a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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Perhaps this will reflect my naïvety in these matters, but:
How is this not just a straightforward trademark issue? Jason was selling the product as One Hour One Life, a mark that is clearly unique, even registered as a domain and had been doing so for a while with reasonable success (for a small business). Is it not therefore immediately illegal to sell something called "One Hour One Life for Mobile" without being Jason (or with his direct involvement)? I was of the impression that trademark protections were non-optional and couldn't be waived because the risk is not to either vendor but to the potential consumers.
Chard:
A few things first: I am not a lawyer. I have offered all the advice to Jason that I feel I have worth offering. I'm reluctant to write anything else in this particular thread, because almost everything that everyone has said so far - including probably me - is not likely to be helping either Jason or Christoffer better understand their dispute and better find ways to resolve it.
Discussing fine points of the law with anyone other than a licensed attorney with practical experience in the specialty at hand is a sure-fire recipe for misunderstanding crucial details while expending huge amounts of words and energy arguing to no effect. I personally think that Jason's most recent attempts in this thread at understanding or explaining his legal situation are horribly off the mark, but I'm not going to try to discuss it with him: because I am not an expert, because I will probably get something wrong in my own explanation, because he has no reason to listen to let alone argue with me, because me discussing it with him won't help him at all in a very serious practical matter he's dealing with right now, and because he really really needs to have these kinds of discussions with a lawyer.
That said.
To answer your questions here, as a purely academic matter, speaking purely as a layman:
There are no Copyright Cops. There are no Trademark Cops. You could write the great american novel, and I could steal it and publish it and make money doing so in blatant disregard of copyright law and absolutely nothing would happen to me... until you filed suit against me.
Let's assume for the moment as you do above that Jason does have valid trademarks in OHOL, and that Christoffer and his associates are infringing on those trademarks. Absolutely nothing will happen to them unless and until Jason files suit against them. Leaving aside questions about jurisdiction for the moment... Jason will have to prove that he has valid trademarks and that the mobile team is infringing on them, and he will do so by making specific legal arguments. The mobile team will have an opportunity to counter those arguments with their own. The validity of trademarks and the question of whether a particular use infringes on those trademarks can be a rather complicated question. The laws surrounding these two questions are complex and voluminous, and the case law surrounding them even moreso. The effort that Jason would have to go through to press a suit and prevail on his claims would be extensive and costly, for both sides.
So. Not being a lawyer I'm not going to opine on whether or not Jason's trademarks are still valid and whether or not the mobile team's use of those trademarks is infringing. I'll simply note that even if they are, that is of little use to Jason unless he is prepared to defend his trademarks in court, or can convince his counterparts that he is prepared to do so and use that as leverage.
I want to stress that my answer here is to Chard regarding what is essentially a hypothetical question, and that I wholeheartedly encourage Jason and Christoffer to seek a resolution to their disagreement in consultation with knowledgeable and experienced professionals.
oh, that's clever
don't tell Jason or he'll "fix" it
Properly managed, the one-item-per-tile clutter of carrots and seeds isn't too bad, as long as it's done on the edge of town so that you make carrot biomes extending out into unused space. It's annoying but not unworkable.
But stacking them will still be much, much better.
Good point. Reclaiming scrap steel from broken tools (or, for that matter, melting down useless toolheads) is one of those important-but-not-obvious bits of knowledge that needs wider dissemination.
I hear you on Trademark, but so many of the elements of the work would have to be brought to bear as part of the trademark---it would really have a chilling effect on any and all derivative works. I mean, is the milkweed plant trademarked? Could it be used in someone's logo or icon? If so, would that imply my involvement?
If I was going to do that, I might as well use copyright.
It is a quandary, alright.
Absent copyright, which you don't want to use for well-established reasons, or trademark, which you might be reluctant to use for the same reasons, your position with Christoffer and his team seems to come down to goodwill and moral suasion.
I hope you can all come to a resolution that satisfies everyone, and I wish you all maximum clarity of everyone's desires and constraints in the discussions, whether public or private.
I wanted to explicitly answer some specific questions you asked:
And now the question: what rights do I have, as public domain creator, to make demands like this in the first place? Are "copyright" and "plagiarism" and "fraud" and "libel" different issues? Can I make demands about the marketing around a work, without making demands about the work itself? Is it possible to plagiarize a public domain work? What about a historical work? Can you plagiarize Shakespeare? Could Lewis Carroll's estate bring legal action against you if you misrepresented Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as your original work? And what kind of legal action would that be? Certainly not a copyright claim. Maybe a libel or slander claim?
I am not a lawyer but I am confident the things I am about to tell you are correct.
Copyright, plagiarism, fraud, and libel are indeed different issues. Trademark is also a different issue.
"Can you plagiarize Shakespeare?" If you mean is it possible: Yes, it is possible to plagiarize a public domain work, a historical work, or Shakespeare; it is possible to claim them as your own, and doing so is plagiarism. If you mean is it permissible: as a matter of law, yes, it is permissible; there is no law that would forbid you from doing so. As a matter of propriety, no, it is not permissible; it is generally agreed that doing so is wrong and should not be tolerated.
"Could Lewis Carroll's estate bring legal action against you if you misrepresented Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as your original work?" - No, they could not.
"Maybe a libel or slander claim?" - No, because "Here is a book that I wrote" does not damage the reputation of Lewis Carroll. There might be a case for the statement "Lewis Carroll did not write Alice in Wonderland, I did" being defamatory (and thus libelous or slanderous), but merely publishing a copy of Alice in Wonderland and putting your name on it is not the same as making such a defamatory statement.
There is a "line" somewhere, but where exactly? Do I give people the right to lie about me? If I have a right to not be lied about, that right is not a side-effect of copyright. It's not a right that can "expire" after a limited term of required truthfulness. Beyond preventing explicit lies, do I have the right to force people to tell the truth? What about implicit lies?
You do not have a legal right to force people to tell the truth.
You do not have a legal right to prevent people from lying, either explicitly or implicitly.
You do not have a legal right to prevent people from lying about you, unless those lies are defamatory, i.e. they are damaging to your reputation.
If I waive my right to control the adaptation, do I also waive my right to control what is said about it?
You do not have any legal rights to control what is said about it. That is true regardless of whether you waive your legal right to control the adaptation.
So can I waive my right to control how copies are distributed, or derivative works are made, without also waiving my truthful claim of authorship?
You never waive your truthful claim of authorship. You can always truthfully claim authorship. The question, though, is whether you can prevent others from falsely claiming authorship.
So far I've been giving you bad news. Here is some good news, however:
Can I make demands about the marketing around a work, without making demands about the work itself?
YES! Yes, you can. You can hold one or several trademarks in the work, and by doing so you can prevent others from using those trademarks, of if you wish you can grant them permission to use those trademarks only as long as they adhere to terms that you specify ("licenses"). You can thus abandon any control over the work itself (i.e. place it in the public domain) but retain control over how certain elements that are inherent in the work - the trademarked aspects of it - are used, including how they are marketed.
This is almost certainly what you want.
I infer that what you care about is that people don't confuse "the mobile version of OHOL" with "the game that Jason Rohrer made". You don't want the changes they've made to be thought of as part of your design. And that's your right!
Trademark is the method by which that right of yours can be made legally enforceable.
The function of trademark is to ensure that different products made by different parties are recognized as different from each other in the eyes of the public. Kellogg's Corn Flakes are different from Post Toasties; trademark law exists to ensure that consumers will never mistake the two, even though they may be similar. The words "Kellogg's" and "Corn Flakes" (when used in the appropriate context) are trademarked and can't be used by anyone else. Ditto the graphics printed on the cereal boxes, the distinctive rooster mascot, etc.
A trademark embodies the elements of your product which most distinctively make it yours. Thus, trademark is a way to retain authorship rights of a product when you want to - in some sense - relinquish authorship rights of the content.
You undoubtedly have numerous elements in One Hour One Life that you could claim a trademark over. The details can be complicated. Please talk to an attorney. But with a trademark claim established, you could then dictate to others how and under what conditions they could use those trademarked elements.
Please consult an intellectual property attorney and ask about your options. I know of one; I have not worked with him but have great respect for him based on our social interactions. I will email you his information.
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Speaking entirely as a layman and an outside observer, and at the risk of both being wrong and telling you things you already know:
Copyright and trademark are separate matters. The various issues you cover in your 2004 copyright essay aren't applicable to trademark. Even if you reject copyright, there's no similar reason to reject trademark. Trademark is precisely the mechanism that would allow you to exert the kind of control over the mobile developers that I believe you would now like to exert.
You have probably lost your copyright in your code and artwork due to your efforts to put them in the public domain. You have probably not lost your various trademarks in One Hour One Life. I say "probably" in both cases because I Am Not A Lawyer and you should consult with one. I expect that you haven't attempted to register a trademark, which would count against you, and I expect that you haven't tried to defend your trademark against the infringing uses of it by the mobile developers, which would also count against you... but these two facts do not necessarily mean that you have no trademark or that you cannot enforce it.
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If the mobile developers are claiming authorship of something they did not create, they are not engaging in "fraud". I understand the concept you are trying to convey, but the correct term is "plagiarism". Fraud has additional connotations that most likely do not apply here. Fraud would be a civil or criminal matter and would involve a wronged party; that party would not be you. You have no standing to raise the issue of fraud here.
Plagiarism is (probably!) not a civil or criminal matter in any relevant jurisdiction. It's a social matter; plagiarists are subject to social sanctions such as loss of reputation, being fired, etc. There's no remedy to someone saying "I made this" other than to say "No, you didn't." You can't even force them to stop saying "I made this"; there's no way to force someone to stop making false statements outside of specific contexts such as defamation, perjury, and contract. People can lie and you can't stop them.
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If you pursue this as a matter of trademark protection, you may have some legal leverage you can use.
But as a practical matter, the most that you may have is social leverage, i.e. asking them and hoping they agree to comply with your requests. Anything more than that might be more expensive, time consuming, and logistically difficult than you can afford, especially considering that they are in a foreign country.
But again, I would urge you to speak with an IP lawyer before either embarking on a course of action or deciding not to do so. Good lawyers have a way of saving their clients huge amounts of money and time by skillfully applying their knowledge and craft.
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I don't expect that mobile developers will agree to the requests you've made in your most recent email. Adding those various phrases and so forth would make the app less appealing, which would damage their commercial interests. And you've offered no compelling reason for them to make those changes.
I think you need to consider further exactly what your interest and goal is here, and then make requests which meet both parties' interests.
Are you trying to ensure that people who play their game know:
that it is based on a game you created (i.e. you want to receive attribution for your original work)?
that it is based on a game the mobile developers did not create (i.e. you want to prevent them from taking attribution for your original work)?
that it includes game design elements that you did not create?
that it is not the same as the PC version?
Each of those suggests a different action that the mobile developers could take which would satisfy your interests. Making your interests crystal-clear would help you make a request that the mobile developers would be more likely to agree to.
There is an opposite option too right? Jungle farm in building like this, but snowmen and not fire.
Snowmen don't cool as much as fire heats. Fire provides radiant and convection heat; snowmen only provide convection negative heat, but not radiant negative heat. I thought that was a bug but Jason confirmed it was intentional.
The amount of convection negative heat they provide depends on how much insulation there is in the airspace. A farm won't have much insulation because most of the tiles will not have floors, so there won't be a large contribution from the snowmen.
Also, as of the new update, snowmen melt in all stages, so they're no longer as practical for heat management. You'd have to keep rebuilding them.
MAKE MORE BOWLS
There's never enough bowls, and now we need even more.
Seals don't respawn. They can dive into ice holes, and then thirty seconds later they'll jump back out, so maybe that's what you saw.
Bears respawn in empty caves after 24 hours.
Excellent guide!
I've just always found it odd that we cant achieve PERFECT temp yet by just wearing clothes.
That's deliberate on Jason's part. He wants perfect temperature to require clothing AND fires AND buildings. Any one on its own shouldn't be sufficient, or it means the others would be useless and would never be made.
+1 for Morti
Anyway, if mobile players are confused about the origins of the game that they are playing, they might think that NPC Santa was my idea, or that I at least approved of it. I most certainly did not. So you can see how, through the confusion, this can reflect poorly on me as a designer.
Here's one that more directly addresses the "reflect poorly on me" concern:
"The mobile version of One Hour One Life is a modified version of the original PC version by Jason Rohrer. Jason did not authorize or approve the mobile version or any of the changes made from the original PC version."
216 characters.
Or even shorter:
"The mobile version of One Hour One Life includes changes from the original PC version which were not approved by the original developer, Jason Rohrer."
Hopefully one of these suggestions expresses your intent.
So even if the mobile devs don't actively issue misleading statements, they can mislead by omission, because the default, expected explanation is so different from the true explanation. I'm trying to come up with wording that they can use to explain it to people.
Okay, that's a different use case than I'd been assuming. My first suggestion was written as if you would be replying to someone who was asking you for support.
How about this:
"The mobile version of One Hour One Life is based off of the original PC version by Jason Rohrer, but the two versions are completely separate. Jason has not authorized or approved the mobile version and has nothing to do with it."
229 characters.
I think it addresses your main concern in a way that is clear, concise, and complete. Again, I'm leaving out the whole public domain thing, because as you say many people won't even understand what that means and it can't be explained in a short sentence.
It also strikes me as something completely reasonable to ask the mobile developers to tell their users.
"The mobile version of One Hour One Life is completely separate from the PC version. Jason Rohrer makes the PC version and has nothing to do with the mobile version. You'll need to contact the mobile developers for further assistance."
233 characters, so it's tweetable.
I don't think there's any point in even mentioning the public domain aspects and all that that implies; it won't help the person understand the situation any better and it won't help them solve their problem.
I agree, that was excessively strict moderation.
yumming bad foods is selfish and no one should do it
Everyone should do it!
Yum is a toy, and everyone should play with the toys. That's what they're here for.
Just make sure the village is stable and food-secure first.
Avoid overeating, i.e. don't eat a big food (like pie) when you're only missing a small number of pips.
Otherwise, no, you don't have to wait until you become hungry. Eat when it's convenient for your particular situation at the time. Maybe that's when you're hungry, maybe that's sooner. Don't wait until you only have a single pip; you'll risk dying if there's something that delays you for some reason. This happens to new players a lot.
lol good luck getting anything like that done close to town
a lot of specialty work has to be done on the outskirts where people don't go, so that nobody messes with your stuff
Congratulations, you've wasted some of the village's raw foods and wasted a truckload of your own productive time.
Yum is a toy.
I'll report the bug on github and I imagine Jason will fix it soon, although it's possible he intended this.
Just got confirmation that he did in fact intend this.
https://github.com/jasonrohrer/OneLife/issues/232
This was intentional.
There is no such thing as "radiant cold."
Facing a fire from across the room warms your front, but not your back.
Facing a snowman from across the room doesn't "cool" your front in the same way. There are no "cool" rays.
However, having a snowman present inside a room will cool the whole room, due to convection.
Man, there is nothing like that feeling when your kid takes the carefully gathered, sparse-in-the-area milkweed that you've collected to make your desperately needed fire tools and turns it into an utterly useless lasso that you can't unmake.
Don't collect milkweed or rope. Collect fire tools. When you're out in the field gathering milkweed for the tools, make each tool on the spot as soon as you have the rope. Don't give someone else a chance to use the rope for something else. Where there's milkweed, there's stones and branches, so go ahead and finish the job then and there.