Open License Change Statements

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Under CC-BY-SA, you are required to indicate changes that you made to the original material.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en#ref-indicate-changes

This requirement was obviously not written with actual creative work in mind — the explanations are for people who crop a photograph or image. My Starter Set and Timothy's Mythic Venice do not change the original material in an important sense, but they are certainly not verbatim reproductions of it. So, that raises the question of how we should meet this licensing requirement.

If the community (which, right now, is us) decides on some helpful conventions, people will copy those conventions, and things will be fairly easy and straightforward. So, here are some suggestions. Suggestions for modifications, other cases, and any other changes very welcome. The intent here is just to have a concrete starting point, not to close discussion.

For an original supplement, like Mythic Venice:

This is an original supplement for Ars Magica. It makes use of many background and rule elements from the works listed here, but is a new work.

For something like the Fan Grimoire:

This is a compilation of [spells/creature stats/magic systems] from the works listed here. They have been rearranged within this work, but not otherwise altered.

In this case, I suggest that the titles of the books that the things were taken from be listed, so that people can see if there are any missing sources.

And, for a revision of a rule system that you found lacking:

This is a revised version of the Amazon magic in Rival Magic, one of the works licensed by Atlas Games.

(I only picked on Amazon magic because it was easy to name in an example.)

Comments, revisions, expansions, questions, clarifications?

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The first two are fine. There's just going to be a standardized list that goes on the copyright page (along with a disclaimer that the art, unless listed, is not cc-by-sa). I don't like the last one because I don't want to call out every rule revision in detail, especially in the main text. Unless we start using footnotes or endnotes that could get unwieldy.

(Would you even bother to register copyright on a cc-by-sa text, what would there be to register. The art and layout? Still might like to see the book in the library of Congress though.)

Keep in mind a supplement might look something like this:

New text and material.

Edit to mythic choreography to make clear it works with craft magic from HoH:S.

Appendix reprinting rule from HoH:S.

And to top everything off some of the material is set in Venetian territory across the Adriatic, so Mythic Venice also needs to get added to the CC-BY-SA list.

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There's no need to detail your changes, only your sources.

It's like those afterwords that warn that inaccuracies don't come from professor Dunwich, but from the author's artistic license. You don't want to put your words in someone elses's mouth.

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4

I went with

Based on the material for Ars Magica...

This is a pretty standard formulation for works using CC-BY (e.g. look at A_State, or other works based on the CC-BY Forged in the Dark rules system).

Though it occurs to me that I have paraphrased some of the demon powers for conciseness, and I should really indicate that.

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Copyright exists automatically, without registration.

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I don't think detailed change statements are worth the bother. Say someone does a change of Amazonian magic without a statement. What mechanism would enforce that? What would the penalty be? In what court?

Essentially: is Atlas going to sue? If not is this just all semantic? We all know there's going to be a pirate version of 5DE up on Scribd before we can blink and Atlas won't sue them. Why go harder after people who are using the license officially?

Also, I'd note that demanding a set form of change statement isn't possible. You can't add restrictions, and that's a restriction.

Basically, the CC world is highly pragmatic about enforceable rights. We don't have to pretend that documenting our cross references matters.
.

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7

Its a new requirement under CC-BY 4.0. But it can be done in any reasonable manner. And agreeing on what's reasonable seems like a good idea.

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8

Exactly.

That's not the question. The question is: Is anybody with IP incorporated under CC-BY-SA going to sue for violations of the license? And I am not so confident about the answer to that question. That's why I think it's a good idea for the community to agree on what is reasonable, and keep it simple, so that if someone does sue, the suee can point to community agreement that they indicated the changes in a reasonable manner. Courts do take that sort of thing seriously.

That is true. (And, I would also note, you can't legally add a no-AI restriction, although CC is looking into that and it may become possible with version 5.0, which will be declared compatible (one-way) with version 4.0.)

However, the point of these licenses is to create a safe harbour, where you can do something and know that you can't get effectively sued. Part of that is sorting out how credit should be given, and how changes should be indicated. The current form of the credit requirement on Atlas's website is the result of a discussion as to how we could make it easy and stop anything like the growth of OGL Section 15. The point of this discussion is to have a "changes" indication convention that people can use easily, and know that they won't get sued for using this even if they have paraphrased a couple of demon powers.

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You get some addition protections with copyright registration. I'm think more of the benefit of their being an archival copy somewhere so that somebody can find it a hundred years from now.

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Oh, as an Australian there's no particular benefit, and your duty to deposit is a separate thing. I do need to consider if I owe the state and national libraries paper copies.

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Maybe a change log in back if the new version if the license requires it? One thing that strikes me is that we may want to collect a record of all the changes somewhere for versioning purposes. Could this be done through gethub or the like? (My concerns with such an approach are non-English speaking authors, as well as the technical skills needed for get).

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So i don't know how the chips are going to fall, but in my draft adventure, in the monster section I have more or less followed what I saw in the Venice bestiary. So "based on [monster name], [book name] p [number]".

I don't need to steal credit for an atlantean with the numbers filled off...

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13

Just a note, there was never a plan to release the Fan Grimoire for sale. So it will not fall under the CC license.

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Just a note: as far as copyright law is concerned, that is irrelevant.

Now, I believe it incorporates material that wasn't released under the license, so you couldn't choose to release it that way in any case, but the question of whether it is for sale or not is immaterial.

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What material do you think it incorporates that's no under the license?

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According to the thread, it incorporates fan-written spells, which are not under the CC license unless the authors put them there. Which is a good idea now if you want to be safe, but wasn't an option when they were being written, so they are not currently licensed that way. (And only the original authors can do so, which means that a CC-BY-SA compliant Fan Grimoire would be a massive and thankless task — which is why I said "something like", not the Fan Grimoire itself.)

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Same in Aotearoa.

I get an ISBN and depost copies if I do hardcopy of something.

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18

It works basically like this.
You write a derivative work with Ars Magica IP under license (CC-BY-SA). As the author of the work you gain the copyright to that specific work and you are legally allowed to distribute and profit from said work.

Under the terms of the CC-BY-SA license, you make the entirety of the work open content under CC-BY-SA license.

Then a year later some jerk, copies your work without following the terms of the license. If the copyright is not registered then your legal remedies are limited. Basically boiling down to stopping distribution of the work that violates the CC-BY-SA license.

However with copyright registration, in the United States, you can sue to recover damages, and more importantly have the option to use the new US Copyright Small Claims court. So while a standard lawsuit is rarely ever a good option for a hobby publisher. The Small Claims court is a viable option even when the outcome is just cease & desist.

However it is worth noting that the court of public opinion is often effective in small communities such as ours.

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