Bad example...Your comparison would be right, if the creater would simply make screenshots of the game, so Honey Select, Sexy Beach Premium Resort or whatever. (Nah even then it doesn't make sense. No one has a copyright on the statue of liberty. But illusion has on their games.)
Anyway the creator is using the character creator with is part of the game. The models are then exported, rendered, processed in Photoshop and so on. Even if he/she wouldn't do that and make simple screenshots + some text bubbles instead, it's illegal, as long as he/she makes money with it.
the originator of the artwork, is the copyright holder. In this example, paparazzi made the photo
they make a lot of money for some photos, and not a fuck was given to Justine
the originator of the artwork, is the copyright holder. In this example, paparazzi made the photo
they make a lot of money for some photos, and not a fuck was given to Justine View attachment 17109
That's what i said. That's why your example with the statue of liberty is wrong.
The models of Honey Select aren't buildings or person. There are digital art.
You can't use someone elses "artwort", or tools...or whatever creation and use it to make your own creation, with the intend to make money. Not without a licence. Justine in your case isn't an "artwork" but a person and in your case the "statue of liberty".
The creator who is making this adult game, has the copywright of the work he's making. But the hasn't the copywright of the models from the Honey Select game. Illusion has those rights. As long as he hasn't an agreement with Illusion, it's illegal.
Back to you paparazzi example. It depends from country to country. I my country you can make photos of other people. But if you want to make money with it, you've to ask the photographed person.
#1 You cannot copyright the building, but you can copyright the architectural plans. That is if the building is new and complex enough (it needs to be significantly unique to allow being copyrighted, whatever you want to make from that is up to courts to decide) and copyright hasn't yet expired (In most developed countries copryright ends 50-100 years after the author's death, the USA are an exception to that rule, because you have to register a copyright claim and renew it regularly and they have the option of transfering the actual copyright to someone else)
That even includes photographies of the building. The EU currently discusses a legislation to remove the freedom of panorama from the copyright exemptions. Other countries might or might not have copyright exemptions for that stuff.
#2 You can't claim the rights to a photography of a camera you developed, but you can (legally, not always practically) keep others from building a copy of your camera.
#3 That one is absolutely true. Copyrighting a person is impossible (as of now, I'm sure someone in the USA has already explored the possibilities of making that possible by law)
The restriction on making money is unneccessary. It's illegal regardless of you making money or not. As soon as you make something publicly available it's illegal.
One more thing, though:
Only the creator and distributor are liable to copyright violations. People downloading and playing a game with "stolen"/illegally copied artwork are fine as far as criminal justice goes. You might be subject to civil damages, though. Especially in Europe there's a whole industry for automating that, but it's usually focused on music and film downloads via P2P filesharing. Typical charges are in the ballpark area of a few hundred €. (main problem is if you wanna fight such a civil notice sent by a lawyer, you'll have to go to court and hire a lawyer yourself, spending more than the actual charge without a reasonable chance of getting that money back, even if you're falsely accused)
The supreme court ruled that watching a pirated movie, is akin to sneaking into a movie theater without buying a ticket.
You might be breaking some rule somewhere, but watching the movie without paying, in no way violates copyright.
The court ruling you refer to only applies to Downloading/consuming illegal copies.
Uploading/Distributing them is a whole different story and definitely a criminal felony in most jurisdictions (i.e. go directly to jail, do not take 4000 EUR).
The Downloading part isn't allowed either, but the original author can only try to sue you for the actual damage (including legal fees). Usually that is pretty expensive for the original author since their own work time is not included in the damage amount and seeking damages from people in foreign countries is associated with additional costs like professional translations etc. and therefore small companies will practically never try those legal stuff in the first place.
Long story short:
Downloading illegal copies isn't allowed, but also not criminally prosecuted.
Uploading/Distributing illegal copies isn't allowed either, but in most countries that's a criminal felony.
#1 You cannot copyright the building, but you can copyright the architectural plans. That is if the building is new and complex enough (it needs to be significantly unique to allow being copyrighted, whatever you want to make from that is up to courts to decide) and copyright hasn't yet expired (In most developed countries copryright ends 50-100 years after the author's death, the USA are an exception to that rule, because you have to register a copyright claim and renew it regularly and they have the option of transfering the actual copyright to someone else)
That even includes photographies of the building. The EU currently discusses a legislation to remove the freedom of panorama from the copyright exemptions. Other countries might or might not have copyright exemptions for that stuff.
#2 You can't claim the rights to a photography of a camera you developed, but you can (legally, not always practically) keep others from building a copy of your camera.
#3 That one is absolutely true. Copyrighting a person is impossible (as of now, I'm sure someone in the USA has already explored the possibilities of making that possible by law)
The restriction on making money is unneccessary. It's illegal regardless of you making money or not. As soon as you make something publicly available it's illegal.
One more thing, though:
Only the creator and distributor are liable to copyright violations. People downloading and playing a game with "stolen"/illegally copied artwork are fine as far as criminal justice goes. You might be subject to civil damages, though. Especially in Europe there's a whole industry for automating that, but it's usually focused on music and film downloads via P2P filesharing. Typical charges are in the ballpark area of a few hundred €. (main problem is if you wanna fight such a civil notice sent by a lawyer, you'll have to go to court and hire a lawyer yourself, spending more than the actual charge without a reasonable chance of getting that money back, even if you're falsely accused)
You seem to be confusing, and blurring lines between copyright, trademarks, patents, etc. They are very different things.
Copyright only applies to art. There is no such thing as a camera copyright open to court interpretation. Cameras can be patented, not copyrighted. A logo on a camera may be a trademark.
Patent does not prevent you from copying someone's camera. You can make clones of every camera ever made, if you are so inclined. Selling those clones is another story, but for your own personal use, it is not infringement. Yes, someone built their own space shuttle for personal use.
Copyright does not need to be registered, it begins the moment you create the artwork.
Litigants who fight false claims of copyright infringement are currently being awarded millions in damages.
[Note: I'm not a lawyer, just someone with some knowledge in international copyright. I'll try to keep it as short as possible.]
[Edit: Oh my god... Sorry, English isn't my natural language and it seem that I can't concentrate on a complex subject and in the same time concentrate on my English skills. There's syntax/grammar/whatever errors, please excuse-me by advance.]
There a major point that every one seem to have missed in this discussion, we talk about a worldwide thing... Mostly, people talk about the US laws, when it's a total nonsense here.
In first intention, it's the copyright laws of the country where the "thing" (I'll not debate about what is/can be copyrighted) is firstly published which apply ; so in this discussion, the Japanese laws. This imply that you ask to the justice of this said country (so, here again Japan) to enforce your rights. But the justice of the said country can conclude that they have no authority on this case, because the infringement occur outside of the country.
In second intention, so, if you try to enforce your rights in the country where the infringement occur, you must refer to the Berne convention of 1886, if the country is member of the Berne Union, or be fucked because almost all the countries which aren't members of the Berne Union have a really good reason for this and will not care about your rights.
So, at the end, Illusion don't have this much solutions. If they go after you because you use their characters, they'll face at least these six problems.
They must prove that it's an infringement in regard of the laws, they take the risk to face a partial justice, they must prove that you were selling your game and that your intention was to distribute it to as many people as you can. They also must states that some static pictures of their game are not "a small amount of the game", and for that the better way is to states that they sell picture studios and not games ; that's what they do, but I don't think they are ready to admit it.
And all this for what ? Well, for nothing. They'll spend a ton of money, you'll be sentenced, and that's all. They will say, "it's our games, don't touch", and that's all...
Is that really all ? In fact no... They've go in justice because someone have used their product, used pictures made with their studio... Did you know how many people have a blog with only pictures made with the studio of an Illusion game ? They'll fear them after this... questioning their right to have this blog. So, they'll stop the blog, and... well, now they have no reason to buy an Illusion games...
So, what's the TL;DR of all this, now that all the legal point of view is cleared (er... at least I tried) ?
It's simple, the main reason why they do nothing is the fact that they win money because of your game. It's the best advertising for them and it cost nothing :
Hey, look what every single one of you can do with an illusion game ! You want to play with the modern version of dolls and make them on display for everyone ? Buy an Illusion game...
[Note: I'm not a lawyer, just someone with some knowledge in international copyright. I'll try to keep it as short as possible.]
[Edit: Oh my god... Sorry, English isn't my natural language and it seem that I can't concentrate on a complex subject and in the same time concentrate on my English skills. There's syntax/grammar/whatever errors, please excuse-me by advance.]
There a major point that every one seem to have missed in this discussion, we talk about a worldwide thing... Mostly, people talk about the US laws, when it's a total nonsense here.
In first intention, it's the copyright laws of the country where the "thing" (I'll not debate about what is/can be copyrighted) is firstly published which apply ; so in this discussion, the Japanese laws. This imply that you ask to the justice of this said country (so, here again Japan) to enforce your rights. But the justice of the said country can conclude that they have no authority on this case, because the infringement occur outside of the country.
In second intention, so, if you try to enforce your rights in the country where the infringement occur, you must refer to the Berne convention of 1886, if the country is member of the Berne Union, or be fucked because almost all the countries which aren't members of the Berne Union have a really good reason for this and will not care about your rights.
So, at the end, Illusion don't have this much solutions. If they go after you because you use their characters, they'll face at least these six problems.
They must prove that it's an infringement in regard of the laws, they take the risk to face a partial justice, they must prove that you were selling your game and that your intention was to distribute it to as many people as you can. They also must states that some static pictures of their game are not "a small amount of the game", and for that the better way is to states that they sell picture studios and not games ; that's what they do, but I don't think they are ready to admit it.
And all this for what ? Well, for nothing. They'll spend a ton of money, you'll be sentenced, and that's all. They will say, "it's our games, don't touch", and that's all...
Is that really all ? In fact no... They've go in justice because someone have used their product, used pictures made with their studio... Did you know how many people have a blog with only pictures made with the studio of an Illusion game ? They'll fear them after this... questioning their right to have this blog. So, they'll stop the blog, and... well, now they have no reason to buy an Illusion games...
So, what's the TL;DR of all this, now that all the legal point of view is cleared (er... at least I tried) ?
It's simple, the main reason why they do nothing is the fact that they win money because of your game. It's the best advertising for them and it cost nothing :
Hey, look what every single one of you can do with an illusion game ! You want to play with the modern version of dolls and make them on display for everyone ? Buy an Illusion game...
from law student that take focus on business law point of view, i agree with most what you already state,
International dispute settlement are fukken expensive,complex,and time-consuming (a case usually settled by 1-2 years) it is not worth the effort except if the stake is huge,this why we have chinese bootleg industry still run amok till now. Usually for electronic file that distributed over the internet the most they forgoes the lawsuit phase and end up just ordering 'cease and desist' to where you hosting your file so the webhosting delete your file (this why that local distribution is a lot better than hosting your file on web), it the most economist way for them but there no court ruling binding your product existence,there are chance that somebody other than you to upload the file once again,and Illusion will start the process from zero
for what law will govern to settle the dispute arising from this,because this is a private to private matter, we need to use International private law/ international conflict of law ruling,where both party need to files their claim in the appointed district court which have the authority to do so, which mean also at the respondent country
i am working on a non-commercial twine based game and i would like to use some pictures from the www .... i read your posts and what I understand is : I am not allowed to upload my game with the intention of public sharing because some parts of the content are not my property...
Do you know some incidents regarding to twine games and copyright issues from the past ?
i am working on a non-commercial twine based game and i would like to use some pictures from the www .... i read your posts and what I understand is : I am not allowed to upload my game with the intention of public sharing because some parts of the content are not my property...
This thread only looks at the problems you might get into when using content from other paid-for games (specifically the HoneySelect game by Japanese company Illusion).
If you're using pictures with real humans you're in a completely different field of copyright.
While most of the general stuff (especially about what the copyright owner must do in order to sue or cease and decist you) can be applied to all kinds of copyrighted content.
When it comes to actual humans being depicted, there's usually more than one entity involved with the copyrights.
At least the producer and the people depicted might have claims against you and when it comes to Movies in general (both adult and more family friendly ones), there's also territorial or scope based exclusive licenses (i.e. A produces the movie and sells it directly in Europe, but has sold the distribution rights for Asia and the Americas to B OR they only sold a web license to B and the DVD license to C etc.)
Google has some blocked results (at least in Germany) when you look for something like that, but other than that I haven't heard of anyone getting in trouble.
Not directly related to Adult Games and distributing them, but in Germany there was a famous case 3-4 years ago where a company sent out Cease and Decist letters to people who were only watching porn on a popular streaming site. While this particular company had to face a massive backlash and go out of business later on (formally wrong C&D letters, they only licensed the content themselves and didn't have permission to seek damages in the first place etc), this shows that there are companies looking to make money even out of small infringements.
To sum it up: It's more likely to be illegal than perfectly fine to use such content without permission, but the risk of a) getting caught and b) being fined anything at all is very low to non-existant.
This thread only looks at the problems you might get into when using content from other paid-for games (specifically the HoneySelect game by Japanese company Illusion).
hmm some of YouTubers are earning money by making gameplay videos... or by making fan arts... adding adversiting to their videos and nobody cares ...except music industries... Youtube changed its terms of use and stoped most youtuber from using songs of some artist illegaly. Development towards copyright abidance is predictable in every sector. In my opinion ppl who are using HoneySelect content commercially, have a lot of time until companies will starting react... Maybe 5 years or more.
If you're using pictures with real humans you're in a completely different field of copyright.
While most of the general stuff (especially about what the copyright owner must do in order to sue or cease and decist you) can be applied to all kinds of copyrighted content.
When it comes to actual humans being depicted, there's usually more than one entity involved with the copyrights.
thank you i will try to avoid using photos and movie screenshots... i was inspired by games like Inner Bimbo and Evil inc. and would like to create a similar non commercial game, but i think that i must reconsider this idea...
Google has some blocked results (at least in Germany) when you look for something like that, but other than that I haven't heard of anyone getting in trouble.
Not directly related to Adult Games and distributing them, but in Germany there was a famous case 3-4 years ago where a company sent out Cease and Decist letters to people who were only watching porn on a popular streaming site. While this particular company had to face a massive backlash and go out of business later on (formally wrong C&D letters, they only licensed the content themselves and didn't have permission to seek damages in the first place etc), this shows that there are companies looking to make money even out of small infringements.
To sum it up: It's more likely to be illegal than perfectly fine to use such content without permission, but the risk of a) getting caught and b) being fined anything at all is very low to non-existant.
Maybe our politicians will finally take the GDPR catastrophe as an opportunity to limit the Cease and Desist Desease in this country once and for all. (There is an opportunity, but I fear they'll narrow this down so much and make it so ambiguous that it won't help anyone but lawyers. After all lawyers make up the biggest group of professional politicians in Gernany)
