Guild of Writers

Alright people, lets roll up our sleeves and get involved in some of the messier parts of this whole scheme.

Cyan needs to protect their copyrighted material. This involves any of their currently existing Ages and all aspects of the storyline they've built. But as Writers, we are part of that continuing storyline. Any work we do is building on their work. So how do we avoid stepping on their toes? I know I and many others would love to build an Age with a deep storyline dating back to the time when the D'ni thrived in the cavern, referencing the beautiful story work the people at Cyan have woven. But I don't want to build something, only to have Cyan tell me that mentioning my character lived during the reign of King Adesh is a violation of their copyright. (I don't think they would, but you get the point.)

I think the way we can answer this question is to get together a list of rules that represent reasonable boundaries within which we can operate without Cyan feeling like their material is being stolen or twisted. If we come to a consensus on a set of such rules, we can submit them to Cyan along with our request to become the Official Guild of Writers, thus proving we've banded together on something and can be trusted to "discover" as well as "write" Ages. I've set up a few preliminary guidelines as a base for what this will become. Please review, change and add at your leisure.

- The names of our Ages must not be the names of any Cyan Ages. They can be named using either already existing D'ni vocabulary or complete orginality.

- Other than the engine itself (and Relto pages/clothing if we are permitted by Cyan explicitly), we are not to use any raw files of Cyan's, including textures, models, music, sound effects, animations, etc. Avatar animations and sound effects associated with an avatar (i.e. pushing buttons, footsteps) are necessary components of the engine and acceptable for use. (It is okay to use the sound that plays when your avatar steps in a puddle, but not okay to use the music in the Cleft, because the former is built into the engine and the latter is not.) (Kierra)

- We may not use any characters from Cyan's storyline (i.e. making the Great King show up is a no-no.) We may not make anything we claim to be written by any characters from Cyan's storyline. We may only reference them in passing (like the example of a character living during the reign of King Adesh).

- The histories of our Ages can only be contemporary to (rather than part of) D'ni history. We cannot claim causal connection to established D'ni events, as Cyan reserves the right to change any of those events at any time. We may reference these events and claim they caused a piece of our storyline, but not the other way around.

- If the events of our storyline are said to be contemporary to D'ni history, they may not take place on a large scale (i.e., kings can not be said to have visited or requested our Ages directly). They will be written so as to have taken place in the relative background of D'ni history (there are no D'ni historians who have written about our storyline).

- The content of our Ages may not indicate any facts about the D'ni culture or practices, excepting those explicitly described elsewhere by Cyan productions. (Owehn)

- Just as we will abide by these rules concerning Cyan's copyrights, we will do the same for any other licenses and refrain from any use or mention of characters or settings outside of the Myst canon or "real world" (aka, no LotR Ages). This applies to outside work on textures or models as well. (Lehm)

- All content must be rated E and abide by the guildelines in the Uru Live Code of Conduct. Additonally, no Age may be submitted incomplete or untested. (There's rarely such thing as bug-free, but your Age shouldn't have giant holes in the floor.) (Paradox/Whilyam)

- Content created by the Guild is only licensed for use by Guild members, Cyan, and the individual creator of the content. Development of Ages outside and without the assistance of the GoW is perfectly acceptable, but any textures, music, models, etc. posted on these forums are for the Guilds use, not for anybody who might find this page on a search engine. (Simon_Bitdiddle)

- Cyan reserves the right to reject your Age upon its submission to their servers, even if it complies with the above rules. (BAD)

That seems nicely conservative.

How about:

- The content of our Ages may not indicate any facts about the d'ni culture or practices, excepting those explicitly described elsewhere by Cyan productions.

Excellent, I'll add it.

In response to belford on the "Discovery" thread: the problem is that our Ages are to be hosted on Cyan's servers. In that way, we ARE expecting Cyan to officially sanction our work, and they can't do that if we're invading their territory.

I've posted fanfic on Cyan's servers. They host it right now. (I'll look up the forum post URL if you want.)

Their rule for prose fanfic is, if you post it on the Myst forums, use the "Creativity" forum. That frees them from arguing whether they "sanction" it.

UL Ages are certainly going to come in many different degrees of take-it-seriouslyness, if you'll pardon the phrase. There will be unfinished Ages, untested Ages, Ages that don't pretend to be a consistent world, Ages that are consistent worlds but don't pretend to have a history. We're going to be sharing all of these, for various reasons.

I don't think you can reasonably argue that writing, releasing, or inviting people to your Age means that Cyan has accepted the content as canonical -- *even if* that write/release/invite process involves going through Cyan's server. A far more likely scheme is that most content will be "player stuff", and only a small minority will be blessed as part of the Uru storyline.

I don't agree. I don't see unfinished, untested, unconsistent Ages being hosted on MOUL. I feel like the GoW should only send completed and serious Ages to Cyan to host on their servers. It's one thing to post something on a public forum, and it's another to ask them to make it part of their game, public to any and all paying explorers. They can't risk their copyrights being breached by outsiders, or anyone will be able to toy with their storyline and their material.

Besides, grey dragon has already said there's a number of things we can't do for these very reasons. Fanfic doesn't breach copyright, but something in the Uru engine on the Uru server can and will.

Actually, speaking in terms of copyright law, fanfic is considered a copyright infringement. Take for example this little story:

"Once upon a time there was a man named Dave with three beautiful daughters named Tisha, Odissha, and Lenga. They all lived in a tree with a flock of parakeets. One day a fishing eagle came to live in the tree. Then there was a thunderstorm. And then they lived happily ever after."

Well, I now automatically own the copyright to this story, no paperwork required. Even if you quote this story in your next post, you're infringing my copyright. (Actually, there may be a loophole about critiquing the story and quotations, but I'm not sure about that.) If you draw a picture of Dave, Tisha, Odissha, and Lenga with their parakeets in the tree, you're infringing my copyright. If you write a story about the future adventures of my characters, you're also infringing my copyright (this is called a "derivative work"). But if I were to say, "Hey, I don't really mind if you use my story, just don't mess with the main plot," and then you wrote a story about Dave, Tisha, Odissha, Lenga, and a flock of pink flamingos instead of parakeets, then you would be messing with my storyline material, and not really with the copyright.
Now I don't know what the legal implications for using Cyan material are, since they have the whole "fan created content rules" statement and I don't know what legal standing that has for copyrights. (Someone should find a copy of that so we can see what they think too.)

You're right about that, but it's because of laws concerning automatic copyrighting of text on the Internet. Laws like that are there to protect authors from plagarism, but if I wrote the story about them with pink flamingos, the legal weight of you saying "Hey don't mess with the main plot" becomes very questionable and really only an issue if I manage to make money off my story. The copyright rules concerning software are a lot more severe. If a fan can copy textures and music and models, why can't a worker at another company? Those laws are much more rigorously upheld. If there were companies making a lot of money off of fanfiction, the laws you mention would also be much more rigorously upheld.

This one should go without saying, but just in case. No crossover ages. In other words no Lotr, Star Wars ages or any other franchise content. This comes from experience in other games. Someone always wants to make a crossover mod/level. This might be okay if it were just offline for your own enjoyment. But this can't happen if our stuff is hosted on Cyan's servers.

You're right about that, but it's because of laws concerning automatic copyrighting of text on the Internet. Laws like that are there to protect authors from plagarism, but if I wrote the story about them with pink flamingos, the legal weight of you saying "Hey don't mess with the main plot" becomes very questionable and really only an issue if I manage to make money off my story.

Well, it's a common misconception that you only break copyright law when you make money off of someone else's work. People tend to think, "Okay, I drew a new picture of/story about Bambi and I'm not making any money by posting it on the web, ergo, I'm not breaking any laws." However, in truth just by making the picture you've broken the law already. Furthermore, not only is text (actually, only "Creative" text) copyrighted automatically on the internet, but every "creative work," whether on the internet or not, is automatically copyrighted the second you create it. This includes sculptures, pictures, movies, books, and tiny stories like mine. And so, if all you did was change the parakeets to flamingos and repost my story, it would be a clear case of copyright infringement since someone comparing the two would see the similarity and judge the flamingo text to be a "derivative work," a copyright infringement despite the fact that you wouldn't be making any money off of it.

Yeah I'm not saying it's not breaking your copyright if no money is involved. I'm just saying for the most part, in your scenario, nobody will take any legal action unless money is involved.. whereas, with Cyan, they need to protect their copyright even if we don't make money off what we're plagarizing because it's software and the demand for software is much greater than that for written text.