Copyright for resources posted in the appropriate forum

[Vosje]

Hi, there are a lot of great resources that are shared by their creators in the "resources" forum, however it's not really clear to me whether I may use them for every single project that I may ever make (including commercial ones). Many people just share them without giving a clear permission, so I was wondering whether there's a common Affinity policy for such resources (as in, everything you share in that forum may be used for any project, commercial or not), or is that decided on a case-by-case basis (in that case in theory you'd have to contact every author to verify the permissions). I'm sorry if this question was asked before, I did a quick search but coudn't find anything about it.

[v_kyr]

AFAIK there's no common Affinity policy, or any general permission rules, for offered/shared resources. So you have to check/find out individually.

Can‘t speak for other peoples offered resources, but mine are mostly freely reusable for personal & commercial usage, just with the exception of a few ones, which then explicitely indicate „…for personal/private usage only…“.

[Vosje]

Thanks a lot for your reaction @v_kyr, and also for offering your own resources. 😀

[rvst]

You should treat them the same way you would any image posted on the internet.

The content owner has copyright and posting the image, even publicly on this forum, doesn't put copyright into the public domain. 

From a legal standpoint, you'd be required to get explicit permission from the content owner for any commercial usage. 

[Old Bruce]

4 hours ago, Vosje said:

however it's not really clear to me whether I may use them for every single project that I may ever make (including commercial ones). Many people just share them without giving a clear permission,

If you are going to be using others artwork and selling it as your own you should make sure that the originator is cool with that. In my opinion It is more of a morals question than a legal one. I always assume that if the copyright is stated as @v_kyr put it "...freely reusable for personal & commercial usage..." then I can use it. If however there is no stated copyright like v_kry's attached I figure it is not okay for me to use for commercial work.

Ask yourself if you would be okay with me taking your work and me selling it as my own.

[walt.farrell]

59 minutes ago, Old Bruce said:

If you are going to be using others artwork and selling it as your own you should make sure that the originator is cool with that. In my opinion It is more of a morals question than a legal one. I always assume that if the copyright is stated as @v_kyr put it "...freely reusable for personal & commercial usage..." then I can use it. If however there is no stated copyright like v_kry's attached I figure it is not okay for me to use for commercial work.

I believe that "freely reusable..." is not a statement about copyright; it is a statement about licensing. The copyright is still retained by the original creator, unless they say that they are placing it in the Public Domain or otherwise make a specific statement about giving up the copyright.

I can let you use my copyrighted material freely for all purposes. Or freely for some purposes. Or I can charge you for its use. Or I can let you use it with restrictions, such as "you may use it freely but you must credit me in anything you create". But I still retain the copyright, and one thing you cannot do is claim you created that original work.

[PaulEC]

I fully agree with what has been said about copyright concerning the use of other peoples images etc that are posted in these forums, or found on the web in general. But I would have thought that if someone posts something, such as brushes, palettes, assets, styles, LUTs, macros, templates etc in the resources section of the forums, then they are expecting other people to download and use them. After all the whole point of resources is that they are shared with others! Obviously these should not be used in any way that is illegal, but if the owner/originator of the item wants to restrict the usage to non-commercial only, then I think it is reasonable to expect them to say so when they make the post.

[debraspicher]

10 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I fully agree with what has been said about copyright concerning the use of other peoples images etc that are posted in these forums, or found on the web in general. But I would have thought that if someone posts something, such as brushes, palettes, assets, styles, LUTs, macros, templates etc in the resources section of the forums, then they are expecting other people to download and use them. After all the whole point of resources is that they are shared with others! Obviously these should not be used in any way that is illegal, but if the owner/originator of the item wants to restrict the usage to non-commercial only, then I think it is reasonable to expect them to say so when they make the post.

I think it's fine to ask (time permitting), just as a general curiosity and nod to the poster. I know now though to put in my own uploaded resources "commercial work" OK as a time-saver. That's what important.

[Vosje]

@Old Bruce and @rvst, of course by resources I don't mean actual artwork, but what @PaulEC named: palettes, brushes etc. Things you use when you make your own artwork. I do agree it's time consuming to ask the original poster whether using them for commerical work is OK, and also, some of them are long gone and won't reply anyway. I would also assume it's OK to use resources freely if people share them, but it's only an assumption and they actually always can say that that it wasn't their intention and they actually didn't want people to use them for some purposes. A general Affinity policy would make things easier, but since it doesn't exist things that have been posted previously still have an uncertain status. It would definitely help if everybody said whether it's OK or not to use something for commercial work as you say, @debraspicher! But, I guess, for all things that have been posted in the past the safest way is to ask the owner...

[rvst]

17 minutes ago, Vosje said:

@Old Bruce and @rvst, of course by resources I don't mean actual artwork, but what @PaulEC named: palettes, brushes etc. Things you use when you make your own artwork. I do agree it's time consuming to ask the original poster whether using them for commerical work is OK, and also, some of them are long gone and won't reply anyway. I would also assume it's OK to use resources freely if people share them, but it's only an assumption and they actually always can say that that it wasn't their intention and they actually didn't want people to use them for some purposes. A general Affinity policy would make things easier, but since it doesn't exist things that have been posted previously still have an uncertain status. It would definitely help if everybody said whether it's OK or not to use something for commercial work as you say, @debraspicher! But, I guess, for all things that have been posted in the past the safest way is to ask the owner...

I'm not a lawyer by training, but I do deal extensively with legal issues, including issues of software copyright and patents, in my day job.

I don't believe that copyright could even be asserted on these resources, so in my opinion the question is moot.

Settings in a program, even if exportable to a file, are procedures or methods and are not copyrightable as far as I interpret it.

https://www.carleton.edu/copyright/creator/protected/

[Old Bruce]

8 minutes ago, rvst said:

I don't believe that copyright could even be asserted on these resources, so in my opinion the question is moot.

I would think that I couldn't download the brushes and then sell them on as brushes (which I would be claiming as my own). But any artwork someone does with one of the brushes there is most likely considered the work of the person using the brush, not a work of the person who built the brush.

[walt.farrell]

27 minutes ago, rvst said:

Settings in a program, even if exportable to a file, are procedures or methods and are not copyrightable as far as I interpret it.

Brushes often are based on images, which are copyrighted by default.

Assets often provide small snippets of art/images, which again are copyrighted by default. 

[Vosje]

43 minutes ago, rvst said:

Settings in a program, even if exportable to a file, are procedures or methods and are not copyrightable as far as I interpret it.

But resources like brushes, assets etc. are kind of similiar to fonts, I mean, there are websites that sell commercial fonts and noone would think it's OK to just use them without paying, right, if you somehow manage to get a copy of such a font... Or if somebody buys one copy and then just lets everybody download it endlessly for free, the way I see it that's not legal.

[rvst]

16 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

Brushes often are based on images, which are copyrighted by default.

Assets often provide small snippets of art/images, which again are copyrighted by default. 

Fair enough. It does seem that this is a nuanced topic. Some may therefore be copyright and others perhaps not. 

Serif should probably put a pinned readme at the top of the relevant forum saying something along the lines of "by sharing your resource in this forum you are explicitly putting it into the public domain". 

[Vosje]

1 minute ago, rvst said:

Fair enough. It does seem that this is a nuanced topic. Some may therefore be copyright and others perhaps not. 

Serif should probably put a pinned readme at the top of the relevant forum saying something along the lines of "by sharing your resource in this forum you are explicitly putting it into the public domain". 

Or maybe not even putting them in the public domain, that basically means that anybody can do whatever they want with them (even sell them which is not fair for the maker), but just licensing them for commercial use.

Also, I think I've read somewhere that a font file itself cannot be copyrighted but the way the font LOOKS (with its distinct characteristics, details that distinguish it from other fonts) can be copyrighted. That's why it's not legal to just copy the way some font looks and sell it as your own. Brushes, assets etc. must work in a similar way.

[PaulEC]

I must agree with Walt about copyright that may exist in the images used in some "resources", such as assets, brushes and styles. The end user can only assume that the person who made/supplied the particular resource had permission to use these images, there's no way to know for sure! (This, of course, also applies to all sorts of purchased resources, not just the free ones in these forums!)

[Andy05]

2 hours ago, PaulEC said:

(This, of course, also applies to all sorts of purchased resources, not just the free ones in these forums!)

True! I'm always worried about how many "professional designers" offer to create logos for designers with bought stock illustrations—unedited, just some text slapped onto it in order to call it a "design". This might turn out as a pretty stupid idea for both, designer and client, at some point (aside from the fact, that probably a competitor just ordered the same design for their business...)

Most of the stock pages don't allow using their stuff for logos and/or trademarks in their EULA.