Copyright violation

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Spixi
Posts: 91
Joined: August 23rd, 2010, 7:22 pm

Copyright violation

Post by Spixi »

Hello altogether,

I found a possible copyright issue in the popular Minetest mod Protector Redo. This mod is used on many Minetest servers where you can protect your houses with protection blocks, which use a texture which looks like the Wesnoth logo.

This file looks exactly like the Wesnoth logo, in particular it is favicon2.png from here with slight luminosity adjustments. I already mentioned this in the forum, but they deny the fact that the texture is copied from BfW.

As stated here Protector Redo uses the MIT license, which is incompatible to GNU GPL v2 and CC BY-SA 4.0. I hope this can be resolved.
Tad_Carlucci
Inactive Developer
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Joined: April 24th, 2016, 4:18 pm

Re: Copyright violation

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

The image you present is 16x16.

Wesnoth does include a 16x16 windows icon.

When I compare the two side-by-side, scaled up enough to be able to see the pixels, they appear quite different. So, unless you can prove they started with a Wesnoth image and intentionally worked to make it different, I'd agree with them: while quite similar, theirs is independent and different, and no violation exists.
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josteph
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Joined: August 19th, 2017, 6:58 pm

Re: Copyright violation

Post by josteph »

Tad_Carlucci wrote: December 1st, 2018, 8:05 am When I compare the two side-by-side, scaled up enough to be able to see the pixels, they appear quite different.
Here are the two, side by side. One of these is wesnoth's favicon2.png; the other is the logo Spixi linked to, cropped from 32x32 to 16x16. Can you tell which is which? You're allowed to zoom in if you want.
image1.png
image1.png (967 Bytes) Viewed 3299 times
image2.png
image2.png (847 Bytes) Viewed 3299 times
Tad_Carlucci wrote: December 1st, 2018, 8:05 am So, unless you can prove they started with a Wesnoth image and intentionally worked to make it different, I'd agree with them: while quite similar, theirs is independent and different, and no violation exists.
Hmm, maybe, but don't forget that image is also a trademark.
Tad_Carlucci
Inactive Developer
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Re: Copyright violation

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

Unregistered, and not used in anything like a deceptively similar manner. I imagine someone could make a case of it, though.

To be honest, that this subject even comes up is, to my mind, another example of why I detest the religion of the FSF, it's leader, and it's draconian licensing recommendations. It's not like any of us is going to drop a few grand in legal fees to wrangle this out. So why have a license which pretends we will?

Oh, and, yes, I can look at the tab on my Chrome browser to refresh my memory and then look at your two images and tell which is ours and which is theirs without zooming
I forked real life and now I'm getting merge conflicts.
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Pentarctagon
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Re: Copyright violation

Post by Pentarctagon »

We are not planning on going after them for this, for the record. It's a single, tiny image, and there's just no benefit to trying to force them to stop using that image.
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shevegen
Posts: 497
Joined: June 3rd, 2004, 4:35 pm

Re: Copyright violation

Post by shevegen »

> To be honest, that this subject even comes up is, to my mind, another example of why I detest the religion
> of the FSF, it's leader, and it's draconian licensing recommendations. It's not like any of us is going to drop
> a few grand in legal fees to wrangle this out. So why have a license which pretends we will?

Usually code (that is to be compiled) is quite different from artwork. The GPL applies much better to code
than e. g. to artwork. This, and also for other reasons, is why other licences are adopted usually for artwork,
e. g. the various SA/BY or however the abbreviation was.

GPL is not a "religion". It is a licence. It is also a strict one at that. You may dislike it or not; I do not use
GPLv3 myself, but I use GPLv2 just fine. There is nothing "draconian" about it - complying with the GPL
is easy. You have to abide to any licence that has been attributed to you as a licensee, unless specific
laws exist that may invalidate the licence or overrule parts of it (for example, the EULAs used by
Microsoft are not valid in the EU).

Additionally nowhere is it specified that one HAS to drag someone else to court.

> To be honest, that this subject even comes up is,

It has "come up" because Spixi posting it. If you want to avoid trivial examples - or that are considered
too trivial to care about, like this example here - you could always publish a loose policy when to go
apply the more rigorous licencing parts.

For artwork that is under a permissive licence, usually requiring only attribution, it should be trivial for
anyone to comply. If they are correct that it is independent artwork, though, then there is also no way
to force them to have to comply since they would not be in violation of any artwork. To me it makes
sense to not have to care about something as trivial as this really. (I am not affiliated with any of
these projects.)
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