Mojang owns the game, but they do not what happens in the game.
Think about it. If Mojang decided to put out an awesome map for public download one day without the creator's consent, there would be a problem. It's like if Obama controlled what is written on these forums.
Think about it this way. If you make a beautiful Lego masterpiece, does Lego own that? Assuming you purchased the Lego set, the answer would be no. You own it. Lego would still get credit for making the pieces, but you would get credit for making the masterpiece.
If you purchased a certain clay from a manufacturer and built a clay sculpture, you would own the sculpture. The manufacturer would not be able to claim ownership of the sculpture.
The same thing applies to Minecraft. You own all your builds, Mojang owns the game. Mojang does not own any of your builds.
At least in Single Player, your builds are yours. Though in most cases it seems like Mojang reserves the right to use your builds as seen in the Terms and Conditions for realms.
There's a reason for the second part of those terms, and that reason is not a good one. That reason is abusive litigation.
It's the same reason that so many writers, for example, will absolutely not look at fan fiction based on their writing. It's not that they don't want to (Marion Zimmer Bradly once said, with regard to fan-written work, that it was a way she could read new Darkover stories without having to write them herself!) -- it's that they don't dare.
And what happened to MZB is one of the reasons. To make a long and complicated story short, a person who had written something Darkover-related sued MZB for writing something similar -- something in her own world, with her own characters, her own history, etc., but the person filing the suit wanted half the profits from something she had nothing to do with because she'd written something remotely similar (using MZB's world, characters, history, etc.) MZB died with the story still unpublished, and those of us who loved that world never got to read it, and never will, because one greedy person said "My idea! Mine! Mine! Give me money!!!!!"
As a result of that, and many cases like that, Mojang has to include a clause like the second one. If they don't, they're setting themselves up for potentially crippling (not to mention expensive) lawsuits. There are always greedy people who will go after the deep pockets, and always lawyers -- or shysters -- who will take the cases on contingency, so the plaintiffs risk nothing and, even if they win, the defendant has had to pay thousands, sometimes millions, to defend themselves.
Imagine if Mojang were to feature, say, a cathedral in something they did. So some random schmuck playing on Realms says "That cathedral is just like mine!" and sues Mojang. It doesn't matter if the cathedral is just like his or not (though if he gets the right judge, and holds up pictures of both cathedrals, he can win the "legal roulette" because hey, it's a cathedral and that other thing is a cathedral, and therefore they're the same). It matters that Mojang has to pay, say, $200 an hour to a lawyer, and if that lawyer puts in a couple of weeks' work on the case, Mojang is out $16,000 just to defend themselves against a totally baseless lawsuit. With that clause in the agreement, they just have to pull it out and file for summary judgement. "The plaintiff agreed right here that we own it; he's got no case."
Yeah, it sucks. It sucks that writers can't read fan fiction about their stories. It sucks that movie producers can't read un-agented scripts. It sucks that I can't read that one story by Marion Zimmer Bradley. And it sucks that Mojang has to say that. You can thank the people who think Mojang (or anyone else with more money than they have) is a source of free moola, and the way to get it from them is to sue them and either win, or get them to pay a "settlement" to make the lawsuit go away. But we can't blame Mojang for that happening.
A relevant lawyer joke: A prominent attorney had a fatal heart attack on the golf course one afternoon. When he arrived in heaven, Saint Peter looked confused. "That's odd. You look like you're only 40 years old. According to my list, you're 973 years old, which is a new record." Saint Peter checked his clipboard again. "Oh, my bad. We calculated your age based on the number of hours you billed for."
(and you think people don't go after Mojang for stupid stuff? Two words: "Putt-putt")
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Much like Vocaloid software (Youtube it), for those who are creative Minecraft is considered a tool. What you create with a tool belongs to you even though the tool itself was made by someone else...
YEY Thank you for all your great answers! And no trolls this time that's a first lol
Anywho, so if you guys say that the builds are owned by the people who make them and not Mojang, does this also mean that the builds fall under US copyright laws assuming you live in US? so the builds are automatically copyrighted by the person who makes them according to the law?
It's just all very confusing to me.
If your talking about realms, the answer is Majong, it's in their terms and conditions, they claim anything you build belongs to you, but then say they can use/alter/sell (yes they can make real money from it) anything you make and they don't have to pay you a cent or give you credit for it.
and that is one of the main reasons realms is a complete rip off and no one should use it. (seriously people need to learn to read terms and conditions.)
If your talking about single player they have no access to your builds, bukkit they have no access to them either, SMP I'm not sure about that one.
o_o Wow I wasn't talking about realms but yes, that is very alarming
I had no idea! But this brings light onto one reason why realms was created; this must mean regular servers and single player don't abide by those terms.
To be perfectly honest you can't really copyright a build It is possible for two people who have never met to build the same thing completely by chance, it's not probable but is possible.
so trying to prove your the original creator is well, impossible if your truthful about it, how can you prove your work is original without showing every other build ever made anywhere in the world, to prove you didn't in fact copy someone Else's work to begin with.
It reminds me of the chicken and the egg conundrum. how do you prove which came first!.
Ok so perhaps i jumped the gun to fast but lets also be fair, you are talking SPECIFICALLY about Minecraft realms. NOT all around Minecraft and private servers including single player. those rules and conditions you posted are for and apply to only Minecraft Realms.
Lets go back to who owns your builds in the first place (disregarding Minecraft Realms)? Is it Mojang? Is it you? Or is it this potential guy who accidentally made an exact replica of your build by chance? who owns your work? and yes i mean work because some of these Minecraft builds are pure art forms and take months to make.
Think about it this way. If you make a beautiful Lego masterpiece, does Lego own that? Assuming you purchased the Lego set, the answer would be no. You own it. Lego would still get credit for making the pieces, but you would get credit for making the masterpiece.
If you purchased a certain clay from a manufacturer and built a clay sculpture, you would own the sculpture. The manufacturer would not be able to claim ownership of the sculpture.
The same thing applies to Minecraft. You own all your builds, Mojang owns the game. Mojang does not own any of your builds.
lets also look at it this way, you make a painting in Photoshop, Photoshop designed the tools and the pieces you use to make the art(brushes, shapes, textures, tools) so does that mean that Adobe owns everything you make in Photoshop?
Much like Vocaloid software (Youtube it), for those who are creative Minecraft is considered a tool. What you create with a tool belongs to you even though the tool itself was made by someone else...
That's what I was thinking. I was also looking through the official terms of use for Minecraft (not minecraft realms) and I couldn't find anything.
Whether or not you actually can, the main thing stopping you from selling stuff you make would be the lack of buyers, because seriously, who's going to pay for what is essentially a game save file, especially when there's plenty out there for free that probably have the same thing or close to it?
When you create a work, it's automatically copyrighted. If you create it with somebody else, it's jointly copyrighted. If it gets to the stage where you have to try to prove stuff, that's what courts are for.
THIS^ so much, of this! ^
That is my point with this hole thread; I am an artist, I spend months developing a single build and all my builds are uniquely my own work. what is a crime is when people come onto my server that i have handcrafted myself for over 2 years and steal my builds with world downloader and use them for their own servers or even monetary gain and claiming that they built them. I am reading some comments in this thread of those of you who feel copyrights are bad and that it is just an excuse for people to get easy money out of others through lawsuits, that's completely outrageous and it's people who believe that who are hurting hard working artists like me. Sure, there are big corporations and people who abuse it but they are the minority, us honest, hard working individuals need copyright laws to even stand a chance against large crooked corporations and other corrupt individuals.
I have no interest in suing people, and I have no interests in "easy cash", All I want is self defense from the art thieves and crooks out there. So I use copyrights as an art-theft deterrent to AVOID lawsuits, not create them!
The reason why I've been asking you guys what your thoughts are on build ownership is because I put a legal disclaimer on my server that all players have to agree to before being able to enter. And I get yelled at for that because all these players who want to copy my builds tell me I cannot copyright my own builds and they claim that my builds are owned by Mojang and not me. I needed to find out for sure.
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
Think about it. If Mojang decided to put out an awesome map for public download one day without the creator's consent, there would be a problem. It's like if Obama controlled what is written on these forums.
/logic
gg dice
also you should check out Link Removed
If you purchased a certain clay from a manufacturer and built a clay sculpture, you would own the sculpture. The manufacturer would not be able to claim ownership of the sculpture.
The same thing applies to Minecraft. You own all your builds, Mojang owns the game. Mojang does not own any of your builds.
It's the same reason that so many writers, for example, will absolutely not look at fan fiction based on their writing. It's not that they don't want to (Marion Zimmer Bradly once said, with regard to fan-written work, that it was a way she could read new Darkover stories without having to write them herself!) -- it's that they don't dare.
And what happened to MZB is one of the reasons. To make a long and complicated story short, a person who had written something Darkover-related sued MZB for writing something similar -- something in her own world, with her own characters, her own history, etc., but the person filing the suit wanted half the profits from something she had nothing to do with because she'd written something remotely similar (using MZB's world, characters, history, etc.) MZB died with the story still unpublished, and those of us who loved that world never got to read it, and never will, because one greedy person said "My idea! Mine! Mine! Give me money!!!!!"
As a result of that, and many cases like that, Mojang has to include a clause like the second one. If they don't, they're setting themselves up for potentially crippling (not to mention expensive) lawsuits. There are always greedy people who will go after the deep pockets, and always lawyers -- or shysters -- who will take the cases on contingency, so the plaintiffs risk nothing and, even if they win, the defendant has had to pay thousands, sometimes millions, to defend themselves.
Imagine if Mojang were to feature, say, a cathedral in something they did. So some random schmuck playing on Realms says "That cathedral is just like mine!" and sues Mojang. It doesn't matter if the cathedral is just like his or not (though if he gets the right judge, and holds up pictures of both cathedrals, he can win the "legal roulette" because hey, it's a cathedral and that other thing is a cathedral, and therefore they're the same). It matters that Mojang has to pay, say, $200 an hour to a lawyer, and if that lawyer puts in a couple of weeks' work on the case, Mojang is out $16,000 just to defend themselves against a totally baseless lawsuit. With that clause in the agreement, they just have to pull it out and file for summary judgement. "The plaintiff agreed right here that we own it; he's got no case."
Yeah, it sucks. It sucks that writers can't read fan fiction about their stories. It sucks that movie producers can't read un-agented scripts. It sucks that I can't read that one story by Marion Zimmer Bradley. And it sucks that Mojang has to say that. You can thank the people who think Mojang (or anyone else with more money than they have) is a source of free moola, and the way to get it from them is to sue them and either win, or get them to pay a "settlement" to make the lawsuit go away. But we can't blame Mojang for that happening.
A relevant lawyer joke: A prominent attorney had a fatal heart attack on the golf course one afternoon. When he arrived in heaven, Saint Peter looked confused. "That's odd. You look like you're only 40 years old. According to my list, you're 973 years old, which is a new record." Saint Peter checked his clipboard again. "Oh, my bad. We calculated your age based on the number of hours you billed for."
(and you think people don't go after Mojang for stupid stuff? Two words: "Putt-putt")
Lonnehart's Youtube Channel
Y'know? I bought Minecraft because I thought it was a war game where you had to create tactically placed proximity explosive devices...
Anywho, so if you guys say that the builds are owned by the people who make them and not Mojang, does this also mean that the builds fall under US copyright laws assuming you live in US? so the builds are automatically copyrighted by the person who makes them according to the law?
It's just all very confusing to me.
What terms? Where are you coming from? who are you replying to?
your post confuses me T__T
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
I had no idea! But this brings light onto one reason why realms was created; this must mean regular servers and single player don't abide by those terms.
Ok so perhaps i jumped the gun to fast but lets also be fair, you are talking SPECIFICALLY about Minecraft realms. NOT all around Minecraft and private servers including single player. those rules and conditions you posted are for and apply to only Minecraft Realms.
Lets go back to who owns your builds in the first place (disregarding Minecraft Realms)? Is it Mojang? Is it you? Or is it this potential guy who accidentally made an exact replica of your build by chance? who owns your work? and yes i mean work because some of these Minecraft builds are pure art forms and take months to make.
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
~Epic Space Milk Muffin
Whether or not you actually can, the main thing stopping you from selling stuff you make would be the lack of buyers, because seriously, who's going to pay for what is essentially a game save file, especially when there's plenty out there for free that probably have the same thing or close to it?
Baseball, then Minecraft.
THIS^ so much, of this! ^
That is my point with this hole thread; I am an artist, I spend months developing a single build and all my builds are uniquely my own work. what is a crime is when people come onto my server that i have handcrafted myself for over 2 years and steal my builds with world downloader and use them for their own servers or even monetary gain and claiming that they built them. I am reading some comments in this thread of those of you who feel copyrights are bad and that it is just an excuse for people to get easy money out of others through lawsuits, that's completely outrageous and it's people who believe that who are hurting hard working artists like me. Sure, there are big corporations and people who abuse it but they are the minority, us honest, hard working individuals need copyright laws to even stand a chance against large crooked corporations and other corrupt individuals.
I have no interest in suing people, and I have no interests in "easy cash", All I want is self defense from the art thieves and crooks out there. So I use copyrights as an art-theft deterrent to AVOID lawsuits, not create them!
The reason why I've been asking you guys what your thoughts are on build ownership is because I put a legal disclaimer on my server that all players have to agree to before being able to enter. And I get yelled at for that because all these players who want to copy my builds tell me I cannot copyright my own builds and they claim that my builds are owned by Mojang and not me. I needed to find out for sure.
~Epic Space Milk Muffin