copyright and forum guidelines

[maroder]

I recently read the Blender forum copyright guidelines and just wanted to discuss if there is any relevancy of that to 0ad.

They basically say: "Don't post any screenshot of other (non-open source) applications as reference" because apparently they did get into legal trouble about that in the past.

So is this something that should be handled in a similar way here in the forum and on phabricator + trac, or is the situation here different?

[smiley]

Without additional context, who knows.

If you get sued, there is a greater than >90% chance that it will be considered fair use, because its non-profit, its used as reference and because screenshots have a legal precedence of not being considered under the same copyright as the software at least in the case of video games.

1. The purpose and character of the use.
2. The nature of the work that is used.
3. The amount and substantiality of the work used in relation to the copyright owner’s work as a whole.
4. The effect of the use on the market for the work.

Fair use is subjective based on these 4 criteria.

Regardless, online service providers fall under safe-harbor laws. Article 13 in EU also makes reasonable providence subjective based on the size of the platform, whether or not its non-profit.

Edited April 12, 2022 by smiley