Shipbucket

I would like to discuss the issue of copyright and how it applies to Shipbucket. I think this is a very important aspect of this site (especially with a revamped main archive coming shortly), and while we've discussed this in the past a few times, we've never really gotten anywhere with it. As more and more quality drawings are added to the archive, I think we owe it to all contributors to settle this issue once and for all.

As I understand it, the long-standing Shipbucket Fair Use Agreement only applies to non-commercial / free use. We have no legal backing or protection against commercial use of our work.

I will always be against published works using Shipbucket art in print format. I think that goes against the very nature of what Shipbucket is about. To me, Shipbucket has and always will be a free, open resource of drawings created by a community of non-professional hobbyists using a raster (pixel) format, with a pre-made set of parts sheets that allows for anyone to freely and easily modify any existing drawings. This is why I was originally attracted to this venture. We are not a shop that produces commercial work, and while most Shipbucket work is extremely accurate, the scale/style do not lend themselves to being reproduced in print.

During my researching (which included reading tons of old threads where this question came up), I re-discovered the Creative Commons licenses. I think this one may be the best for our uses: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Any thoughts? I'd like to replace the Shipbucket Fair Use Agreement with a CC license if at all possible. I think this would give us a lot more protection than we currently have. Looking for feedback from anyone with more legal expertise than me, and especially anyone involved in the original discussions. A CC license that disallows commercial use of our work would be much easier to use when battling Italian magazines (or whoever) who decide to use our work without credit.

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Good thinking.
I can't say I had paid much attention to the intellectual rights of SB drawings, but your interpretation of the current fair-use agreement not explicitly barring commercial use seems spot on.

I'll favor a CC license on principle, and the BY-NC-SA version you selected seems the most fitting with the accepted SB rules.
The only potential snag I see would be in building on the BY condition to match the current crediting rules. Not saying that it won't work, but you'll probably need some additional text somewhere if you want to prevent e.g. people cutting out credit text and adding it besides the pictures.

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I think this would really help the website. I've seen a few rips floating around the interwebs, and I'd say this is probably our best bet to stop those.

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Oh, wait.

Although I strongly tend to agree with the above opinions, and I do think that the CC license is the proper tool to protect our intellectual rights, the Internet, being what it is, will always have those with no regards to rules.
That being said, I'm all for it, especially considering the fact that it is the best solution as of now.

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"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

The nature of the internet being what it is, and the intrinsic nature of SB art which can be so easily modified and re-used, I don't think we can stop the thousands of copies of our work that have been used online or mangled in uncredited kitbashes.

However, commercial publishers should know better and this aspect might be better served by a CC licence. I would add one caveat though, and that is how would we enforce this if a publisher didn't play ball? We haven't the resources to fund lawyers and such. Though I believe from past efforts we've been successful in the past at getting crediting or removal for published works without permission?

I do not share Colo's pessimism about SB works in published works. I've been published and I've seen other SB work printed in quite high-end quality books like Conway's Warship. If the SB drawings are reproduced in a small enough scale they don't look that bad, and with B&W reproduction they still look pretty good and indeed in many cases better than the pixelated line drawings and photos I've seen in several books recently.

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I agree almostly entirely with Colo though Hood's right about the commercial use but proper and measured responses should be implemented if thatever becomes more than a occasional thing

My main issue is while we focus on exterior abuses of the Fair use agreement and it's potential successor there's a lot of internal ones as well, crediting amongst new arrivals that's not so much an issue but a handful have been here months/years and fail to abide by it at all. If we're going to be serious about it, may as well be homogenous about the matter in our own back yard as on the rest of the web

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Regarding commercial use, I think it is best to ask permission from the artist or artists who created the drawing or drawings to be used. While I think it is a good idea to apply a single license for drawings uploaded on the main site, I think artists could allow their own original drawings to be used under their own terms in addition to the standard Shipbucket license. This is called multi-licensing.

Hood is spot on that internet is what it is, and if someone wants to fight it, then godspeed on that. perhaps we can draw a medal for such valiant heroes. Against foes of that caliber no matter what we have in backing the end results would not differ much.

What comes to publishers the few occasions our humble little artwork has confronted them, have been rare and isolated issues. the fears of exploiting are offcourse there, but sometimes despite great and skillfull work we do, we tend to forget that there are also more suitable artforms for publishers to use in printed media. Our strange habbits and customes regarding scales and pixels usually drives off those few who have expressed intresses of using SB work.

The main reason why we Adm. want to get these things sorted is the fear of someone doing malice intent towards us and registering SB themselves and then prevent us to continue doing our works as a community we have been customed to do. Where as these fears are also quite far-fetched, but considering our history, they are not completely alien ones. The new website and its features are an investment of different caliber of what we have had before, so it would warant some level of more precautions to be made in order to secure our continuing future.

In the end all these aspects will cost money, and the donation flow should continue so we can overcome what we have estimated to cover all costs. We are still bit behind from the donation part of the share.

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That is how I have always interpreted the SBFUA. The original rights still reside with the artist, and they can license the work to other organizations (not Shipbucket) on whatever they wish. Obviously this gets complicated when you have multiple artists, but it can be worked out.

My issue with transferring to a NC license is that you're moving from one that is less restrictive to more restrictive, and that might run into legal troubles. As usual, IANAL.

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I agree wholeheartedly re: trying to police the greater internet. It's not really possible or worth our time - but that still doesn't mean our work shouldn't be defended with as much gusto as we can manage. A proper CC license would help this.
The issue to me, of course, is that these artists would use parts drawn by the rest of the members on this site. How do we sort that out?
My biggest complaint is that Shipbucket intrinsically is not a print-friendly format and I will never support its use by print publishers as a viable tool for rendering ships. In this age where MOST lineart and graphics are done using vector techniques, there is absolutely no reason to use a raster format. If people were to come to us trying to license artwork or pay for drawings, my first sentence to them would be to seek out an art shop that specializes in vector art.

Anyway, suitability for print aside, the biggest concern I have is just that all drawings inherently use parts drawn by the community as a whole. I'm really curious how that would work from a commercial art perspective.

Were it up entirely to me, I'd make it official policy that we do not allow any kind of commercial use just because of the weird questions it seems to generate. But that's just me, and the decision is ultimately up to Gollevainen and the community!
What legal troubles would you be referring to, exactly?

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)