Copyright/non-F2U longevity

I was wondering: There are many old projects with non F2U assets.
Many that was not explicitly stated by the author as F2U during his lifetime in the FE community.
I know a non FEU is, well, a non FEU asset.
But some authors has not been around for years, even a decade. Many does not even care anymore/don’t have time for it. If I ask for some specific asset from some old (and mostl likely unfinished) hack, I may never get an answer. But it’s :lock: locked and the author disappeared, so I may never get the chance of an answer.
In real life copyright has a lifetime after author pass away.
How much does this rule about non FEU should protect an Asset after the author disappeared?
How much does the rule should protect an Asset after a completed / abandoned / canceled project stop development?

Not because “stealing others works”, but because “preservation of old stuff who, otherwise, will be forgotten”

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There is no expiration date on asset ownership. “The original creator has vanished” is not, to me, an acceptable reason. If they don’t care, then it’s your responsibility to prove it, not the reverse.

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If someone never historically released their work as F2U or F2E, and they never stated any specific pieces were listed as such, it doesn’t feel ethical to take/use their work when they aren’t here anymore.

That being said, I did make this topic in the past:

I would like to catalog and add as many old sprites as possible to this secondary repository. Anything made by people who never made their work F2U should go in there, because otherwise, their work will be lost to time, and that feels like a damn shame.

If you have any notable collections of non-F2U stuff, you can DM it to me and I’ll add it in the Historical Archives, as I call it.

We don’t want this situation to happen, after all.

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Realistically, there should be no IP on any of these, we’re not using them just because we decided that it’s kinda rude to use assets without author’s consent.

I’ll tell you what I think.
I think it should be the Antragsdelikt.

That is to say, if the rights holder raises an objection, it should be removed.
On the other side of the argument, it means that as long as the rights holder doesn’t complain, it will be tolerated.
//And the idea is that it is only the right holder who can raise objections.

This is also the case with secondary works such as hack rom and doujinshi.
If the rights holder complains, you should quit the secondary creation, no matter what the reason is.

This is the same reason why this cominity has been able to survive.
So I would like to support this idea.

I think this is a different part of the idea depending on national law, but I think it should be Antragsdelikt.

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I think that we could make the occasional exception to feu site policy and have an admin email a user about their work.

But only in rare circumstances. Say for example if Circles had suddenly disappeared in 2017 before publically releasing skill systems, I would think it’d be worthwhile to contact them about it by now.

(Imo we just need to stick to the “obtain permission before using” rule.)

Or maybe we could add a donor card clause for the future?
The forums would include a question along the lines of:
“If your project or assets thread is inactive for 2 or more years, would you like the materials to become free to use and edit for the rest of the community?”
That way users have consented in advance. And many will say no, which we’ll have to respect.

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This. If FEU wants to be a serious repository for fan work, participation and contributions need to be explicitly opt-in.

Which also makes

this seem rather questionable. Why are we making a distinction between reposting someone’s work and putting it in a romhack?

No. Original artwork is 100% the property of the creator.

I think most people who post resources make their policy clear enough already, but this certainly couldn’t hurt if it’s reasonably easy to implement.

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I do like the donor card idea, which is what’s cool about this thread/poll:

It’s unfortunate there wasn’t this sort of thing in the past, though. I don’t feel right picking up an asset just because its creator is gone without leaving a policy, and especially not when they made clear at the time it was for their use only.

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Because… at some point they put it on the forums for everyone to see? “Don’t use in a romhack” is clearly different from “don’t let anyone see it/repost it for people to see”. Otherwise every time you’ve said “Yeah I remember so and so’s old mug, look here it is” on a discord would be art theft and clearly that’s a dumb stance to take. Does looking at a mug constitute art theft? Clearly not or why would people post their mugs on forums in the first place?

What does ‘picking up an asset’ entail?

Also, what if someone returns 5 years from now and says ‘oh yeah by the way all my stuff is F2E’ but now all that stuff has died and burned in Photobucket Hell? Can’t well recover it at that point, can you? It’s just gone and died to the internet crematory.

This is just one of many reasons why art preservation is important.

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they can just reupload whatever they want to make free to use, and if it’s gone… it’s gone. c’est la vie

you have good intentions but this is not a precedent we have interest in pursuing

Sure, but that means they gave people permission to look at it in the context where it was posted. They did not automatically agree to make it part of some collection or archive elsewhere.

I mean i obviously don’t object to gathering things from threads that were blatantly made specifically to generate resources for the community like the mugging blitzes or whatnot, but things you found on a deviantart account that hasn’t been touched since 1997 don’t really fall under that category.

I don’t think it’s “clearly” different unless the author has explicitly stated that it’s ok to repost but not to use in hacks.

Informally sharing things in chat is somewhat different from deliberately gathering a bunch of resources with questionable usage rights into a showcase specifically for items with questionable usage rights.


Like i don’t respect copyright law that much in daily life, i’ve pirated shit, i’ve ripped mp3s off youtube, whatever, but as an “official” community resource i feel the policy should be 100% squeaky clean. Whether we think the og author actually cares, it’s a bad look to sit on a display of artwork with dodgy permissions.

You’re making valid points but note this: in the eyes of the law hacking is illegal. And most assets are modified GBA assets and even the custom ones contain files and formatting to insert it into the ROM (which 90% of people pirate).
IP laws are stupid anyway, my stuff is always F2U, F2E and TBH even F2R34 because I don’t believe in them.

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There is absolutely a disconnect between fandom’s use of corporate assets and fanmade ones, and it is somewhat uncomfortalbe, but at least i feel better about ripping off art from a multi billion yen corporation (which may even be benefiting financially from the existence of an active fandom) than some nobody who spent hours making a thing for nothing more than internet cred

Laws aside, i feel the most important thing is to respect the work and wishes of the artists, and as such the only reasonable solution is to only collect things we explicitly have permission for.

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i mean, that’s the point of hacking, exactly?
if we’re using other formatting there might be a possibility of errors
yet you somehow ignore that the idea and the design of the newly made asset from an existing asset can also be considered original and it should be considered as an intellectual property

oh and yeah im just gonna drop my two cents here

leave the assets alone if you’re not sure if it’s f2u/f2e, ask if you can contact the artist and hack project lead (sometimes you will need these two permission or maybe one of them, depends), and if you can’t find one of those people, just leave. the asset. alone.

I don’t really see the problem with Klok’s archive of non F2U/F2E stuff, its clearly stated they’re not freely useable for projects, so why not preserve some nice artwork?

That aside don’t really like how stingy some people are with their stuff in general tbh. I mean we make our games everyone to enjoy, and at no monetary cost, because we love this game series, do we not?. Just let people enjoy themselves here and help rom hackers/game makers out who aren’t master artists or songwriters. Obviously its good practice to credit people if you used their assets, im not against that. But just saying “This is mine and you can never use it, even after i have left, died or whatever else” is just childish in my opinion.

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On this we agree. I’ll respect the author’s wishes even if I don’t understand them.

And yet there are many people that make things completely from scratch that, while the intended usage of them is for illegally modifying ROMs, the work is able to stand on its own as simply pixel art for making mock ups or for display. There are other uses than for modifying games. Someone’s own creation, however inspired by another IP, is still their property.

Because in this age of internet fandom where there a bazillion artists that all have “do not repost” rules on their accounts, it’s worth respecting the creator, whether they had that policy prominently displayed a decade ago or not. Just because they posted it online does not give anyone else carte blanche to do anything else with it in an archive, especially if they can’t be reached.

Are there things that have been lost to the void of time that I wish I could find again? There are probably too many to name. But if the person has left the fandom/community and links are broken or things have disappeared, then there should be an acceptance and people should move on.

You need to understand that some assets are made with specific purposes in mind. For example, maybe someone came to me and wanted me to make a battle UI for them to make their project look spiffy and unique. Well, releasing that asset to the wild will suddenly make that aspect of their project no longer unique. Or, what if Glac is hired to do a personal portrait for someone as a commission - why should something tailored to the person that paid for it be fair game for everyone else to use as some random character in their project?

I understand that the more assets there are, the better the resulting projects of everyone else can be. But, just because an asset exists does not mean that everyone should have access to it. Would it be nice if they did? Sure. But you should not expect to have access to everything that an artist does.

And, if you aren’t a “master artist or songwriter”, there are 1) plenty of assets that already exist that you can draw upon, 2) you can see if someone wants to join up as a co-developer that might have expertise in one of those areas, or 3) you can commission someone to make it for you.

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First of all, I think we can almost all agree that we will respect the author’s idea and not use the data that the author clearly states that he does not allow to be reused.

The problem is with data where the author has not specifically stated anything.
And there are cases where the author has already left and it is difficult to contact him.

My view on that is that it should be Antragsdelikt.
I explained this in detail earlier, so see that.

I think it’s an option to accept the risk that the author might come back in 10 years and say “don’t use it”.
If the right holder says so, even after 10 years, you have no choice but to stop using it.
// In other words, the data is so attractive that you want to use it even if you have to take that risk.

In other words, I believe that everything should be decided by the right holder, and no one but the right holder should have any say in the matter.

Right holders can exercise their copyrights for as long as they are allowed by law.
In most cases, it is up to about 70 years after death.
The owner of the right or the surviving family members who inherited the right can express their opinions at any time within that period.

On the other hand, if they don’t say anything within that period, I think it can be interpreted as tacit approval according to the rule of Antragsdelikt.

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I’m somewhat fine with commisions being private, i was mostly talking about artists doing artwork just for fun, posting it, and then making it completely private anyway. Should’ve maybe specified that a bit more.

And regarding @7743 's post, i think its a better alternative/compromise than just “never use this and let it rot”.

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Ultimately, the core question here is whether we should assume that works that are made and displayed with no explicit disclaimer default to being up for grabs or not.

Setting aside the question of reproducing these works for archival purposes (which I have no particular opinion on), it’s a matter of which is a worse evil:

  • Someone gets mad because they found out that their art was being used without their permission, because we saw no explicit forbid and assumed it was F2U
  • Some project ends up using a bad Raven recolor because they’re not allowed to use the sick custom Ike sprite that they found on someone’s DeviantArt from 2006 because they never posted an F2U disclaimer

I’m hard pressed to come up with any justification that the latter is really a worse state of affairs. Even if there was a less than 1% chance that anybody is ever mad in the first world, and literally every project on this site was forced to pull from the same set of collective F2U works, I’d rather not take the chance on disrespecting someone’s work like that. I can live in a world with fewer, less graphically-spectacular fan works if it means giving creators the respect they deserve. From experience, if your project is that good, you’ll have no shortage of people offering to lend you a hand artistically (see: Elibian Nights has been vaporware for over ten years and people are still bending over backwards to make sprites for it).

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