Contingency DMCA Policy
Draft
Preface
Copyright law and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) are large pieces of legislation filled with nuances to account for the multitude of ways humans have begun to create pieces of work. Despite its size, it is a straight forward piece of legislation. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misinformation regarding copyrights built up over the years.
It has come to my attention that within Contingency, copyright/DMCA matters have not been fully understood and handled in an unideal manner. With this policy, the rights to the works invovled with Contingency will be explained and a path set in how to deal with percieved infringements.
Official Sources
Copyright: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/
DMCA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW...ubl304.pdf
The basics of copyright in relation to Contingency
When an author first saves a newly created asset, a copyright is immediately granted over that work. This applies whether that asset is a model, texture, animation, Unreal blueprint, text file, etc. Said copyright for the newly saved work lasts for 70 years past the duration of the author's life. After that 70 year period, the copyright expires and the work enters public domain.
The author mentioned above may not be a human in all cases. Copyright Law allows for works to be made through employment and through collaboration.
In case of employment, the employer generally owns the copyright for works created as part of the job. This is not always the case though, as it is allowed for the employment contract to dictate alternative terms for how the copyright is granted.
In case of collaboration, an author retains copyright of the work they contribute to the collaboration. The collective, which is what the collaborators of a shared work are referred as, is fundamentally assumed to only have the right to reproduce and distribute that work as part of the collaboration.
Filings to the United States Copyright Office (and other nation's equivalent services) is the mechanism in which ownership of copyright is conveyed. This is the only guaranteed method for ensuring transfer of copyright is documented and legaly recognized.
So what is Contingency? First and foremost, it operates under the Microsoft GCUR and thus is unable to function as an employer hiring indivudals to create works. Additionally, it is not a formal legal organization (such as a tax entity partnership or a limited liability corporation). At best, it can be considered a collaboration for the purposes of copyright law.
That means Contingency doesn't exclusively (as in be the only owner) own copyright for the assets in the game. It only owns the rights to distribute and reproduce the assets provided.
The basics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in relation to Contingency
The DMCA is a piece of legislation that amends copyright law from 1976 in order to account for "the digital millennium" bringing news ways to create and distribute copyrighted works according to international treaties regarding intellectual property.
The DMCA provides Contingency the right to secure its digital work so as to prevent unlicensed copying in whole or part. Any circumvention of the security measures is not allowed. And when I say "any" I mean it. There is no defense provided through law to permit it. Copyright infringement exceptions such as education or fair use do not apply to circumvention of the security of digital work in any way. Thus, ripping content from the Contingency game client is not legally allowed.
What does this mean for Contingency? Let's establish some foundational statements for assumptions made on how the collective driving Contingency operates.
- The collective basically began having no formal agreements in place. Any agreements that are said to exist are done orally and are only done so through a subset of the collective. Any such oral agreements are only binding if they can be proven to take have taken place.
- It is presumed by the collective that works contributed to Contingency will not be distributed outside of the collective.
- Nothing is actually preventing members of the collective from distributing their contributions to the public. That is to say, no one in the collective has taken anyone else from the collective to court to try and enforce any perceived agreements.
- Contingency secures its works in accordance with the DMCA.
What are the practical uses of the information above?
First, oral agreements have mostly kept works contributed to Contingency from being freely distributed to the public. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the only way for the general public to get the works of Contingency is to play the game in accordance to the EULA.
Second, the game employs security measures to ensure its contents are not freely copied and/or distributed. So if Person A ends up distributing a copy of something from Contingency in a mod for another game, there is a baseline established in determining infringement. Has 100% of the content in the mod been distributed by its copyright owner through a means which it can get to Person A without the Contingency game? If so, then that is perfectly okay under the law. If not, then the DMCA affords members of the collective, under certain conditions, to act on behalf of the collective to protect the copyrights of the infringed work and initiate a takedown request to halt further distribution of the infringed work.
Third, one of the conditions the DMCA has for allowing members of the collective to act on behalf of the collective to protect infringed work is that it is done so through the best of their knowledge that the work in question is trulying having its copyright being infringed.
According to the DMCA, the infringing work must cease distribution within a set timeframe. After distribution has ceased, the offending party may only restore distribution after filing a counterclaim notice stating they do have the rights to distribute the work(s) in question.
Fourth, if the collective actor wishes to further halt distribution of infringing content then the only option is for litigation to be filed in court. This is why that it is paramount that the information in a takedown request is 100% certain of its factualness in claiming the perceived infringer has no rights to copy/distribute the work whatsoever.
ANY false statements, whether they were known as false at the time or not, made in the takedown request or counterclaim are considered perjury and grounds for financial penalty amongst other things.
Contingency's new copyright policy
It is important for Contingency to have a clear and present policy on how to act in regards to potential copyright violations. A single takedown attempt that ends up being a false positive is all it takes for the entire project to be put at risk of being shut down and any individual on the team having to face civil litigation or criminal indictment. Every step of the way, from suspected infringement to details of an attempted takedown, needs to be documented and recorded in case of any sort of legal retaliation.
The tooling I have been working on for the team does have this planned, but it has yet to be implemented. In the mean time, I have opened a new channel in the discord: Contingency Central > DMCA Infringement.
In this channel, you should report any suspected infringements you run across. Once you have done so, the team will discuss the merits of the claim. Once a conclusion has been reached, the appropriate measures will be taken and logged for future reference.
Draft
Preface
Copyright law and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) are large pieces of legislation filled with nuances to account for the multitude of ways humans have begun to create pieces of work. Despite its size, it is a straight forward piece of legislation. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misinformation regarding copyrights built up over the years.
It has come to my attention that within Contingency, copyright/DMCA matters have not been fully understood and handled in an unideal manner. With this policy, the rights to the works invovled with Contingency will be explained and a path set in how to deal with percieved infringements.
Official Sources
Copyright: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/
DMCA: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW...ubl304.pdf
The basics of copyright in relation to Contingency
When an author first saves a newly created asset, a copyright is immediately granted over that work. This applies whether that asset is a model, texture, animation, Unreal blueprint, text file, etc. Said copyright for the newly saved work lasts for 70 years past the duration of the author's life. After that 70 year period, the copyright expires and the work enters public domain.
The author mentioned above may not be a human in all cases. Copyright Law allows for works to be made through employment and through collaboration.
In case of employment, the employer generally owns the copyright for works created as part of the job. This is not always the case though, as it is allowed for the employment contract to dictate alternative terms for how the copyright is granted.
In case of collaboration, an author retains copyright of the work they contribute to the collaboration. The collective, which is what the collaborators of a shared work are referred as, is fundamentally assumed to only have the right to reproduce and distribute that work as part of the collaboration.
Filings to the United States Copyright Office (and other nation's equivalent services) is the mechanism in which ownership of copyright is conveyed. This is the only guaranteed method for ensuring transfer of copyright is documented and legaly recognized.
So what is Contingency? First and foremost, it operates under the Microsoft GCUR and thus is unable to function as an employer hiring indivudals to create works. Additionally, it is not a formal legal organization (such as a tax entity partnership or a limited liability corporation). At best, it can be considered a collaboration for the purposes of copyright law.
That means Contingency doesn't exclusively (as in be the only owner) own copyright for the assets in the game. It only owns the rights to distribute and reproduce the assets provided.
The basics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in relation to Contingency
The DMCA is a piece of legislation that amends copyright law from 1976 in order to account for "the digital millennium" bringing news ways to create and distribute copyrighted works according to international treaties regarding intellectual property.
The DMCA provides Contingency the right to secure its digital work so as to prevent unlicensed copying in whole or part. Any circumvention of the security measures is not allowed. And when I say "any" I mean it. There is no defense provided through law to permit it. Copyright infringement exceptions such as education or fair use do not apply to circumvention of the security of digital work in any way. Thus, ripping content from the Contingency game client is not legally allowed.
What does this mean for Contingency? Let's establish some foundational statements for assumptions made on how the collective driving Contingency operates.
- The collective basically began having no formal agreements in place. Any agreements that are said to exist are done orally and are only done so through a subset of the collective. Any such oral agreements are only binding if they can be proven to take have taken place.
- It is presumed by the collective that works contributed to Contingency will not be distributed outside of the collective.
- Nothing is actually preventing members of the collective from distributing their contributions to the public. That is to say, no one in the collective has taken anyone else from the collective to court to try and enforce any perceived agreements.
- Contingency secures its works in accordance with the DMCA.
What are the practical uses of the information above?
First, oral agreements have mostly kept works contributed to Contingency from being freely distributed to the public. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the only way for the general public to get the works of Contingency is to play the game in accordance to the EULA.
Second, the game employs security measures to ensure its contents are not freely copied and/or distributed. So if Person A ends up distributing a copy of something from Contingency in a mod for another game, there is a baseline established in determining infringement. Has 100% of the content in the mod been distributed by its copyright owner through a means which it can get to Person A without the Contingency game? If so, then that is perfectly okay under the law. If not, then the DMCA affords members of the collective, under certain conditions, to act on behalf of the collective to protect the copyrights of the infringed work and initiate a takedown request to halt further distribution of the infringed work.
Third, one of the conditions the DMCA has for allowing members of the collective to act on behalf of the collective to protect infringed work is that it is done so through the best of their knowledge that the work in question is trulying having its copyright being infringed.
According to the DMCA, the infringing work must cease distribution within a set timeframe. After distribution has ceased, the offending party may only restore distribution after filing a counterclaim notice stating they do have the rights to distribute the work(s) in question.
Fourth, if the collective actor wishes to further halt distribution of infringing content then the only option is for litigation to be filed in court. This is why that it is paramount that the information in a takedown request is 100% certain of its factualness in claiming the perceived infringer has no rights to copy/distribute the work whatsoever.
ANY false statements, whether they were known as false at the time or not, made in the takedown request or counterclaim are considered perjury and grounds for financial penalty amongst other things.
Contingency's new copyright policy
It is important for Contingency to have a clear and present policy on how to act in regards to potential copyright violations. A single takedown attempt that ends up being a false positive is all it takes for the entire project to be put at risk of being shut down and any individual on the team having to face civil litigation or criminal indictment. Every step of the way, from suspected infringement to details of an attempted takedown, needs to be documented and recorded in case of any sort of legal retaliation.
The tooling I have been working on for the team does have this planned, but it has yet to be implemented. In the mean time, I have opened a new channel in the discord: Contingency Central > DMCA Infringement.
In this channel, you should report any suspected infringements you run across. Once you have done so, the team will discuss the merits of the claim. Once a conclusion has been reached, the appropriate measures will be taken and logged for future reference.