Well, as far as intellectual property and copyright, according to Australian law, which is where I am, intellectual property recognition doesn't apply to artistic works, and any artistic design work must be copyrighted in order to allow for a legal protection of ones' rights.
Actually, that is categorically not true.
I am in Australia and work in the Arts industry and am very familiar with both Australian and international law as it applies to artistic and research work.
I think you've confused "fair use" with "ok to use what you want" (a very common mistake that leads to the sort of plagiarism qualification that paysites use).
Your point:
intellectual property recognition doesn't apply to artistic works, and any artistic design work must be copyrighted in order to allow for a legal protection of ones' rights.
From the Australian Copyright Council website (which incorporates changes of the new 2006 legislation brought about by our FTA with the US):
http://www.copyright.org.au/information/basics.htmCopyright is a type of legal protection for people who express ideas and information in certain forms. The most common forms are: writing, visual images, music and moving images.
ie, artistic works,
and
You do not need to publish your work, to put a copyright notice on it, or to do anything else to be covered by copyright — the protection is free and automatic. There are no forms to fill in, and there are no fees to be paid. You do not have to send your work to us or to anyone else.
A work is protected automatically from the time it is first written down or recorded in some way, provided it has resulted from its creator’s skill and effort and is not simply copied from another work. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is protected.
Australian copyright works are protected in most other countries, and copyright works from most other countries are protected in Australia.
You do not need to put a "copyright notice" on your work for it to be protected in Australia. You may choose to put a copyright notice on your work to remind people that it is protected by copyright. You can put the notice on your work yourself; there is no formal procedure.
The notice is: © (or "Copyright") + copyright owner’s name + year of first publication —for example: © Gus O’Donnell 1968.
ie, copyright is automatic in Australia on said artisic works, provided they're the original work of the author. Thsi is in line with world copyright agreements and also applies in EURO and US jurisdictions (the differences between the jurisdictions apply to how it's enforced, and length of copyright rather than "how" something is copyright).
Fair use, as you said, covers all articles or what-have you, but only up to a certain point, presuming you are the current copyright holder and did not sell your article's copyright to a magazine along with an article (which is the usual contract format).
If people are photocopying your work wholesale in libraries, then you can, in fact, if you choose to, take action. However, in the case of research articles, most authors would choose not to, as we do what we do to further research in our respective fields. But that doesn't negate the right to do so if we choose to, and the decision not to take action is a choice allowed to use under copyright law. As is the choice to act.
Libraries pay fees to the copyright council to cover such useage that is then disseminated to authors. These fees are included in author royalties for novels. Articles are different: they're given to the magazines themselves. The magazine has paid for the article so copyright (depending on the agreement with the author) has often reverted to the magazine for a specified amount of time befiore it reverts back to the author.
It also should be noted that libraries are not allowed to "rent" items. Their licensing applies to lending only.
Australian "Fair use" covers articles for the purpose of review, criticism and advertising only (to a maximum of 10% of the total if an article or 2.5% for a longer work). It doesn't allow for wholesale useage, and all quotations must be properly credited with the name of the author, the date and place of publication and the author's copyright license poilcy (if applicable).
Renatus wrote:I do a lot of things as 'hobbies'. I sew, I paint, I crochet. If someone came up to me and told me I had to give what I made to them for free because I did it for fun, as a hobby, I would kick their asses. Doing something for fun does not negate the value of my work or my time. I do not have some moral obligation to give my pretty thing to others just because I enjoyed making it, or because I'm not a professional at it. It doesn't matter that Sims 2 content is digital; most of my paintings are digital, and you can bet I'm not going to let anyoen use them however they please just because of that. I find it false logic to state in regards to Sims 2 content that no one is allowed to charge for it because it is done as a hobby.
Which sounds just fine until you realise there is a serious difference between the two examples. "Hobby" or not is irrelevant. Whether someone is getting paid for a hobby or not is only relevant to tax law.
The relevancy for whether someone has the
right to be paid for a hobby is covered by copyright law in the most jurisdictions and is figured by who actually owns the resultant product.
In your case, your hobby can be sold because the resulting finiahed product is owned by you. When you bought the materials, you entered into a tacit agreement with the manufacturer of those materials that you could do whatever you wanted with those materials, and they do not have a policy that disallows that. You are not breaching anyone's copyright by selling your stuff (assuming they are not well known trade-marked images, in which case the packaging
will have anouncements to that effect and selling the product would be illegal).
In the case of TS2, the package fileformat and the resultant package files are owned by Maxis/EA and the EULA you sign by ticking the box when you install the game and clicking on "I agree" (which is a legally signed electronic document in all jurisdictions) clearly states that you cannot make custom content and sell it, and that all resultant package files ("tools and materials") are owned by Maxis.
When you start the hobby of making cc, you have already agreed to this condition by signing this document.
Thus, paysites are in clear breach of the law and
may not sell packages.
How good they are or how much time is spent on the content is a moot and irrelevant point. The fact is, paysite owners agreed not to do what they are doing when they filled in that little ticky box and installed the game. The fact that EA is not taking action at present doesn't negate EA's legal right.
To put it another way, how would you feel if someone took your digital images without your permission, put them on a maxis mesh, then uploaded them to a paysite and asked everyone to pay for them? They would be profiting from your work. See the difference?
(Although it could be argued that the so-called pets "bug" where all custom meshes were uploaded with sims made in the pets bodyshop, was an attempt to regain their rights, but I'd never spout conspiracy theories...
).
PMBD
Author