Scratch

Andrés, I don't believe German law is any more progressive regarding IP than US-law, I'm not even sure that being 'progressive' has anything to do with it. German IP-law is scattered among a lot of statutes, ranging from copyright law over patent law to laws regarding unfair competitioin and personality rights. So it's a somewhat vast playfield. And while we're frequently using terms like intellectual 'property' or 'ownership' of an invention, these are clearly *not* legal terms in Germany (nor, I believe, in the US).

Like you I find it very interesting, that the concept of 'stealing' some else's idea (or project) and 'claiming all the credit' took up almost instanteneously with the start of this website even among children. So it seems to me that popular demand to 'protect' intellectual ownership in fact exceeds most legal implementations by far 

I don't think you should feel guilty about advising someone to look at someone else's project and remix it. Sharing and remixing are key concepts of Scratch.

Interesting discussion! It can be very eye-opening to study the philosophical underpinnings of IP law as it varies between countries and over time. As Jens mentions, there is a "natural law" flavor to European IP which you often see expressed metaphorically as "giving birth," while in the U.S. the laws and principles explicitely reject that idea, allowing IP rights for a limited time _only_ for the purpose of encouraging inventors and writers financially. We've adopted a form of "moral rights" in the U.S. because we had to in order to join various treaties (you'll even see moral rights exempted in the creative commons license), but they're not taken seriously. At the same time, the European idea sort of "feels" right to us, as you can see in the various posts on Scratch (viz. the Evil Gough!). It's great to see kids struggling with these issues. Another plus for Scratch.

There is an interesting article about a photographer who sued a person who made a funny video that became very popular on YouTube. The photographer contacted YouTube and they took down the video. The creator of the video reuploaded the video with different images and with credits to the photographers.  This sparked a controversy about what is "fair use" and if you can really remix a photography. I liked this quote in the article:

People who try to protect and silo off their work are simply being ignored. Those that embrace the community, and give back to it not only allowing but asking for their work to be mashed up, re-used and otherwise embraced are being rewarded with attention. At the core is a basic implicit understanding - if you want to be part of the community, you have to give back to it, too.

I thought that would resonate with Scratch creators.

I think that there is a big difference between Scratch remixes, where people agreed to remixing by posting their projects, and stealing other people's work and claiming it as your own.  As an academic, my job does not depend on selling programs, but my promotions do depend on how much people cite my work.  If I were working in industry, I would be really upset if someone stole my code that took years of effort to develop and started selling it or giving it away without my permission.

I'm in favor of people sharing, but not of people stealing.  Sharing your work freely with others is a noble act—forcing others to give away what they have done is theft.

I am thinking in implementing a feature that will try to automatically quantify how different a project is from another. This way when someone copies a project and makes no changes at all it will be properly identified like that on the website.

The way I see it, is that I would like to have Scratch more similar to the way academic work is done. You can cite others as long as you put references. Probably not as strict but taking that as a model. Academia is all about remixing, isn't it? You take an idea from paper1 and another from paper2 and you mix them with your own ideas and create something new.

Yeah, I just got ripped off for the first time on my Battleship project.  I feel honored and annoyed all at the same time.  I like the idea of a plagerism quantification.  I have no idea how you would do it but I have faith in the wizards on the Scratch Team.

Mark

Wait, if we don't want people to take our projects, then why do we ever click the share button. What does "share" mean.

Axeblade: you bring an excellent point. We picked the expression "Share!" for the button precisely because you are not just uploading to the website, you are sharing your work with the world. That's the spirit we are trying to foster.

MidNightLeopard, it is good that you want people to remix your projects. I encourage that. 

I'm pretty sure if as long as the copy-cat credits the original guy, I think it's ok. ( but if they mess with the code, and make it impossible to play, I wouldn't want to be the creator.) 
_________________________________________________________________________
DON'T POKE THE PILLSBERRY DOUGH BOY!!! HE GETS MORE POWERFUL THAT WAY!!! 

Last edited by DigiFox (2008-03-07 16:01:10)

teguki wrote:

i

not to mention they are breaking a very strict LAW!

they are commiting fraud and you can be sued for doing that (provided the person sueing them can prove that they made it first)

This part isn't true, of course. 

All projects shared on the Scratch website, are shared under the Creative Commons license.

Therefore you are free to Share, to copy, distribute, transmit, remix and adapt anybody else work from the website, as long as you abide by these conditions:

1) Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). (This is pretty much covered by the automatic project attribution)

2) Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.

In fact, under condition (2), by trying to tell people NOT to remix your work, you are, in effect, in breach of the Terms yourself.  When you share a scratch project you MUST share it under a creative commons licence.

Last edited by Mayhem (2008-03-08 15:52:01)

it IS actually really annoying when you finally finish making a project, and then you find out that someone just copied your project, and only changed the background. thats what happened to mine too

mine: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/sausagestand/40904
other persons: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/glough_guy/118254