Matrix Games Forums

Hellen_slith wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 5:52 pm Here is part of the TOC for WWII briefings-the Pacific.
(...)
PPS: someday, I will put all of scenes into a comprehensive excell file like this and post it
in mean time I post portions as I do them (sorry, still hard to type--a bum Ulnar nerve in one hand LoL

Khanti wrote: Wed Jan 10, 2024 6:52 pm

Hellen_slith wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 5:52 pm Here is part of the TOC for WWII briefings-the Pacific.
(...)
PPS: someday, I will put all of scenes into a comprehensive excell file like this and post it
in mean time I post portions as I do them (sorry, still hard to type--a bum Ulnar nerve in one hand LoL

Thank you for your effort to prevent those scenarios from fading away.
I'm rather sure it's not the "fair use" doctrine, but "non commercial use" but keep it up.

My full statement is:

In general, modding a video game files for personal use or for non-commercial purposes is mostly considered legal (in most parts of the world), as it falls under the category of Fair Use or Non-Commercial Use.
Anyway: copyright is the legal concept that works — art, writing, images, music, and more — belong to the people who create them. According to copyright law, any original content you create and record in a lasting form is your own intellectual property. This means other people can't legally copy your work and PRETEND it's their own. They can't make money from the things you create either.

From this short point of view it's pretty clear that is completely legal to use other's people work under few conditions:
1. Attribution: You must credit the creator in order to use, copy or share the content. You must also indicate what changes were made by you.
2. Fair Use (statutory provision allowing the limited use of copyrighted materials without permission or license fees in certain circumstances): but it's mostly not a case in modified scenarios, as you use others work as a whole and fair use is originally limited to use parts of work.
3. Non-Commercial: You can't make a profit from the content. This is key attribute. It's obvious to games community that
published modifications are free and no one pays their creators. No one can be forced also to pay authors of Derivative Works (modified modifications).

So as long, as people strict to this rules, is obviously legal and moral to publish others people work, unless the original author explicitly forbids it. Why it is also moral? See point 1: You must credit the creator and not pretend that all this is your work. Some people seem to not understand the concept of copyright and claim that modifications cannot be published without the author's consent. But if the author has not indicated that he does not wish to have his work used and the modified content published, the above applies.