I’ve been looking for some good podcasts to listen to while commuting, and was also wanting to ham up on what’s happening in the realms of machinima before I go along to the Machinima Europe Festival this weekend. I come from the relatively small planet of flight sim machinima, and within that world, the tiny island of IL2.

Well, sir, this fits the bill perfectly and I have been laughing out loud for the past week in my car as well as having little moments of revelation at some of the ideas put forth. So, accepting all the strange looks I have received from other mad commuters, I thank you for such a free and illuminating resource.

More please!

The big galaxy of machinima and the little planet of flight sims need to meet in the universe more

I appreciate your coverage of the Microsoft …uh..what to we call it? Agreement? Rules? After reading it several times and going over Hugh’s comments, I’m still confused on many aspects of the document. While Anthony’s comments are specific, they just went right over my head honestly. In one sense, our comments are really moot since it’s meant as a legal document written in more common language. Even at the end of Hugh’s long (and excellent) blog on the matter he states that you shouldn’t consider his comments legal advice. Do we really know what Microsoft intends us to do and not do with regards to machinima? If I wanted to know exactly, I’d have to contact a lawyer, wouldn’t I? This is just for my own work as a machinimator, but why would I want to even put myself in the position to violate ANY rules that Microsoft has created? It’s the main reason I don’t work with Halo or any other game created by Mircrosoft.

Of course, I’m playing devil’s advocate here. Commentary and discussion about this important document is essential in the community. I guess what I’m most pleased with is that Microsoft is actually talking to our community (via Hugh and EEF). I’m not as sanguine as you are about Microsoft, but as Hugh points out, this is a very good sign.
Blizzard’s recent document along the same lines is an improvement over Microsoft’s. Perhaps this will create a domino effect and pressure studios like Epic and Valve to issue “rules” in the same fashion. Whatever the outcome, the movement seems to be a good thing for game oriented machinima.

Thanks again for your show. I always laugh and think (not necessarily at the same time).

ricky

It worries me because I feel like we’ve made such healthy progress in steering ourselves away from the copyright snares of commercially licensed music, and I think the general feeling was that CC BY-NC-SA was the savior. But it certainly does appear that - with game-spawned machinima - it may feel “safer” but it’s no more legal to use BY-NC-SA instead. And that’s disappointing to realize.

There are several workarounds; avoid this kind of source material, for one. And the other option is, of course, to forsake games. Optimum timing to consider doing so, too, given the products out there now.

“You can’t grant anyone the right to build on your creations.”

This is a clarification of what is already true given the other rules, not an additional restriction. There is a lost opportunity to grant further freedoms, though.

The basic bad news is that you will never be able to release a work that uses MS content and is allowed to do so only because of the freedoms granted by the Usage Rules under a license that allows generic derivative works. MS have placed other restrictions on the way in which you can use their content. A license like Creative Commons BY-NC (Attribution, non-commercial) grants a general right to create derivative works that could be in conflict with those restrictions. You could use the BY-NC-ND (…, no derivatives) license so long as you require the “was created under Microsoft’s Game Content Usage Rules…” boilerplate as part of the attribution requirements for your work.

There’s nothing MS can do that would allow people to use BY-NC (let alone BY-NC-SA) as-is without removing the restrictions that are important to them. What we’re seeing here is the difficulty of combining differently licensed materials, which I understand to be an active research topic at Creative Commons. (A way of more easily adding “plus these other inherited restrictions” to CC licenses would be great, although it can only make the world muddier.)

MS could explicitly allow you to permit a third party to publish a work derived from your one so long as it was in accord with the Usage Rules (and with whatever additional restrictions you want to muddy the world with.) Wording it will be a little tedious, but that’s what the lawyers get paud for. I got the impression from Hugh’s report that MS are looking into doing that. I’m not sure what else you can expect to persuade them to do.

But Overman’s example of Share-Alike is viral and by definition cannot play nice with any license that wants to impose additional restrictions. It only works for subcultures where adoption reaches a suitable critical mass or where sufficient material is public domain or similar (music is your example, GPL is an analogous success story in software.) The lesson is that if you want more freedom in your choice of sources to combine, don’t use licenses with viral components.

…I’m not lying, but I rewinded it like… 10 times just to hear my name. Really.
Heh, well, I’ll be expecting my DVD in the mail one of these days.

Oh, and another great podcast, Mr. Overman.