KatsBits Community

General Category => Blog => Topic started by: kat on January 19, 2016, 07:42:04 AM

Title: Pepper and Carrott and the curious case of Copyright infringement >meow<
Post by: kat on January 19, 2016, 07:42:04 AM
[update] 'faux' KickStarter is being disputed (http://www.peppercarrot.com/en/article348/day-2-kickstarter-campaign-news) so its essentially disabled for now.

A few Blender related news outlets are reporting what seems to be a pretty egregious infringement of Copyright for a well known 'open' project called Pepper and Carrot (http://www.peppercarrot.com/). The 'perp' is alleged to have essentially created a 'fake' KickStarter campaign based around content freely provided by the author/team behind the Pepper and Carrot project, causing the author and community to raise questions and report said perp for infringement.

There's a problem doing this however. The Pepper and Carrot project is open source, and the CC License it's release under (Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)) allows for content to be exploited in anyway the individual thinks they can, with attribution and a changelog being the only 'cost' for doing so. In other words, its perfectly 'legal' for someone to monetise projects like this under these circumstances so long as they provide "reasonable" mention of source with changelog placed somewhere in their revised materials.

Whilst it truly is a kick in the starters for someone to do this, Creatives should always be wary using these types of 'open' licenses, especially when something is worth protecting (Pepper and Carrot is worth protecting) because doing so assumes everyone acts in good-faith with respect to honoring license terms, the authors Rights and/or their content; bad actors don't (http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=215.0), never have (http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=411.0) and never will.

Whilst creators want others to be able to use their materials freely (usually in terms of "availability" or "access"), more thought should be given to the conditions under which that is granted to avoid misappropriations, or when they do occur, better provision is in place for legitimate recourse to remedy under current Governing law on Copyright (Creative Commons does not supersede or stand in, for, or as, a parallel system of license or enforcement above or comparable to current regional and International Copyright Law, many argue it is in fact "moot" because it does not confer any Rights the individual does not already have, has no way of obligating individuals to its precepts, nor does it provide a means or framework through which remedy can be had. It is, to use the phrase "worth nothing more than the paper upon which it isn't writ").

Additional Reading
- Selling Games made with Blender & GPL/GNU Licensing (http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=643.0)
- Fan Art and Copyright Infringement (http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=593.0)
- I got a DMCA 'take-down' Notice, what do I do? (http://www.katsbits.com/smforum/index.php?topic=514.0)
Title: Re: Pepper and Carrott and the curious case of Copyright infringement >meow<
Post by: ratty redemption on January 20, 2016, 01:10:03 AM
very interesting.