Protect Your Future

There seems to be a growing trend recently of not respecting the copyright and wishes of Freeware developers. We have all heard about the Eric W. Ernst and Staffan Alberg incident with Apollo. This hopefully is now being brought to a successful conclusion and is now behind us.

There seems however to be an even more widespread problem with Freeware, where Freeware developers are using other Freeware developers' work without permission thinking that it is all right to do so. At its most innocent, developers are unaware of the law and what is right or wrong and at worst there is a flagrant disregard for the law and the rights of the original authors.

Discussion with other freeware developers during the past couple of weeks has done nothing to clear the muddle. Virtually every developer has a different view of what other people should be able to do with their products, and even confuse the issue with ambiguous statements in their documentation.

To help clear up some of this muddle, you need to divide the thing into two halves. What is the situation under International Copyright Law, and what are the wishes of the authors owning the copyright?

The first point is fairly easy to deal with.

All original work is automatically copyrighted whether it is Freeware, Shareware or Payware. It does not have to carry any copyright statement or symbol. That copyright remains with the author unless transferred, until 50 years after the death of the author. The product only ceases to be covered if the author deliberately places it in the "Public Domain".

Publishing it, even as "Freeware" does not in itself place it in the Public Domain. A written statement has to be given that the author places the product in the "public domain" before it is free to be republished by anyone else.

In simple terms this means that unless the author states differently in writing, you cannot republish his work in original or modified form without his written permission. End of story!

The second point is not so easily dealt with as most Freeware authors believe different things about what should or shouldn't be done with their original work. This ranges from "Anyone can do anything they want with it" to "It must not be republished either in its original or any modified form". To make matters worse there are so many ways of expressing wishes in "Readme" files it is hardly surprising confusion reigns.

Recently a developer (not me) suggested in a forum that we should have a universally accepted category system, where you could allocate any product or part of product as series of letters which would tell you exactly the wishes of the author. What a brilliant idea! Thinking about this, mixed with some other input, I evolved the following suggested list of categories that cover just about any eventuality. (This is only an idea to provoke thought.)

A: May be modified and published without any contact with the author.

B: May be used for any "Freeware" product and published without contact with the author.

C: May be used in any product and published without contact with the author.

D: Authors original documentation must be published with the product.

E: Credits must be given to the original author in the published product's documentation.

U: May not be modified in any way and published.

V: May not be modified and published without the prior written permission from the author

W: May not be used in any product (even Freeware) and published.

X: May not be used in any Shareware or Payware products and published.

Y: May not be used in any product and published without prior written permission from the author

Z: You must submit your product for approval to the original author before publishing.

If this list, or one like it, could be universally adopted, then all the confusion would be at an end.

To help you understand what we are talking about with copyright, let me give you three examples:

1. To repaint an aircraft and place it on the Net without permission from the original author is breaking copyright law.
2. To use someone else's gauges, modified or not, in a panel you put on the Net without permission from the author is breaking copyright law.
3. To modify a panel and place it on the Net without permission from the original author, is breaking copyright law.

In summary, "If you don't have prior written permission it is illegal to publish".

One thing is for certain, if we don't do something to stop the "Piracy", even if most of it is through ignorance, many of the top developers will leave the Freeware world, which would be a great loss to everyone that enjoys this wonderful hobby.

What we must do is mount a strong campaign of education to ensure firstly that everyone knows exactly what is legal and what is not, and secondly, to find a standardised way to ensure the authors views are known. I am certain that here on FlightSim.Com everything possible will be done to help with that education program.

When it comes to dealing with people that believe in "Piracy" or "Theft", and that is what it is, a very firm line must be taken. I can tell you from personal experience that an excellent example is set here by the people on FlightSim.Com.

Safe landings

Roy Chaffin
Freeware Panel Developer, and International Wildlife Artist
Email: roy@roychaffin.com