without permission of the author. When that thing is released under a license, the license defines some specific circumstances in which that work can be used. The person who wrote it still owns it though, and can release it under other licenses if they want to. You can use the material you wrote in any way you want, under any terms, as you own it. For things others wrote, you can obtain permission to use it from the person who wrote it originally, and you'll be fine.
