volfin opened this issue on Sep 21, 2002 ยท 31 posts
williamsheil posted Sat, 21 September 2002 at 6:56 PM
The EULA actually states that the camera, light settings etc. can't be copyrighted, not that CL themselves own the copyright. There is a history behind this statement (the Bebop/Blackhearted dispute, when one party asked CL this question directly), but only issue that was directly addressed was actual (individual) parameters settings. A point I made at PPs was that the P5 EULA refers to "light settings" NOT "light sets". Despite the similarity in spelling, these are not the same thing at all. The best way to demonstrate this distinction is with a literary analogy. Obviously you cannot copyright letters or words - these basically correspond to the individual parameter dials and individual lights. However (and this is, of course a great part of copyright law) you can copyright a (creative) work of literature, even though it is entirely composed of non-copyrightable elements. Furthermore any translation into another language is also covered by the same copyright, even though the words, grammatical structure and even alphabet may differ. Believe me, if CL provided a sub-library of light sets that corresponded directly (and statedly) to, for example, some of the equivalent content of 3D Studio Max, they would be in serious legal trouble. Companies exercise copyright on their own creative effort as it adds value to their own products, and it seriously wouldn't matter what CL's own lawyers had predetermined, nor would it matter that there would probably be no direct correspondance between the parameter settings in the two formats. So far as I am aware there has never actually been a court case regarding light sets, or the equivalent, so it remains a grey area until such a time as it is really tested. However until that happens, I would go by the assumption that copyrights claimed on light sets probably can be enforced, and should certainly be treated as if they hold some legal weight. Bill