What if the health values are human creations like special symbols or works of creative art?
Comment on Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 2 months agoI 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).
notfromhere@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
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.
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?
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 2 months ago
…yes? Changing the language or the way it’s presented doesn’t change the math behind the scenes. That’s not how computers work.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com 2 months ago
Yes, and you have copyright on the photo - not the layout of the plants and trees in it, nor even the angle of the subject. Someone else can go with a camera and take their own photo without touching your copyright.
Much like with digital files, the copyright is as it is a non-random transformation of a mostly replicable media product. People don’t have a copyright on numbers, even if their 5000 trillion billion digit number happened to turn into a 1960s Disney short if you run it through the right compiler.