Comment on Top EU Court’s Advisor Explains Why Video Game Cheats Are Not Copyright Infringement
cmhe@lemmy.world 2 months agoWell, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A work is original if it is independently created and is sufficiently creative. Creativity in photography can be found in a variety of ways and reflect the photographer’s artistic choices like the angle and position of subject(s) in the photograph, lighting, and timing. As a copyright owner, you have the right to make, sell or otherwise distribute copies, adapt the work, and publicly display your work.
www.copyright.gov/engage/photographers/
So if someone intentionally reproduces a picture, they violate copyright, IIUC.
In the case of minecraft, I think a case can be made, where the “picture” is the minecraft world, and the creativity is the selection process by the artist. The artist chooses their angle, position, lighting, etc, in this case they choose properties of the world, maybe by visiting thousands of them, using seed search machines, or other reverse engineering tools etc.
I all depends on if the artist can raise their work above just the random noise they get as an input in a creative way. I am not saying that all minecraft worlds (or save games for that matter) are subject to copyright, but since we are dealing with blurry lines of copyright, it is possible.
You are correct it isn’t about the numbers, it is about the artistic and creative product that is copyrightable, which, in case of digital art, is represented as numbers, and distribution of those might be punished by law.
I am just saying that digital art can be more that just still or moving pictures and sound. It can be a world space the artist prepared for you where you can move around.
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.