Creative Commons clarification

[Midgardsormr]

And that's perfectly fine if we're dealing with an image that we've created from scratch. However, every CWBP map is a derivative work, and the ShareAlike element of the license on the original work--NeonKnight's FT map, for instance--states that any derivative works are bound by the same or a similar license. That is, the Non-Commercial element applies to all of the CWBP maps, no matter who made them.

From the Creative Commons FAQ, http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Freq...vative_work.3F

The one big caveat is for Creative Commons licenses that contain the ShareAlike license element (ie. Attribution-ShareAlike, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). These licenses require derivative works (ie. the result of two combined works) to be licensed under the same license elements.

I may be misunderstanding things, but I want to be sure that we're all in the clear, just in case something funky happens. All we really need to do, as I understand it, is place a notice in whatever documentation we develop for the project that states something along the lines of "content creators are free to relicense their own work for other purposes, so long as all work submitted to the CWBP also retains the NC-BY-SA license. A creator's submission of work to the CWBP constitutes acceptance of this waiver of rights."

This way, the copyright owner (all of us collectively) can permit uses beyond what the license explicitly allows without someone having to come here and receive permission from every affected contributor individually.

We might have to give some thought to exactly how we word things so that someone can't come in, change the name of the continent, then start selling it as their own work, though.

[Redrobes]

Yes, your right. From the point of view that we have all used Neons CC-NC-SA work as a base then its true that you would need permission from Neon to use his world beyond the scope of the publicly stated consent.

I have to say that I would resist changing my works license. If Neon makes it available under additional terms for just the base map then that's fine by me tho.

[Redrobes]

Actually it does throw up an interesting point. If somebody then mapped out an area using Neons original map bypassing the tiled maps we have created then they could make them copyright and restricted. You could get a situation where another clone of Ansium is done and sold with those people referencing these free additional mapped bits for it. Personally I would have no problem with that but its basically forking the art into two separate licensing models. I doubt it would happen because anyone could bypass paying for content by going here and getting our free one but its a thought to keep in mind. Also, what your asking for is a special case for just tier 1 maps. If somebody took one of my Thrub maps and made some more stuff for it then they couldn't sell it either.

[Midgardsormr]

If somebody took one of my Thrub maps and made some more stuff for it then they couldn't sell it either.

Right. And another corner case: Suppose 12rounds wanted to collect all of those character illustrations and tokens into a book and make that available on Lulu or RPGNow. Since most of the characters that have been posted here are based on information created for the CWBP, they also are bound by the NC-BY-SA license. I don't think any of us would begrudge 12rounds the right to distribute that work in such a way, but legally speaking, it would require getting individual permission from everyone who wrote source material in order to free it from the NC portion of the original license.

I don't anticipate that anyone here would prosecute over this matter, but we cannot foresee the future. Forewarned is forearmed.

Concerning the FT line of discussion: FT's license, along with the other ProFantasy products I have looked at, clearly states that maps created with the software are the sole property of the creator. ProFantasy makes no claim of ownership to anything except the art assets, which may be redistributed only in the form of a "finalized" image from which the symbols cannot be extracted. So that's not really an issue here--my concern is with the additional restrictions we placed on ourselves with the CC license.

[Redrobes]

Since most of the characters that have been posted here are based on information created for the CWBP, they also are bound by the NC-BY-SA license.

Maybe the accompanying text might be covered but there is nothing in his images that are based on anything covered by CWBP.

There are a lot of weird stuff in this area. The one that I find odd is the way museums take photos of real and old art and make postcards of them and claim copyright on them.

Only recently we were discussing a bestiary and there are some online made in year X at least 100yrs ago and the people publishing pages from it are claiming copyright on them. I am sure that they have no claim to make on the copyright of an image which is public domain.