Copyright Violations on Free Software?

Marek Futrega asks: "What can independent developers do to protect their copyrights to free (not GPL) software. I've found my game with a changed name, logo, and copyright notice on two web sites (http://www.kita-kits.com/iskrabol and http://www.surfshop.net.ph/games/skrabble/) I don't think I can sue the company or something -- they are half a world away from me and I have no funds. Is bad press the only thing I can do for them?"

Now you know....

[Russ Nelson]

Now you know why rms invented the GPL. You have absolutely *no* rights under the Berne Convention (to which Poland is, AFAIK, a signator). You said, in readme.html, that you don't care what people do with it. Guess what?? The people who copied it took you at your word.

If you want it to stay libre, you have to use a license that puts restrictions on non-free redistribution. This bothers some people for some weird-ass reason, as free countries also nearly always prohibit slavery and yet everybody still says that they're free countries.
-russ

Couple of Options

[CTalkobt]

If you released your game as free with no restrictions whatsoever - then there's nothing you can do. Period.

If you did make a conditional release - such as keeping it free and acknowledging your authorship then try emailing the system contact for the sites. If that fails to get you anywhere then go to the ISP that they're using to host the sites.

If that still fails to get you anywhere - trying sending a letter to the copyright agency in the respective country. Mention honoring of US copyrights and the copyright agreements between the two countries and state that you expect action to take place.

If that fails - notify some of the local press for where the sites are located at.

If nobody's interested at that point then notify the advertisers of the site - before you do this make sure that everything you say can be proven clearly.

If all else fails, give it up -- make sure you do post it to all free software repositories.

All of the above should be taken with a grain of salt. I give advice but rarely take it. You shouldn't take my advice either unless you're really reckless.

Copyright, trademark and unfair competition

[martys]

The post which stated that if you posted without restrictions, you had no recourse, is not quite accurate. For one thing, you stated that the other site put its name on your work. Posting software for free is still use in commerce and you did not waive your trademark rights (note - when you post, state "all rights reserved under applicable law, inclduing but not limited to copyright and trademark. [example] is a trademark of [your name]." Have you contacted the other party and requested that they comply with your wishes? If your reputation and goodwill in your work product is of importance to you, you should contemplate consulting an intellectual property lawyer to advise you how to "perfect" and enforce your rights.

What do you mean by free?

[cr0sh]

Free binaries? Or is source code included? If source is included, is it just there for educational purposes (like many game coding books do), but you retain copyright?

To be honest, I don't think there is a lot you can do, outside of bad press. Maybe the best thing to do is learn from it, and move on. If you have invested a ton of time into the coding, ask yourself what the time was worth - maybe it would be better to go the legal route...

Your situation sounds like something that happened to me, though my situation wasn't as clear cut. I created a game, and sent it to a game dev company here in Phoenix (under an NDA aggreement), trying to get my foot in the door for a job (no luck). They played it and liked it, but they were looking for 3D developers (it was a 2D game), so no dice (NBD, I thought).

A few months later, I am looking around, and found a web site with a Windows version (mine was DOS only) of nearly my exact game (even the name was similar)! Since I don't know who released the game (it definitely wasn't the game dev company I contacted - I thought it might either be a coincidence, or one of the coders at the company ripped the idea), I decided "What the heck, I have nothing to lose" - and released the full code to the game (can't remember if I did it under GPL, or PD - doesn't matter) on my web site (prior to that, it was the binary only).

I didn't feel like a drawn out battle over such a fuzzy issue - it wasn't blatent enough to warrant anything like that...

I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?

Get Thee to Nolo Press, my Son.

[broody]

IANAL.

Let's be honest, most of the population of Slashdot is not either; despite pretenses to the contrary. Even if someone lurking out there happened to pass the bar, they are not going to give you free legal advice, nor will they do it for karma. So what is some poor software author to do?

Kick the legal system in the crotch and handle it yourself with the help of Nolo Press [nolo.com].

Start with the free chapter [nolo.com] from Copyright Your Software [nolo.com] .

After that you may want a look into the various legal tangles a poor techie can get caught up with Software Development: A Legal Guide [nolo.com] . This too has a sample chapter.

I have not looked in any exhausting detail but I do not see any specific license being granted to someone on download; other then saying they may "use" it free. It would be my guess that you still would hold the copyright on the software, barring entaglments with scrabble, and that you would have these clone bastards by the balls if they used your code.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on Slashdot

US Law

[fwc]

<humor>The first thing you can do is overload their servers by posting their url's to /. and letting the /. effect take care of it. Oh, it looks like you aready took care of that...</humor>

All humor aside, there are things you might be able to do depending on how much money you DO want to spend. IANAL, so realize this isn't necessarily 100% accurate.

I'm also assuming that the people you are complaining about are in the US, as I really can't get through due to the ./ effect.

If you both were in the US, then this would be really simple. You send them a certified letter asking them to cease and desist. If they don't stop, you go down to your local federal court and file a copyright suit against them. Usually they settle at this point and everything is solved. Usually you can get them to pay the court costs at the very least.

Internationally, this gets a little bit more hairy. According to the Copyright Office's Circular 38a [loc.gov], your country has copyright relations with ours. From my understanding of this, this basically means is if you have a valid copyright in your country, it will be honored in the US.

In addition, according to the Copyright Office's FAQ Question 33 [loc.gov] you can register the copyright ALSO in the US. This isn't strictly necessary, but will probably add legitimacy to your claim.

The tricky part is how to get the claim filed. I'm assuming you can have someone in the US do this for you, and have them act on your behalf in this matter. Exactly how you do this and if it can be just anybody you know in the US or if it has to be an Attorney, I don't know. I do know that the claim is relatively cheap to file if you do it yourself.

In any case, good luck! I really hate to see people steal other people's work and take credit for it themselves. It seems to be going around right now, though. I'm aware of at least one person who has had their entire site ripped off and used on a commercial site.

One last thing, one good resource would be the US Copyright office at http://www.loc.gov/copyright [loc.gov]. They have lots of copyright info. Start with the FAQ.

Re:what I would do

[blameless]

According to IANA's [iana.org] database, .pl is the ccTLD for Poland. [iana.org]