Post by Liliana Prikler in Natsumi - Free Character Sprite comments

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Hello. I'll once again be adding your assets to one of my projects. Since I've decided to make use of itch's "exclusive content" feature, which in my interpretation counts as "commercial usage" (you'll see what I mean once it's public), I'll provide a screenshot of the credits below as "proof of credit".

I'm also planning to reuse my COPYING.noraneko file with updated links (IIUC your updated terms correctly, I do not need to copy your Rules.txt, since I'm republishing to itch.io? Feels weird). Perhaps I am overstepping my bounds here a little, but I feel like your Rules.txt could greatly benefit from being written like a COPYING file. It'll take some time to rewrite everything in proper form while keeping the meaning intact, so I will make this a separate reply.

Liliana Prikler4 years ago

Below my attempt of rephrasing the current Rules.txt:

Copyright © 2020 Noraneko Games (@NoranekoGames, noranekogames.itch.io)
All rights reserved.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this artwork to use, modify, and/or distribute this artwork subject to the
following conditions:
- The above copyright notice, as well as this permission notice shall be
  included in all works, that redistribute this artwork partial or in total,
  with or without modification.
- Credit must be provided to Noraneko Games in the media using this artwork
  itself or a note accompanying the distribution either as part of the
  distribution or prominently displayed along with the distribution.
- This artwork shall not be used for illegal purposes or other purposes, that
  may reflect poorly on Noraneko Games.
- This artwork shall not be used commercially without Noraneko Games' prior
  written consent.
  - For the purposes of the above, "commercial use" shall be defined as any
    usage, in which the user generates revenue for themselves or a third party
    either directly through the charge of money or indirectly through
    advertisements, cryptocurrency miners or any other tool, that effectively
    generates revenue.
    Not covered under these terms are fees charged by an ISP when downloading
    a copy of this artwork or the cost of physical devices that the artwork may
    be stored in.
  - As an exception to the above, this artwork may be commercially used in
    games after Noraneko Games has been informed about the usage.
- This artwork shall not be replicated in print without Noraneko Games's prior
  written consent.

Notes:

The point regarding credit would be simplified a little if you disallowed notes "on a website" and required credit as part of the distribution. I suppose you allow it, so that others can retweet your work while tagging you, am I correct?
I'd drop the part about informing you from the commercial reuse in games. Since one would have to wait for your acknowledgement on the information before one can actually start using the assets commercially, it is in fact not too different from requiring written consent.

In case I am missing something, please do not hesitate to inform me.

NoranekoGames4 years ago

The Rules.txt is just there for the person who has come across the download for the characters. I often download free to use assets but I can't remember the rules attached if it disappears in the future so I thought it would be nice to put in with the download folder, just as a reminder.
It doesn't have to show up in your game folder at all if that helps to clear anything up.
I will take a look at the rewrite very soon and let you know what I think! I'm always open to hearing people's suggestions on how to make my assets and rules a little more understandable so thank you for caring about it!

Liliana Prikler4 years ago

I totally get where you're coming from. Most source code licenses come with the restriction that copyright notices and they themselves need to be replicated in order for them to apply, I assume for exactly that reason. I was asking, because your new Rules.txt (as of Natsumi) carry the line "If re-uploaded to another site for download, do not remove this text file or any part of it." In my rewritten rules, this is formulated as

The above copyright notice, as well as this permission notice shall be included in all works, that redistribute this artwork partial or in total, with or without modification.

which would force games, that use your assets to carry that notice. (Now that I think of it, the phrase "work, that redistributes this artwork" is perhaps a bit unclear. Does it apply to all redistributions? Does it only apply to tarballs/zips?) The reason for that being, that if someone decided to fork an open source project on itch.io, that included your artwork, they wouldn't necessarily know that your artwork is being reused and which terms apply to it otherwise.

For what it's worth, you could also license your artwork as a whole under CC BY-NC version 3.0 with an exception notice like the following:

As an exception to the conditions laid out by this Work's license, You may commercially Reproduce 
or Adapt the Licensed Material as part of a game, a visual novel or any other comparable interactive
medium (henceforth referred to as "Game") subject to the following conditions:
a. You must retain a copy of this exception notice in addition to the material covered by 
   section 4(a) of this work's license.
b. Your Game must list the Original Author by their name among any credits that your Game displays
   during execution.  If your Game would normally not display such credits, you must provide means
   to access them from within your Game.
c. To the extent that it can be reasonably expected of You, You must inform the Licensor about Your
   usage of their work for commercial purposes prior to or at the time of the publication of your Game.
   If the Licensor deems, that Your usage does not qualify for the terms of this exception, you must
   at once cease all commercial use of the Work in your Game.
d. You must otherwise follow the conditions laid out by this Work's license in the manner that they
   would apply to Reproduction and Sharing for NonCommercial purposes.

The CC BY already covers many conditions of your rules, those being:

Requiring attribution
Not allowing illegal themes or themes that would hurt your reputation [section 4(c), which IIUC is not present in version 4.0]

CC BY-NC additionally adds, that you cannot reuse the work commercially (without dual licensing). With the exception notice above, commercial use in games is allowed as long as credits are made, the exception notice is kept and an attempt is made to inform you, e.g. through itch or deviantArt.

Not covered by this would be non-commercial redistributions of your assets, which remove the exception notice. I.e. it would legally be possible to redistribute the work under CC BY-NC without adding the exception notice. I don't think that's too big of an issue, however. Also not covered is the kind request "Not required, but I would love for you to link me to your project!" as it is not legally binding.

For this license package to apply, you would have to add three files to your packages:

The CC BY-NC license text. (Names for that should be COPYING or LICENSE)
The exception notice (similarly named COPYING.exception or LICENSE.exception)
A file with crediting information of the covered work (a suitable name would for instance be CREDITS).

The CREDITS file could for instance look like this.

Natsumi Character Sprite <https://noranekogames.itch.io/natsumi> by NoranekoGames (@NoranekoGames, noranekogames.itch.io)

You can also add comments like "I would love for you to link me to your project!" into it, if you want to, but I'd recommend keeping it clean and simple.