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Comment on Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement

[His] opinion asserts that manipulating transient data generated during gameplay through third-party software does not infringe copyright according to the EU’s Computer Programs Directive. This distinction between protecting a game’s code and the temporary data it generates is a very significant one for all developers of game-enhancing tools.

The Advocate General also highlighted that the variable values in question are not original works of the game’s author but result from player interactions and game progression, which are unpredictable and dynamic. Since they depend on unforeseeable factors, these values lie beyond the author’s creative control.

That is an interesting distinction, the code to generate your health total is copyright but the actual health value you modify with cheats is not.

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otp@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The music on the CD is copyrighted, but you’re free to use the Bass Boost feature or whatever on the thing you’re playing the music from

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- hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah honestly this makes a lot of sense to me.
  
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MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I mean, this is a pretty normal distinction afaik (human vs non-human creations; afaik non-human creations almost always have any human copyright claims voided when challenged).

Imo what makes this special is how precise he’s being. If I understand correctly, he’s basically saying that the code for the health bar is a human creation and protected by copyright, but while the code to change the health value might be human-made, the actual values are machine-made and not under copyright (there’s probably a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but my understanding is that’s the gist of it).

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- cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Well, I think both are human creation, you are using the machine and the game to create something new. In that sense, a save game file could also be under the players copyright.
  
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  - MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What this is saying is that the Minecraft world would not be under copyright, but anything the player built in that world would be. So you can’t copyright the world itself, but you can copyright any human-made constructions in that world.
    
    This is wholly preferable to the alternative options which could result in things like being able to copyright AI-generated works (applying his logic to AI, they’re basically saying you can copyright any edits to an AI-gen image, but not the image itself because that was AI-gen).
    
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    cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I said “minecraft world file” which stores the chunks the player explored and potentially modified. And I said “could” not “must”, it depends on if hits a certain creative threshold.
    
    If the player decides to teleport around while creating a dickbud or whatever by just the explored chunks, that could meet it.
    
    If someone selectivly openes quests to use the open quest markers on a map in an RPG to create a dickbud, that cloud meet it as well.
    
    The save game could tell your individual story through the game, that cloud meet the threshold as well.
    
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  - Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    A Minecraft World isn’t, not even if you draw on it with exploration as the world was generated from a random seed.
    
    It is random, and unpredictable. You could maybe make an argument from reusing the random seed… But since the ability to turn the seed into the map isn’t something a human can replicate without Minecraft I think it also fails the test for copyright.
    
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    cmhe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nature is often random and unpredictable, but the process of selecting a interesting POV and taking a picture of it is still copyrightable.
    
    I wouldn’t be so sure that if you discover a seed, that can be transformed using minecraft into a world with very interesting and specific properties, could not be under copyright protection.
    
    In fact movies and pictures are specific numbers as well, that are transformed using a codec. That isn’t something that can be easily replicated without that codec.
    
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- notfromhere@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What if the health values are human creations like special symbols or works of creative art?
  
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  - MossyFeathers@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The symbols would be copyrighted, but the actual behind-the-scenes value (i.e. 20/100, 62.5/1200, etc) isn’t. That’s what they’re referring to.
    
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    notfromhere@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I mean what if you didn’t use 20/100 for the value, you used a symbol (in the code as the value). Would it still apply?
    
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