I downloaded the Morgan L. Owen's Chebychev Collection of formula's at http://www.parkenet.org/jp/ufresources.html.
Are these formulas free to tweak? And can I post my results here under my own name? Or are these formulas copyrighted?

Greetings Marit

In my humble opinion a formala's copyright counts only for the excact same formula. With other words, when you change the formula, even if it is for one tiny piece of it, it is no longer the original and therefore no longer in the copyright of the original owner.
That means that from the moment you tweak it, you will have the copyright, but I'm no law expert and I might be totally wrong on this one, but this is just my opinion.

Cheers,
Vraxor
Webmaster of TerraCon Revolution

Hello Vraxor, Thank you for your answer. I suppose you are right, at least I want to suppose LOL ;-). Besides, the whole collection of formulaes is offered for download! Why don't I get started on them right away and when something is wrong, I will in time find out.. Greetings, Marit

Marit,

Just like fractal images, the formulas used to make them are copyrighted. The courteous thing to do is to contact the formula author and ask permission to make changes to his formulas, especially if you have the intention of publishing any changes and claiming authorship.

For the formulas in question, read the formula notes; you'll see that every single formula in the collection bears a copyright notice.

Karen

Okay, now my brain is fried. Just spent way too long looking through legal garbage for an answer. However, looking through U.S. copyright law I found this page relating to derivative works: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html I would have thought that if you tweaked a formula enough to produce something completely different, you would be okay. But according to this statement, it would probably be best to contact the author first: "Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work." Also, just because it is offered as a free download, does not mean it is in the public domain and free to be changed. Hope this helps. Nick

Nick C. Sorbin
Staff Writer
Renderosity Magazine
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"For every breath, for every day of living, this is my Thanksgiving."
-Don Henley

I agree on that. Even though I think that it is not to be proven that you in fact used his/her formula for the one you made after the changes it would still be the best thing to just contact the owner. I know I would appreciate someone asking me if they may alter my creations and I'm sure not going to ask for any more then a reference unless the new creation would look in no way to the orinigal. Cheers, Vraxor

Great answers everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read up on the copyright laws for works of art Nick. I bet that gave you an ice cream headache :) As always, when in doubt about a copyright situation, please contact the original creator [when possible]. Hey Vraxor, also, some great food for thought :) Thanks everyone for your positive feed-back - hope this helps to answer your Marit. I will also direct our copyright Admin to this thread - for any additional input :) Wishing everyone a wonderful week. ladynimue

Nick, yeah, only derivative works can be authorized by the copyright holder. Usually, the copyright holder will grant permission, but include some limitation (like it can't be sold or even given away; but just for personal use). Hope that helps, Jenifer Keeling Renderosity Admin & Copyright Agent

 

Thank you everyone for taking the time to answer my question and to try to find out how things work. I myself got totally confused over formulas, parameters, tweaking, UPR's etc etc. I therefor probably didn't state my question very clear. What I wanted to know was whether you can call the image you produce, based on the formula, your own. I have no intention to produce formulas.. Anyway, I asked some questions to Janet Parke, who maintains the Ultra Fractal Resources List (http://www.parkenet.org/jp/ufresources.html). Her answer makes a lot clear about claiming formulas, parameters and images. Also the link she mentions, at www.fractulus.com can help to find out more about this issue. This is Janet's answer to my questons :

Basically, you can use all formulas the same way, whether you download
them from the UF database or from links on my (or another) website.

Formulas are different than parameter files. Formulas that are written
and shared publicly -- either through the UF database or somewhere on
the world-wide web (like the chby and emp formulas) may be used by
anyone to create a fractal. The copyright for that fractal belongs to
the artist and never to the formula writer.

Parameter files are the "recipes" for each individual fractal image and
are subject to copyright. If you always start your images from scratch,
then the resulting fractal will be yours. If you start from an image
created by someone else and then tweak the various parameters, then you
will need to contact the original artist to see if your image is
sufficiently different from their's to be able to claim ownership,
copyright, and permission to post. The ideal process, then, is to
always start your images from scratch rather than by tweaking that of
another.

More information about all this can be found here:
http://www.fractalus.com/gumbycat/yourimage.html

Hope this was clear!

Janet

http://www.parkenet.org/jp

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Greetings Marit