Katawa Shoujo Forums

I thought it was common knowledge that 4LS was a shady, nefarious entity. The most nefarious of entities. Almost outranking the Feminists.
I just saw the Q&A talking about 4Leaf owning its content and sort of locking down on the IP to the point of no modding. I just didn't know about their grip on IP as far as characters and letting each writer go solo if they so desired. I guess it's much lighter than I thought.

TehLandshark wrote:Question for Aura (I mention KS2 but that isn't the topic, so don't skip the instant you see it):
While I know that KS2 isn't happening and you don't want to return to KS because it is a boring concept at this point and you don't want to do anything else in a Japanese high school, and while I know that nothing outside of KS is canon and that 4Leaf owns all of the characters,

If we were in a perfect world where 4Leaf doesn't own the rights to Rin, would you have any interest in doing a solo project just about her? Not even with Hisao or the same setting, plot, or anything else from KS, could you be inspired to write a story (not necessarily a VN or anything in particular, just any piece of content) about Rin or a Rin-like character? Whether or not we all received feels from her or think of her as a "waifu" in some crazy fanboyish manner, we can generally agree that Rin had some of the best writing and was easily the most complex character. You have an entire fanbase that would love to see more content in any form of her, and while maybe sick of the concept of KS, I want to see your opinion on what you would do given this perfect universe where you have full rights to her character and the freedom to make any story of your own based around her.

Again, I know that this is probably an impossibility legally, unless you end up just doing a fanfic-y thing like A Runner's Afternoon. And here is Yummine's opinion:

yummines wrote:Rin all wet was too damn cute to fap to.

I can hear the screams of my Copyright lawyer echoing through the internet.

I know that Copyright law gets a bad wrap, particularly due to the efforts of the film and music industry, so I can forgive people for not really looking into it. But this post has a couple of flaws in it that are, really, all too common.

Anyway, point number 1: Ideas aren't covered by Copyright. It needs to be something that you can put into a transmissible form. So whilst the text, music, images and Ren'py code are all in Copyright, "Rin" as a concept is not.

2: 4LS doesn't own Squat. At best, 4LS is a non-registered partnership. Thus, it can't own any property, and hence the Copyright belongs directly to the developers. We all agreed (via conduct) to abide by the 4LS licence, which essentially got around the fact that we shouldn't have been editing each other's work. I would say that the Literary Work (comprising the script) would belong equally to all of the writers and the editors, the Artistic Works would belong to the individual artists, and the Literary Work (in the computer code) belongs to Delta

3: Fan-fics and Fan Art are actually completely legal if they are all your own work. If you were to copy a section from the script, then that doesn't count. Also, depending on your country, you can actually "re-mix" artworks, meaning that you could, in theory, use some of the art assets.

4: HOWEVER! The licence that we have attached to the completed work that is "Katawa Shoujo" means that you aren't allowed to disassemble it, so unless an artist gave you sprites/CGs etc, you are breaking the licence conditions....

5: All of this stuff comes from the Berne Convention, which (thankfully) the US has now mostly ratified (why is it that the US continually lags behind on international treaties?).


Anyway, there is a lot more that I could go on about here, but this is a question forum about the game. If you are interested in continuing the discussion on Copyright, please either PM me or hit up my blog. Last week I halfheartedly started a topic about this exact subject.

I'm just curious; what would happen if someone breaks the 4LS license? What could you possibly do? It's not like you sell Katawa Shoujo, so a lawsuit would be a viable reaction, though, I know very little of plagiarism and copyright laws, so that is why I am asking you guys. How would you react to someone breaching the license?

Also, a follow-up question; are we allowed to make fan material such as flash games as long as we get your guys' consent? I'm talking material built from the ground up using our own capabilities and sources, though using Katawa Shoujo characters. Does that breach the license in any way? I know there are games out there that feature KS characters, though, I wanna be really sure. (Not that I have any plans. I can't do crap)

KeiichiO wrote:I'm just curious; what would happen if someone breaks the 4LS license? What could you possibly do? It's not like you sell Katawa Shoujo, so a lawsuit would be a viable reaction, though, I know very little of plagiarism and copyright laws, so that is why I am asking you guys. How would you react to someone breaching the license?

Also, a follow-up question; are we allowed to make fan material such as flash games as long as we get your guys' consent? I'm talking material built from the ground up using our own capabilities and sources, though using Katawa Shoujo characters. Does that breach the license in any way? I know there are games out there that feature KS characters, though, I wanna be really sure. (Not that I have any plans. I can't do crap)

The thing you have to look at here is how much you want to piss us off. Asking permission is always a good idea, and we generally say yes.

As for remedies for people breaking the licence; you're right, there's not much that we could do about it. However should an unauthorised derivative work start making money, then we'd be able to sue for damages. It's also worth noting that it is usual practice for courts to force the losing party in an action to pay for the legal fees, so (assuming that we had a strong case) it wouldn't be much of a risk or cost to us...

I'm going to direct all further questions on the copyright kind of things to my blog. I'll clean up that post so that it has some actual information there as well.

cpl_crud wrote:

KeiichiO wrote:I'm just curious; what would happen if someone breaks the 4LS license? What could you possibly do? It's not like you sell Katawa Shoujo, so a lawsuit would be a viable reaction, though, I know very little of plagiarism and copyright laws, so that is why I am asking you guys. How would you react to someone breaching the license?

Also, a follow-up question; are we allowed to make fan material such as flash games as long as we get your guys' consent? I'm talking material built from the ground up using our own capabilities and sources, though using Katawa Shoujo characters. Does that breach the license in any way? I know there are games out there that feature KS characters, though, I wanna be really sure. (Not that I have any plans. I can't do crap)

The thing you have to look at here is how much you want to piss us off. Asking permission is always a good idea, and we generally say yes.

As for remedies for people breaking the licence; you're right, there's not much that we could do about it. However should an unauthorised derivative work start making money, then we'd be able to sue for damages. It's also worth noting that it is usual practice for courts to force the losing party in an action to pay for the legal fees, so (assuming that we had a strong case) it wouldn't be much of a risk or cost to us...

I'm going to direct all further questions on the copyright kind of things to my blog. I'll clean up that post so that it has some actual information there as well.

And bear in mind, there are a SHITLOAD of places where we lay out the license for KS, so we would have a pretty strong case. It's why we can issue takedown notices to bootleg merch (when we can be bothered to look into it).

I apologize if this has been asked before.

As far as i understand it, 4LS wouldn't accept a fan anime adaptation of KS, presumably no matter how well made it is. I was just curious if there is a particular reason for that? Or is it just lack of interest or not wanting to have any fan-works of that type (that get involved with the VN's material/story)?

Dream wrote:I apologize if this has been asked before.

As far as i understand it, 4LS wouldn't accept a fan anime adaptation of KS, presumably no matter how well made it is. I was just curious if there is a particular reason for that? Or is it just lack of interest or not wanting to have any fan-works of that type (that get involved with the VN's material/story)?

Yeah, the word adaptation is the problem. We don't currently want KS itself to be fan adapted to any other medium. Some guy asked a while ago for permission to make a fan animation that doesn't directly adapt any part of KS or use its assets. We of course gave permission, because we have no problem with that.

KeiichiO wrote:I'm just curious; what would happen if someone breaks the 4LS license? What could you possibly do? It's not like you sell Katawa Shoujo, so a lawsuit would be a viable reaction, though, I know very little of plagiarism and copyright laws, so that is why I am asking you guys. How would you react to someone breaching the license?

Also, a follow-up question; are we allowed to make fan material such as flash games as long as we get your guys' consent? I'm talking material built from the ground up using our own capabilities and sources, though using Katawa Shoujo characters. Does that breach the license in any way? I know there are games out there that feature KS characters, though, I wanna be really sure. (Not that I have any plans. I can't do crap)

In past cases of license breaches that bother us enough to get involved, we've asked for them to stop doing that.

For the second part, of course. In your specific example, it does technically breach the license but in a way that we don't really mind. And you can always ask for explicit permission to bypass the license. We can, have and will waive the license for specific people and specific cases if we want to. The license exists only for the small, small minority of stuff that we really wouldn't like. The KS fandom often errs on the side of caution when dealing with the license, almost nobody actually understands what it's for and why we instated it, and the existence of the somewhat prohibitive license has even spawned some resentful feelings towards us. In practice we almost never enforce the license, but instead let people break it (softly). Still, asking never hurt anybody.

Short guide to the 4LS attitude to KS license and fanworks:

1. Does the work use anything concrete from KS itself (art, music, text etc)? We don't like it.
2. Is money involved? We don't like it.
3. Neither of the above apply? We are probably fine with it.
4. But what if...? Well then just ask.

Aura wrote:

KeiichiO wrote:I'm just curious; what would happen if someone breaks the 4LS license? What could you possibly do? It's not like you sell Katawa Shoujo, so a lawsuit would be a viable reaction, though, I know very little of plagiarism and copyright laws, so that is why I am asking you guys. How would you react to someone breaching the license?

Also, a follow-up question; are we allowed to make fan material such as flash games as long as we get your guys' consent? I'm talking material built from the ground up using our own capabilities and sources, though using Katawa Shoujo characters. Does that breach the license in any way? I know there are games out there that feature KS characters, though, I wanna be really sure. (Not that I have any plans. I can't do crap)

In past cases of license breaches that bother us enough to get involved, we've asked for them to stop doing that.

For the second part, of course. In your specific example, it does technically breach the license but in a way that we don't really mind. And you can always ask for explicit permission to bypass the license. We can, have and will waive the license for specific people and specific cases if we want to. The license exists only for the small, small minority of stuff that we really wouldn't like. The KS fandom often errs on the side of caution when dealing with the license, almost nobody actually understands what it's for and why we instated it, and the existence of the somewhat prohibitive license has even spawned some resentful feelings towards us. In practice we almost never enforce the license, but instead let people break it (softly). Still, asking never hurt anybody.

Short guide to the 4LS attitude to KS license and fanworks:

1. Does the work use anything concrete from KS itself (art, music, text etc)? We don't like it.
2. Is money involved? We don't like it.
3. Neither of the above apply? We are probably fine with it.
4. But what if...? Well then just ask.

Looking at this answer has actually got me slightly worried now . The thing is, I have a fanfic I've been writing for about a year now, it's pretty well established and has a good sizeable following on this site and on Fanfiction.net, but now I'm slightly worried it might be breaching the rules? It's basically a retelling of Hanako's arc from her own point of view, so most of the story is my own work based on my interpretation of the character, however, the actual dialogue for a lot of it is directly taken from the VN itself (aside from a few chapters that are my own creation completely, characters aside). What would the situation be with this? (for reference, on this site it's in the Fanfiction forum, named 'Hanako's Story', if you want to look and see if it meets the rules yourself). I mean, if you want me to stop and remove it then I'm willing to do that, though I'd admittedly be rather annoyed since I've been working on it for a year now, 16 chapters and about two thirds thereabouts of the way through, and on the three websites it's on it's ammassed a decent following of people wanting me to continue, but I'm happy to defer to your judgement (hence me asking the question now ).

So what do you think of people making money on fanworks through ad revenue?

A Forum Member wrote:So what do you think of people making money on fanworks through ad revenue?

See above. If money is involved in any way, we fundamentally dislike it.

Trivun wrote:Looking at this answer has actually got me slightly worried now :P. The thing is, I have a fanfic I've been writing for about a year now, it's pretty well established and has a good sizeable following on this site and on Fanfiction.net, but now I'm slightly worried it might be breaching the rules? It's basically a retelling of Hanako's arc from her own point of view, so most of the story is my own work based on my interpretation of the character, however, the actual dialogue for a lot of it is directly taken from the VN itself (aside from a few chapters that are my own creation completely, characters aside). What would the situation be with this? (for reference, on this site it's in the Fanfiction forum, named 'Hanako's Story', if you want to look and see if it meets the rules yourself). I mean, if you want me to stop and remove it then I'm willing to do that, though I'd admittedly be rather annoyed since I've been working on it for a year now, 16 chapters and about two thirds thereabouts of the way through, and on the three websites it's on it's ammassed a decent following of people wanting me to continue, but I'm happy to defer to your judgement (hence me asking the question now :P).

Yeah you are breaking the license but in this specific case it doesn't bother me enough that I'd tell you to take it down or anything.

Aura wrote: 1. Does the work use anything concrete from KS itself (art, music, text etc)? We don't like it.
4. But what if...? Well then just ask.

Now let's say I make a flash game and said flash game includes a quote of a character from KS; Does said quote breach license technically? As long as this "quote" isn't ridiculously long, would you be cool with it?

And on a side note, thanks goes out to Aura, TheHiveMind, and cpl_crud for clarification on what you own and don't own.

TehLandshark wrote:

Aura wrote: 1. Does the work use anything concrete from KS itself (art, music, text etc)? We don't like it.
4. But what if...? Well then just ask.

Now let's say I make a flash game and said flash game includes a quote of a character from KS; Does said quote breach license technically? As long as this "quote" isn't ridiculously long, would you be cool with it?

And on a side note, thanks goes out to Aura, TheHiveMind, and cpl_crud for clarification on what you own and don't own.

From what I remember there are all sorts of nuances to the legality of quoting, explicitly or not. I really do not want to even try to appear as an authority, which is why I always say what we feel about the copyright/license issues rather than try to lay down facts. In fact I'd recommend you don't trust anyone short of an actual copyright lawyer about this stuff. Anyway, a short quote, whether explicitly sourced or not, wouldn't be an issue (compare to the guy a few posts above who literally lifted most of Hanako's route dialogue, and I still didn't care all that much even though I acknowledged it sucks for us and breaks the license)

Hello everyone, new to the forums so sorry if i mess up in some strange way or another

I had a question for Nicol Armarfi: Not sure if you've ever spoken about this, want to keep it a secret or if it's simply visible for everyone to see and i somehow missed it
But, does your name have any reference to a certain character from the anime Gundam Seed? Reason i ask is because the name had a lot of emotional value for me and still does, relating to something out of the anime.
The first time i listened to Moment Of Decision and actualty saw your name under it brought me to tears... the fact that the very scene was the heartbreaking one with Emi and Hisao didn't realy help either

PS. Thanks for all the wonderful music you've brought to 4LS, this VN just wouldn't have been what it is today without it. Your pieces of music are amazing, they realy can define a scene. Don't want to forget Blue 123, very nice as well. But i can lose myself when i listen Nicol's pieces, they just fit so well/are so well composed. The only thing that saddens me is that not more people can enjoy them

Woops, turned out to be slightly longer than i anticipated :s Sorry

Regards,
Merloficus