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frogbeastegg

Lurking Frog
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Apr 6, 2004
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I'll try to keep this potentially long story short; I am writing a CK AAR that has gone so far beyond the game it barely classes as an AAR. I am using it as a (incredibly) rough draft for a book. In my thread coz1 just said
I would caution that whatever you post here at Paradox becomes their property once it is posted on this forum (at least that is how I understand it to be.) I'm not sure if you knew that. They made a decision early on that they would maintain copyrights on anything that appeared here, I assume for reasons of simplicity and legality. You might want to research that a bit more before you move towards attempting to publish. You may very well find a way around it, but I thought you should know.

Simply put I want to know if this is true, where do I stand? If no one here can tell me can someone point me at a person who can?
 
Check your AAR, eggy. I linked to the User Agreement that gives you the low down. Again, I really hate being the person to point that out as I love your AAR and would hate to see it stop!! I just thought you should know that now rather than later. :(
 
Yes, I just found that - we must have been posting at the same time. Hate it when that happens. Looks like it is already too late, since I have posted some 110 pages of Red hand.

And so the question arises: Now what?
 
The board does indeed take your AAR and include it in the copyright, and so far we've been unbalbe to get a clear picture of the consequences as this is a VERY hazy area.. here in Denmark for instance you can only relinquish your IP (intelectual Property right) for specific instances, not a carte blanche as here :)

The passus is there for three reasons:

Mainly, the modding and scripting, anything posted here is the rights of PE, thus they can use or disregard any research script mod or idea presented here, in a patch or a new game...

Secondly for commercial purposes, that would be a statement or a pressrelease, and it is in this instance AARs have so far been used, as good PR on other sites...

I think your rights are safe here, shoudl you choose to publish, but OTOH PE DOES reserv the right to publish or use it too :)

I'll forward the questions to PE and admins :)

V
 
Valdemar said:
I'll forward the questions to PE and admins :)
Thank you very much :) I shall await an answer with baited breath.

Thanks, Sapphire, I'm always happy to find another person who enjoys my scribblings. :)

And thanks to you, J. Passepartout; that does give me a bit of hope :)
 
frogbeastegg said:
Thank you very much :) I shall await an answer with baited breath.

Thanks, Sapphire, I'm always happy to find another person who enjoys my scribblings. :)

And thanks to you, J. Passepartout; that does give me a bit of hope :)
The copyright is, in this case, a non-exclusive copyright. The author of an AAR retains his right to use the material however he chooses to.
 
Well that's great news. Thanks so much Havard for clearing that up for frogbeastegg and making us happy readers of her AAR even happier to know that not only will she keep going but will also be able to utilize this material elsewhere if she chooses. Wonderful! :D
 
Thank you, Havard, for clarifying, and very quickly too. :) That's excellent news, and now I shall return to putting virtual pen to paper.
 
I hate to be a downer, but an "implied non-exclusive copyright" suggests that Paradox can do what they like with a given work, too. This isn't all that much of a concern (I don't think they're going to start publishing things without the author's permission) unless something gets fairly successful. For example, if your book became wildly successful, Paradox might be inclined to do a second printing, lay claim to a cut of the profits, etc.

Again, I'm not trying to cause trouble or suggest that Paradox actually would do any of these things; they're just potential disputes that could arise in the future. I'm only well-versed in them because LD and I went around and around about this stuff at one time. Personally, that copyright clause is reason enough for me to never post anything here that I might hypothetically want to publish someday. So, with all respect to Havard and the Paradox folks, I would advise caution.
 
The other potential problem for you is that a future (non-Paradox) publisher will probably want to you warrant that your copyright interest in the work is unencumbered. This might require you to disclose that PE has some nebulous legal interest in the work, a fact that might discourage the publisher.

But this is not my area of legal expertise.
 
This is quite disturbing news indeed, as my current AAR is also a very rough sketch for a book im planning to do in the future as a pet project.

Luckily i read Harvards message :p phewf.

Don't know about the legal stuff though, has there ever been a case where an AAR writer wanted to publish his work?
 
Well at 1st I started reading this thread and I'll admit it was rather concerning to me. I do not belive that PE would do any of those things but knowing that they Could is enough a cause of concern.

Not that I have the opinion that I have the skills to write a book but it would be a shame to one day aquire the skill and see that somebody has thier fingers in pieces of my pie.

Well If that day ever comes I guess I'd have to trust PE not to take too big of a slice. :D

Where does PE legality of copyright stand on if another Websight allready has the said material. For example the AAR's in question were originally posted on another webisght?
 
TreizeV said:
Don't know about the legal stuff though, has there ever been a case where an AAR writer wanted to publish his work?

Several, yes. As near as I can gather, the traditional rule is that copyright vests in the author as soon as something's written, and it takes an express agreement to sign away a copyright to do so -- which would imply that all such copyright waivers on website forums (PE's included) would be invalid. That said, I don't think there's ever been a legal challenge to one that actually went to trial, and in any case I don't know anything about Swedish law (or much about copyright law generally, to be honest). As I say, with so many questions unanswered, it's a risk.
 
Well I have just erased my entire aar out of existence due to copyright reasons... so my advice is simple - if you want to publish something and have no trouble... just don't post it on the net - anywhere. There are MANY potential problems, and problems with PE are the least of one's worries.
 
I need to talk to someone in the UK publishing business about this, problem is it appears you need something more complete than what I have before you can approach an agent, then that agent handles the publishers. It will take a few months to finish this off, even if I don't post any more than is a very long time to be left hanging, waiting to find out where I stand.

I admit I know very little about how the publishing process works; I never thought to even consider ever being halfway decent with something people were interested in reading, but since I started writing this...I can see how it would work as a book, and with more time and a lot of polish/revamping/alteration/work/skill improvement/game related scene removal/historical accuracy improving I think I stand a chance.

So I seem to be in catch 22; it doesn't look like I can ask anyone until this is nearly finished in rough draft form, but I can't keep going as I have until I know.

I am reluctant to go slash and burn on my two posted versions of Red Hand without some clear idea of what I am getting into.
 
Shaytana said:
Well I have just erased my entire aar out of existence due to copyright reasons... so my advice is simple - if you want to publish something and have no trouble... just don't post it on the net - anywhere. There are MANY potential problems, and problems with PE are the least of one's worries.

I would say you're overreacting, esp since the format of the posts are hardly suitable for publishing, and PE do not retain any rights beyond the posts, that is no editing or rewriting rights as I see it...

But I'll pester PE about it in a bit :)

V
 
Valdemar said:
I would say you're overreacting, esp since the format of the posts are hardly suitable for publishing, and PE do not retain any rights beyond the posts, that is no editing or rewriting rights as I see it...

But I'll pester PE about it in a bit :)

V

Yes, the format of the posts is hardly suitable for publishing, and as I said PE is one of the least of the potential worries. I do not worry about PE as much as I worry about potential intelectual theft, and I mean it. Call me paranoid, but I would rather be sure I have all the copyright in the world before I post something I want to publish, because you never know who is lurking these forums and stealing ideas. So, imo as long as you are not sure you can hold on to your publishable ideas...don't share them till they are officialy yours. ;)
It's a better safe than sorry aproach, especialy since I have the go ahead to actualy get my stuff in print...
 
Valdemar said:
I would say you're overreacting, esp since the format of the posts are hardly suitable for publishing, and PE do not retain any rights beyond the posts, that is no editing or rewriting rights as I see it...

Well, they lay claim to the content of the posts. (By the way, the copyright notice is here, if anyone's looking for it.) If they truly have it, and I try to publish even a revised version, it'd be no different than if someone took something I'd written, edited it, and tried to publish it as their own -- i.e. still a violation of copyright. And if, hypothetically, someone's posting publishable-quality stuff, they don't even have the possibility of an edit going for them.