People are saying only input matters, yet the movie rules contradict that thought. "There is no strict authorship rule for cases when research or development was contributed instead of actual movie input." Saying that there is no strict rule means that sometimes that person should receive authorship credit, and sometimes that person shouldn't. Considering that I contributed a very large majority of the research and development of this movie, this certainly seems like a prime instance of deserving authorship. Otherwise why is this statement in the rules? As for signature tricks/strategies, I think four have been mentioned already, and there are a few others.
CC2 says "You are free to ... remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit[.]" Is this movie not building on the previous movie's material? Synonyms for "build on" include expand on, develop, refine, and improve on (per thefreedictionary.com). Is that not what DreamYao did to the previous movie? (To be clear, of course players can improve other players' movies and claim authorship.)
Again if the stance of the site is "our movie rules allow stealing ideas even though that directly contradicts the concept of plagiarism," the question is why is that the rule, since that is generally not how plagiarism is handled? I do believe that previous authors should be credited as authors as long as their ideas are still being used in the most recent movie. That is not always the case since sometimes their ideas are later found to be suboptimal. It is also the case that people do not always want their name associated with a work, for reasons such as believing the work is low quality or that they did not significantly contribute to it, and that stance also has to be respected.
In the interest of solution-seeking, I would be open to the 'Hollywood' solution to writing credits, which is to credit a limited amount of people who made the most significant contributions. This avoids the two extreme positions—where either the list of writers is exceptionally long or only one person takes unwarranted sole credit despite using ideas from other people. So perhaps in cases like this one that are a mix of input and ideas from various people, movie authorship could include the ideas as standard policy but limit authorship to the 3 or so people who made the most significant contributions. (Again this is just a suggestion for the sake of possibly reaching a reasonable agreement.)
I would appreciate if you addressed other people’s posts that completely contradict your whole argument
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Arc wrote:
People are saying only input matters, yet the movie rules contradict that thought. "There is no strict authorship rule for cases when research or development was contributed instead of actual movie input[, so such cases are left to the judge's discretion]." Saying that there is no strict rule means that sometimes that person should receive authorship credit, and sometimes that person shouldn't. Considering that I contributed a very large majority of the research and development of this movie, this certainly seems like a prime instance of deserving authorship. Otherwise why is this statement in the rules?
You can't make a point if you consistently fail to read:
feos wrote:
We respect when someone has built something from scratch, and we respect when someone whose input wasn't directly used is still credited due to massive contribution of some other kind. But we can not demand that co-authors are added if CC-BY-2.0 is not violated.
The person should receive credit if entertainment solutions (non-speed-critical actions) are directly copied. If they are not copied, it's up to the author whom to include as co-authors, and the judge decides whether it still makes sense based on significance of contribution.
Arc wrote:
CC2 says "You are free to ... remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit[.]" Is this movie not building on the previous movie's material? Synonyms for "build on" include expand on, develop, refine, and improve on (per thefreedictionary.com). Is that not what DreamYao did to the previous movie? (To be clear, of course players can improve other players' movies and claim authorship.)
The page you're quoting this from literally says at the top:
This is a human-readable summary of (and not a substitute for) the license.
The actual legal code if CC-BY-2.0 (that you somehow missed several times) defines "work" and "derivative work" as follows:
"Work" means the copyrightable work of authorship offered under the terms of this License.
Literally the movie file itself alone. You don't submit a bunch of ideas to tasvideos as a potent office. We don't handle ideas and their authorship, because it's never been the goal of the site. We handle movie files. We also encourage people to share their discoveries because that makes the resulting movies better.
"Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License.
The phrase "base upon" may sound confusing if you take it out of context. If you just look it up in dictionaries, it refers to other synonyms in the same dictionary that refer to other synonyms, etc. Dictionaries don't provide absolute definitions that licenses could just refer to, which is why licenses are known for "redefining" a whole bunch of words, and those redefined meanings will be used to resolve a dispute, not third-party dictionaries.
So first, the license lists entities of the same nature, and then generalizes them to potentially include other entities of the same nature without having to exhaustively list them all.
any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted
We can also look at the dictionary meaning of the very word "derivative", shall we?
Copied or adapted from others
So. To finally and unambiguously prove that your work has been "recast, transformed, or adapted" in this movie, you'll need to provide examples of where your movie's input is directly copied, as we've been suggesting you this entire thread.
Saying "my movie was stolen and then completely changed to pretend it was original" is ignorant, arrogant, ridiculous, insulting, assumes bad faith, and scares contributors away if we support such a stance officially, directly or indirectly.
Arc wrote:
Again if the stance of the site is "our movie rules allow stealing ideas even though that directly contradicts the concept of plagiarism," the question is why is that the rule
If your stance if "I win by consistently failing to read", then this discussion is done.
Arc wrote:
I do believe that previous authors should be credited as authors as long as their ideas are still being used in the most recent movie.
We didn't ask you to repeat the same questionable claim over and over. We asked you to explain how to resolve problems that such an approach automatically causes.
Arc wrote:
In the interest of solution-seeking, I would be open to the 'Hollywood' solution to writing credits, which is to credit a limited amount of people who made the most significant contributions.
It's what we have the Thanks section of the submission text for. Arbitrary number of people and other entities can be credited for arbitrary things. Usually it's just people, and usually for things that made the resulting movie better.
Arc wrote:
So perhaps in cases like this one that are a mix of input and ideas from various people, movie authorship could include the ideas as standard policy but limit authorship to the 3 or so people who made the most significant contributions.
Am I right that you're repeating the same claim that you've completely failed to prove? You're consistently refusing to even check if this movie contains any of your input (or anyone else's for that matter). But you still claim that it does. This is going nowhere.
Arc wrote:
(Again this is just a suggestion for the sake of possibly reaching a reasonable agreement.)
Which problem is it trying to solve exactly?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
In the interest of solution-seeking, there's also this great elephant-in-the-room of a solution called "improve the run yourself and give credit to whoever you feel appropriate", which is how people in the past used to solve disputes like this.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I submit movies allowing others to use my ideas as long as credit is given, per CC.
Creative Commons is a set of copyright-based usage licenses. "Ideas" do not fall under copyright. The way of doing something (eg. algorithms, instructions and game mechanics) do not fall under copyright. The exact text of a set of instructions, for example, would fall under copyright (with some exceptions and caveats) but not the algorithm or idea that the text conveys. (For example, the text and illustrations of a food recipe falls under copyright, but not the recipe itself. Anybody can copy the recipe and republish at as long as they use their own wording and, if there are any, their own images.)
Giving credit to someone else's work if it was used as a basis for a new original work may be the polite and honest thing to do, but there's usually no legal obligation to do so (with the caveat of so-called "derivative works", which is such a legal swamp that probably even most copyright lawyers don't fully understand it).
Even if it were public domain, there is still plagiarism protection.
No, there isn't. What you call "plagiarism protection" is just copyright, and "public domain" means literally "no copyright", which means no protection.
In addition, most jurisdictions do not recognize publishing works under "public domain" (with, usually, the exception of some governmental publications). All copyrightable works are copyrighted automatically and, in most jurisdictions, are in fact forcefully copyrighted no matter what the author may say or wish. The author may say "this work of mine is not copyrighted" but that doesn't make it so. "Public domain", in other words, "has no copyright", has a very specific meaning, and it's not a publication nor usage license. It is not a synonym for "you-can-do-whatever-you-want-with-it license".
(That being said, most judges would probably judge an author stating "this is published under public domain" to mean "this is published under a copyright license where I allow you to do anything you want with it, and I will never sue you for copyright infringement", and would thus strike down any lawsuit attempting to sue someone for copyright infringement of something that the author published as "public domain". But I don't think this has ever been actually tested in court, so it would depend on the jurisdiction and the judge.)
"Romeo & Juliet by DreamYao" would be plagiarism of Shakespeare's work
It would technically speaking be plagiarism, but it would not be illegal, as it's in the public domain and you can do whatever you want with it (other than claim copyright on it). There's no "plagiarism protection".
Likewise, you cannot steal the entire plot, setting, conflict, and structure of R&J and claim it is your own work just because you changed the characters' names.
Actually you can, because it's in the public domain. You may be considered an a-hole by doing so, but it's not illegal.
Anyway, this is rather irrelevant to the question at hand. We are not talking about PD works here. (For all intents and purposes no work that's newer than around 100 years is under PD, with the exception of some governmental publications, and some 40+ year old works that fell under PD by accident due to copyright law being different back then.)
To my knowledge (although I could well be wrong) no copyright attorneys have ever given their opinion on whether TASes fall under copyright or not (especially since TASes play games that are copyright to third-parties, ie. the game publishers). It's a fuzzy area, and it's not completely clear-cut. I suppose that until this is officially decided in a court of law (which is unlikely to ever happen) it's safest to assume that they do fall under copyright and thus using a copyright-based license (such as Creative Commons) is legit.
However, as mentioned before, describing a way of doing something (such as, for example, how to perform a particular glitch, or describing the most optimal route in a game) does not fall under copyright. A particular set of key inputs might (or might not), but the "algorithm" that this set of inputs implements in itself does not. You cannot claim copyright on a way of playing a game, or the way to do something. That just doesn't fall under copyright.
(For example, the text and illustrations of a food recipe falls under copyright, but not the recipe itself. Anybody can copy the recipe and republish at as long as they use their own wording and, if there are any, their own images.)
And this is why the recipe of Coca Cola is kept in grand secret.
(For example, the text and illustrations of a food recipe falls under copyright, but not the recipe itself. Anybody can copy the recipe and republish at as long as they use their own wording and, if there are any, their own images.)
And this is why the recipe of Coca Cola is kept in grand secret.
That might be patentable (at least in some countries, like the US), but such a patent would have expired like half a century ago. So yeah, basically the only way for them to protect it is to keep it secret.
Another important concept similar to what Warp is talking about is Scènes-à-faire, or the idea that if something is necessary in order to make a work with that goal, then it can't be copyrighted. If in order to make a run of Ghost and Goblins as fast as possible, you are required to use certain techniques, then they can't be protected.
But you also bring plagiarism, which is an academic standard and not a legal one, so let's look at that.
Really, in academic writing, the purpose of citation is to prove that you aren't pulling ideas out of your ass. In other words, to show that you did proper diligence and rigorousness with research. It's a method to help others check your claims, and it kind of saddens me that it's usually framed as a moral issue, but whatever.
If I were to use your work in an academic paper, I would quote you or state your ideas, then I would mark where it came from in the moment, and credit you fully in works cited (in some standards, the full credit is in the moment as well). I do not list you as coauthor on the paper. The only writer of the paper is me, I just used your work to help make mine. For multimedia projects, often the standard is to just include the works cited with the in the moment citation standards being less stringent.
So by academic standards, all Dreamyao needed to do was credit you for your previous run. He didn't need to make you coauthor for that.
A co-author should be someone who directly contributed input to the run. If I suggested a path for a Dragon Quest 7 speedrun, I would like a credit as a matter of courtesy. I am not an author.
If my idea for contribution was a necessary function such as "turn the game on", I don't deserve credit, and I believe the above "Scènes-à-faire" example (although applying for copyright) proves this. If my idea was a carefully planned equipment set and exploitation of the RNG to make a boss endlessly attack itself instead of our party and no one to this date has really posted about it, I think I deserve credit.
If I handled any amount of input for the lengthy speedrun, I expect co-authorship.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Warp wrote:
(For example, the text and illustrations of a food recipe falls under copyright, but not the recipe itself. Anybody can copy the recipe and republish at as long as they use their own wording and, if there are any, their own images.)
And this is why the recipe of Coca Cola is kept in grand secret.
It changing every so often is a bigger reason why it's still allowed to be a secret---or rather, copyright. It also highlights a bad societal issue---we have an effectively useless FDA since companies are allowed to sell entirely unknown items as "foods" or "drinks".
It should be a law that we know what we are intaking---instead "water, sugar, caramel color, caffeine, natural flavors, artificial flavors" are what we're drinking, and what are "natural" or "artificial" flavors?
Well, the FDA is supposed to help with that, but...
A co-author should be someone who directly contributed input to the run.
As I mentioned, when talking about timed key press files, "copyright" is a fuzzy area which, as far as I am aware, has never been tested or even opined about by copyright attorneys. It's not absolutely self-evident that it's copyrighted material.
Consider, for example, that the game recording (eg. in algebraic notation) of a chess game by two people is not copyrighted, even if it's novel and unique. This example comes awfully close to the keypress recording of a speedrun.
A co-author should be someone who directly contributed input to the run.
As I mentioned, when talking about timed key press files, "copyright" is a fuzzy area which, as far as I am aware, has never been tested or even opined about by copyright attorneys. It's not absolutely self-evident that it's copyrighted material.
Consider, for example, that the game recording (eg. in algebraic notation) of a chess game by two people is not copyrighted, even if it's novel and unique. This example comes awfully close to the keypress recording of a speedrun.
I wouldn't ever think to apply copyright to a speedrun. That would be vague at best (trying to copyright a strategy or form of playing a video game?) and disastrous at worst since you're... kind of saying you own a copyright of a copyrighted video game...
I was referring purely to the listed authorship of one here---it seems that it should go to people who directly contributed to the input file.
If all I did was offer suggestions or even a strategy, but did not play it, and contributed 0 input, I'm not an author. I wouldn't expect anyone to list me as such.
I wouldn't ever think to apply copyright to a speedrun. That would be vague at best (trying to copyright a strategy or form of playing a video game?) and disastrous at worst since you're... kind of saying you own a copyright of a copyrighted video game...
The question is not whether the speedrun itself is copyrighted, but whether the data file containing information about the timed key presses is copyrighted.
That file is original work, but whether it falls under copyright, I don't know.
