Licensing of screenshots and videos of the gameplay of Luanti and Minetest

[Mike12345]

I'm planning to create a blog where I would post screenshots I've made while playing Luanti. In the future I might consider making videos, too. I would like to know how they are licensed. In particular,

1. is there a licence at all? Is there more than one?
2. Do I have to include any notices alongside the screenshots and videos, like "these screenshots have been made in Luanti"?
3. Do I have to provide a licence for my screenshots and videos? If there is a licence implied, can I change it?
4. Can I change the screenshots and videos, like cut out some part of a screenshot, or include captions in a video, or combine the screenshot or video with other content, possibly under a different licence? Can I then still describe them as "Luanti screenshots and videos"?
5. Can I publish the screenshots and videos in any other places other than my blog, like social media?
6. If in the future I decide to make the screenshots and videos part of a product or service that I would like to sell, can I do it? If so, what responsibilities do I have in such situation? What licences apply?
7. To the best of my knowledge, currently I don't use any mods, or any non-default "content" whatsoever. (I'm using quotation marks because I don't know Luanti that much.) But if I start to use it in the future, will it change anything when it comes to the questions above?
8. Does any of the things above depend on the particular version of Luanti I use? Currently I use 5.1.1, but I may change it in the future.

I've made some research, but found nothing applicable. I've found https://docs.luanti.org/for-creators/licensing/, but it seems to refer only to source code. I've also found viewtopic.php?t=29461, but I don't see how any information there could apply here.

Ideally I'd like to know as much details as possible. That is, even if there is a single licence covering all of my questions, then I'd probably need some clarification anyway. I'd also be grateful for general explanation, since I am literally in the dark about this topic.

[apercy]

I'm not a specialist, but I believe the licencing is more related to the texture pack licences and visible mods respective licences.

[Blockhead]

Hi Mike, welcome the forums

I am not a lawyer but I do have some experience in this community with the copyright side of things. I will try to walk you through your questions while adding info in each section. By the end of the post, you hopefully will be up to speed. Also note that while we have things like the Berne convention, copyright law does vary from country to country.

Is there a licence at all? Is there more than one?

Licences are a grant under copyright law. In my country of Australia, according to the Attorney-General's Department

Copyright provides an owner of a material with exclusive economic rights to do certain acts with that material. These rights include the right to copy and the right to communicate the material to the public.

Copyright also provides authors and performers with non-economic rights, known as moral rights. Moral rights recognised in Australia are the right of integrity, the right of attribution and the right against false attribution.

Thankfully, the free software (& open source) and free culture licences that most content for Luanti is published under give you a lot of rights to use the content for any purpose and make derivative works from it, and make money from those derivative works. Attribution is required in some cases, according to the terms of the licence.

There is a licence on the core program/engine "Luanti" itself, then licences on any game you play and any content (a useful catch-all for games, mods, texture packs, sounds, models) you install for it. These are considered separate works but also a combined work when together, subject to all the licences at the same time. Then any modifications you apply on top yourself are also part of the combined work. Screenshots, videos and sound recordings are derivative works or performances.

When talking about screenshots and videos of the gameplay, we do not really need to discuss source code licences. Those are only relevant if you were distributing modified versions of the engine or mods, so we'll leave them out for now to simplify the discussion.

Do I have to include any notices alongside the screenshots and videos, like "these screenshots have been made in Luanti"?

The core engine is under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence version 2.1 or later. That licence has terms where the only real restrictions are on re-using the source code with other software programs, and have no restrictions on performance. No statement is needed at that level.

The content that you install will come under a few different kinds or "levels" of licences. As concerns media licences (ones that cover the non-source-code portions of content), almost all Luanti content uses licences from Creative Commons.

• At the least restrictive, some content is published into the public domain or through a licence like CC0 (some jurisdictions don't have a concept of "public domain").
• For some licences, one needs to give attribution to the author(s) for uses of the content. These are the Creative Commons licences with "BY" in the name. Whenever you use content under BY terms, you need to make the authors clear. There are a few suitable ways, such as captions or - for video sharing sites like YouTube - in the video description.
• For some licences, there is a a ShareAlike (SA) requirement that you must not restrict others from further sharing copies of the content. This means your screenshots and videos must be copyable and shareable by others. This does not mean you are not allowed to charge for access to them though, but you cannot stop others re-sharing under the terms of the licence (you may, however, choose at your discretion to stop selling in future to people who do re-share)
• Some content, thankfully not much, may be under Creative Commons licences with No-Derivatives terms (like BY-ND). This means that while you can download and play it, you cannot creative derivative works or adaptations. You shouldn't post screenshots or videos if you used ND-licensed content. ND terms are not allowed on ContentDB.
• Some content, thankfully not much, may be under Creative Commons licences with Non-commercial terms (like BY-NC). This means that you can play with the content and share screenshots and videos of it, you are not allowed to do so for a commercial purpose, so no ad revenue from your blog site or YouTube. You could choose to do this if you want, but you do so knowing that you forego revenue.

The creative commons licences do take a bit to read, but they have a lot in common, so it may be worth doing. Another thing you should know is CC licences also include the restriction that you cannot apply restrictions like DRM to stop people downloading and sharing the content, and that the 4.0 licences are an improvement on the 3.0 licences because of the reduction in the ability to copyright troll with them (using takedown notices and suing people very shortly after) - ref. I can't see why most people haven't adopted them other than that they don't realise the later versions exist or think there's negligible difference - the 3.0 licences are even compatible with 4.0 licences (we'll get to compatibility later).

Do I have to provide a licence for my screenshots and videos? If there is a licence implied, can I change it?

Unlike some proprietary programs, Luanti imposes no ownership or "royalty-free worldwide non-exclusive grant of license" over what you do with it. This is unfortunately common with proprietary games like Warcraft III Reforged, where any custom map you create is theirs.. they wouldn't want another DoTa getting away from them. On the contrary, any images you create with Luanti with 100% your own content remain 100% yours. You could let such images persist in their default "all rights reserved" state if you wanted (and your jurisdiction has this as a default, and with exceptions in some jurisdictions for fair use or fair dealing).

But in the more realistic scenario you will probably reuse content in screenshots and videos of Luanti. Your licence must be compatible with the content licences of any content visible (and for video, audible). You cannot change the terms of any of those licences, however your different licence may be compatible. The best way to guarantee that is to simply adopt the most restrictive of the licences (see the list of terms in the above section). Writing your own licence is fraught with danger, I can't recommend it. See also Please stop using WTFPL.

For instance:

• If you were playing with a game, without any additional content, with its textures under CC BY 3.0 or 4.0, I would recommend the same CC licence for your own work. You could also choose CC BY-SA since it is compatible - see this matrix for compatibility and CC's official advice.
• If you were playing the same game, but with a CC BY-SA 4.0 texture pack, I would recommend that licence as your own licence.

Can I change the screenshots and videos, like cut out some part of a screenshot, or include captions in a video, or combine the screenshot or video with other content, possibly under a different licence?

The CC licences give you all of these rights in allowing derivatives.

Combining the content with commercial licences that have restrictions on sharing and reuse may create a conflicting scenario where you can't do that. For instance, some "royalty-free" licences on content (textures, models, sounds from library sites) require that you use technological restrictions to try to prevent users from extracting that content from a combined work. This is directly opposed to the clause of CC 4.0 licences that disallows that. You could make a video with such content, but you couldn't make a downloadable mod, or at least not one publishable on ContentDB.

Can I then still describe them as "Luanti screenshots and videos"?

The engine's LGPL 2.1+ licence does not say anything about when you can or can't. As long as you are not trying to misrepresent the origin of things or defame the authors of Luanti (basically, things that fall under other laws than copyright or can't be signed away with copyright), then you should be in the clear. You could also accurately call a lot of screenshots "Minetest screenshots", probably even on releases that are named Luanti. Screenshots of forks like Freeminer or your own potential engine fork could also accurately be described as being screenshots of those games. I don't know of any law that places restrictions on naming things, not in a copyright context; you would have to know about some other applicable law about making false or misleading statements.

Since attribution is a requirement for most content for Luanti, you would expect to have to attribute those works properly, including making statements about the nature of those works. For instance "This screenshot is of Minetest Game, a game for Luanti, (c) <years> the Minetest Game contributors".

Can I publish the screenshots and videos in any other places other than my blog, like social media?

There is no discrimination in Creative Commons licences about the place where the content is posted to. But you have to follow the terms of use (and other potentially applicable legal documents) of the website that you are using.

YouTube only provides two licence options for licensing your content to them and onto further users (ref). All rights reserved, where technically users aren't even meant to download the video (would be against the terms of the media licence usually), or CC BY (I think CC BY 3.0 specifically). IANAL, however I would tell you that this is mostly fluff, and you can state your own licence in the video description. If you wanted to be stricter, then you could still upload to YouTube, but also somewhere else like your own website that you know isn't bound to their terms of service. (In the end there is always a terms of service (ToS) from someone: a ToS on website/VPS hosting or a ToS on your home internet connection, but those usually don't restrict you except to tell you to follow the law and not abuse their networks).

If in the future I decide to make the screenshots and videos part of a product or service that I would like to sell, can I do it? If so, what responsibilities do I have in such situation? What licences apply?

I have mentioned this incidentally previously, and the answer is yes for any licence unless it has non-commercial or no-derivatives restrictions. Let's go through the list of creative commons restriction clauses again:

• Public domain and CC0-licensed works have no restrictions. You just need to make sure that the use of the work is within the law. For instance, Steamboat Willie entered the public domain by expiration in 2024, but reuse of later representations of Mickey Mouse are not allowed under copyright law.
• Attribution licences: You need to convey the attribution properly in the sold product. For instance, if you sold a screenshot, you need to keep a text record attached about its origin. In a zip archive, you would have a LICENSE.txt file with info about each file. On a stock image website, attribution on the store page might be sufficient (but anyone who buys the work has to preserve attribution if they republish as well).
• ShareAlike licences: Anyone who is sold a copy of the work has the right to copy it as they please as long as they preserve the same right (the same as you had to). Your only way to cut off someone who redistributes sold SA content is to stop selling to them in future.
• No-Derivatives licences: I believe you are allowed to sell these, but only in unmodified form, which makes it probably a hard sell if you can just get it elsewhere for free.
• Non-commercial licences obviously stop you from selling.

The licence that applies is, as usual, the most restrictive of your compatible CC licences, plus the terms of any source code licences if you are distributing those (which also combine in a hierarchy like: Public Domain > MIT/BSD > LGPL > GPL > AGPL > CC BY-ND > other proprietary licences).

To the best of my knowledge, currently I don't use any mods, or any non-default "content" whatsoever. (I'm using quotation marks because I don't know Luanti that much.) But if I start to use it in the future, will it change anything when it comes to the questions above?

Does any of the things above depend on the particular version of Luanti I use? Currently I use 5.1.1, but I may change it in the future.

Luanti can't realistically be used without additional content. It's like trying to drink out of an empty glass. If what you are saying is accurate and you are on 5.1.1 (which is over 5 years old! whereas 5.11.0 is only 2 months old), and playing a game without having installed anything extra, you must be playing Minetest Game which used to ship with the engine. The licences of that game apply; see the source code for the licence information.

As answered above, it depends entirely on the content licences, not the engine, as to how this will affect your future scenario.

I've also found viewtopic.php?t=29461, but I don't see how any information there could apply here.

The context of that thread is about "screenshot.png" files, which are files that are a screenshot of content (a mod or texture pack), and how to licence them, since they may contain other works. Since mods are conveyed to others just as screenshots on your blog or on a video site YouTube are, a lot of what is said there is relevant to copying. But that discussion is also lead by "REUSE", which is a standard for letting automatic systems know about the copyright info on each file, so that software projects can really easily reuse components - so the intent of copying might be quite different from your own.

Ideally I'd like to know as much details as possible. That is, even if there is a single licence covering all of my questions, then I'd probably need some clarification anyway. I'd also be grateful for general explanation, since I am literally in the dark about this topic.

I hope I have at least introduced you to most of the ideas that are relevant here. Law is complicated at the best of times.

I haven't covered some of the tangentially related topics like fair use (or in Australia, fair dealing), a concept only present in some countries. I can only speak to my superficial understanding of copyright law from America and Australia and not your own local circumstances.

[Mike12345]

Thanks, apercy and Blockhead!

Blockhead, I'd like to reply to particular parts of your post, but for that I need to read it at least the second time. So now I'm just letting you know I've read it.

[Mike12345]

Although the last post is also mine, I'm making a separate post, in the hope it will be easier to discover that I've made an update in this thread.

Also note that while we have things like the Berne convention, copyright law does vary from country to country.

I understand that, to the extent that I'm not a lawyer, too. To be fair, I would love to know and understand all the copyright law I need to comply with. But I'm a realist here, I don't expect anyone to be able to say what exact acts and the like I should read. So only to avoid further confusion I'm going to say up front that I live in Poland.

However, I think I need to at least observe that we are speaking about software and the internet. See, I would be making, and then posting screenshots and videos while I would be in Poland. They would be hosted somewhere. Most probably I would be publishing them on GitHub and YouTube, at least initially. So, I assume they would fall under the terms of use of these services, including any copyright-related terms. Then, you in Australia could display the screenshots and videos. (Or purchase my product or service that they would be part of, but let's exclude that as I've already assumed below that I don't plan to do it).

I don't know to what extent the consideration above should apply in our discussion. Like, I'm not sure whether I should just stop here and not be ever going to publish any Luanti-related content at all. I see that such resolution might sound strange in 2025, with the abundance of content being published in the internet, but still…

I think all I can do is try to do my best to understand it all.

Thankfully, the free software (& open source) and free culture licences that most content for Luanti is published under give you a lot of rights to use the content for any purpose and make derivative works from it, and make money from those derivative works. Attribution is required in some cases, according to the terms of the licence.

You are not a lawyer, I understand. I just want to make it clear, for anybody else, that I still have no idea how FOSS is related to the copyright law of any country.

There is a licence on the core program/engine "Luanti" itself, then licences on any game you play and any content (a useful catch-all for games, mods, texture packs, sounds, models) you install for it. These are considered separate works but also a combined work when together, subject to all the licences at the same time. Then any modifications you apply on top yourself are also part of the combined work. Screenshots, videos and sound recordings are derivative works or performances.

So it seems a good starting point to assume my screenshots and videos would be "derivative works"… or "performances"? Which ones?

When talking about screenshots and videos of the gameplay, we do not really need to discuss source code licences. Those are only relevant if you were distributing modified versions of the engine or mods, so we'll leave them out for now to simplify the discussion.

Agreed, I don't plan to distribute (or sell) any version of Luanti engine or mods, modified or not. Should I ever be going to, I'd ask separately (and think twice, given the complexity of the matter).

Do I have to include any notices alongside the screenshots and videos, like "these screenshots have been made in Luanti"?

The core engine is under the GNU Lesser General Public Licence version 2.1 or later. That licence has terms where the only real restrictions are on re-using the source code with other software programs, and have no restrictions on performance. No statement is needed at that level.

I'm not sure what you exactly mean by "at that level", but I assume you mean the GNU LGPL 2.1 or later says nothing about my case.

• At the least restrictive, some content is published into the public domain or through a licence like CC0 (some jurisdictions don't have a concept of "public domain").

Just to make a note, the "some jurisdictions…" part touches the complex topic of copyright law I've described earlier.

Another thing you should know is CC licences also include the restriction that you cannot apply restrictions like DRM to stop people downloading and sharing the content (…)

I understand this passage that if I wanted to use a CC licence for my screenshots and videos (irrespectively now of whether I can), I would need to forget about DRM and such. Fair enough, I don't plan to restrict anything. I'll let GitHub and YouTube decide what others can do with my content beyond viewing it.

(…) and that the 4.0 licences are an improvement on the 3.0 licences because of the reduction in the ability to copyright troll with them (using takedown notices and suing people very shortly after) - ref.

I don't quite understand what you mean here.

Unlike some proprietary programs, Luanti imposes no ownership or "royalty-free worldwide non-exclusive grant of license" over what you do with it.

You mean the fact Luanti does this is a consequence of GNU LGPL licence's doing this?

On the contrary, any images you create with Luanti with 100% your own content remain 100% yours.

What do you mean here? Something like all the textures visible on a screenshot are created by me? And all the sounds audible in a video? (Seems like a big effort to change Luanti that much with the perspective of every single screenshot and video I would make.)

But in the more realistic scenario you will probably reuse content in screenshots and videos of Luanti. Your licence must be compatible with the content licences of any content visible (and for video, audible). You cannot change the terms of any of those licences, however your different licence may be compatible. The best way to guarantee that is to simply adopt the most restrictive of the licences (see the list of terms in the above section).

That seems simple enough, but how should I know which one is "the most restrictive"… How should I know particular licences don't contradict each other? No, wait, how should I even know what licences apply to all the textures and sounds a screenshot or video contains?

Writing your own licence is fraught with danger, I can't recommend it.

Yes, I can imagine. Don't plan to do it.

Can I change the screenshots and videos, like cut out some part of a screenshot, or include captions in a video, or combine the screenshot or video with other content, possibly under a different licence?

The CC licences give you all of these rights in allowing derivatives.

Understood.

Combining the content with commercial licences that have restrictions on sharing and reuse may create a conflicting scenario where you can't do that. For instance, some "royalty-free" licences on content (textures, models, sounds from library sites) require that you use technological restrictions to try to prevent users from extracting that content from a combined work. This is directly opposed to the clause of CC 4.0 licences that disallows that. You could make a video with such content, but you couldn't make a downloadable mod, or at least not one publishable on ContentDB.

I assume that by "combining" you mean adding something to screenshots and videos already made. OK, I'll keep that in mind. For now I can just plan not to do it.

Can I then still describe them as "Luanti screenshots and videos"?

The engine's LGPL 2.1+ licence does not say anything about when you can or can't.

The engine's licence does not, OK, but what about the licences of the visible and audible content you've mentioned earlier?

You could also accurately call a lot of screenshots "Minetest screenshots", probably even on releases that are named Luanti. Screenshots of forks like Freeminer or your own potential engine fork could also accurately be described as being screenshots of those games. I don't know of any law that places restrictions on naming things, not in a copyright context; you would have to know about some other applicable law about making false or misleading statements.

Well, this I plan to keep as simple as possible. If I play "Luanti", I'm going to call a screenshot "Luanti screenshot". If "Minetest", then "Minetest screenshot". It's important for me that the viewers of my content know what I publish. And, just so I remind, I don't plan to use any mods for now. That said, I still don't know whether the name "Luanti" is strictly synonymous with the name "Minetest" for any game's engine's version, or any other related content I might use…

Since attribution is a requirement for most content for Luanti, you would expect to have to attribute those works properly, including making statements about the nature of those works. For instance "This screenshot is of Minetest Game, a game for Luanti, (c) <years> the Minetest Game contributors".

What years?

There is no discrimination in Creative Commons licences about the place where the content is posted to. But you have to follow the terms of use (and other potentially applicable legal documents) of the website that you are using.

Understood.

YouTube only provides two licence options for licensing your content to them and onto further users (ref). All rights reserved, where technically users aren't even meant to download the video (would be against the terms of the media licence usually), or CC BY (I think CC BY 3.0 specifically). IANAL, however I would tell you that this is mostly fluff, and you can state your own licence in the video description. If you wanted to be stricter, then you could still upload to YouTube, but also somewhere else like your own website that you know isn't bound to their terms of service.

I'm not sure how exactly should I understand "being stricter", thus whether I should want it or not. So for now let's assume I don't plan it.

If in the future I decide to make the screenshots and videos part of a product or service that I would like to sell, can I do it? If so, what responsibilities do I have in such situation? What licences apply?

I have mentioned this incidentally previously, and the answer is yes for any licence unless it has non-commercial or no-derivatives restrictions.

So this should be covered by the licences of the content I would include in the screenshots and videos. So now I think we can simplify things, and we can assume I don't plan to include the screenshots and videos in any commercial product or service. Should I change my mind one day, I'll ask for any clarification separately.

To the best of my knowledge, currently I don't use any mods, or any non-default "content" whatsoever. (I'm using quotation marks because I don't know Luanti that much.) But if I start to use it in the future, will it change anything when it comes to the questions above?

Does any of the things above depend on the particular version of Luanti I use? Currently I use 5.1.1, but I may change it in the future.

Luanti can't realistically be used without additional content. It's like trying to drink out of an empty glass. If what you are saying is accurate and you are on 5.1.1 (which is over 5 years old! whereas 5.11.0 is only 2 months old), and playing a game without having installed anything extra, you must be playing Minetest Game which used to ship with the engine. The licences of that game apply; see the source code for the licence information.

As answered above, it depends entirely on the content licences, not the engine, as to how this will affect your future scenario.

So I don't know, how does it change the state of affairs? Is this a matter of the engine's licence's being different from GNU LGPL? Something different?

To be clear, I run the game with the command

Code: Select all

minetest

and running

Code: Select all

minetest --version

gives me

Code: Select all

Minetest 5.1.1 (Linux)
Using Irrlicht 1.8.4
BUILD_TYPE=None
RUN_IN_PLACE=0
USE_GETTEXT=1
USE_SOUND=1
USE_CURL=1
USE_FREETYPE=1
USE_LUAJIT=1
STATIC_SHAREDIR="/usr/share/games/minetest"

By the way, please let me know if there is a command that at least somehow facilitates knowing what licences apply for all the content a screenshot may contain. Does it depend solely on the packages I have installed? Are the licences listed in some files?

I was talking about "Luanti" since I thought it is the current state of things that should matter in my case, not what was before changing the name.

In general I do realize that the particular version I play may have something to do with licences, may require different licences. But it still feels to me a rather unrelated, orthogonal issue. If I ever upgrade to, say, 5.11.0, will I need to stop publishing screenshots? Or will I need to change the licence (given I can at all, which I don't know yet)? Or will there be nothing I need to do? What if I then downgrade back to 5.1.1?

I've also found viewtopic.php?t=29461, but I don't see how any information there could apply here.

The context of that thread is about "screenshot.png" files, which are files that are a screenshot of content (a mod or texture pack), and how to licence them, since they may contain other works. Since mods are conveyed to others just as screenshots on your blog or on a video site YouTube are, a lot of what is said there is relevant to copying. But that discussion is also lead by "REUSE", which is a standard for letting automatic systems know about the copyright info on each file, so that software projects can really easily reuse components - so the intent of copying might be quite different from your own.

"Copying" means…?

I hope I have at least introduced you to most of the ideas that are relevant here. Law is complicated at the best of times.

It is! Many thanks for that much details so quick!

I haven't covered some of the tangentially related topics like fair use (or in Australia, fair dealing), a concept only present in some countries. I can only speak to my superficial understanding of copyright law from America and Australia and not your own local circumstances.

Understood.

So now, in the end of your reply, I think that my goal is to smooth any rough edges of what I've just understood, and what I yet have to. I'd like to know the bare minimum what I need to do to start publishing. As for my particular confusions above, it would be great if you could answer them. If not, no problem, I understand it may take time which you might not have. Then, certainly you cannot know how legal things stand here in Poland, but maybe somebody else here can?

All in all, I think it should help to have an example. So, in general terms of course, can you say what should I do, or just consider doing if I wanted to post now the following screenshot on my blog? And what licences apply, or just could apply? Let's forget for a while about the platform and its terms of use. Assume I'm going to caption the screenshot just "Sunrise bridge".

If you cannot say that, how should I know what I should do? What packages inspect? What websites visit? What licences read? I can read licences, yes, if that's really the simplest way to go. I only need to know which ones…

sunrise-bridge-2025-04-11.png (439.74 KiB) Viewed 4573 times

[Mike12345]

I've asked this question on Open Source StackExchange (https://opensource.stackexchange.com/qu ... f-minetest). I welcome replies both here and there, where one prefers.

[TumeniNodes]

Although some may knock me for stating this, You're making this far more complicated than it needs to be for yourself.
There are plenty of other people who have already been doing videos, and posting pics of game play across multiple platforms with no issues.
As long as you ad the basic License related to Luanti and MTG in the descriptions, and just a short note that you do not own any of the random content (textures/mods/etc) and you are merely sharing your experience/enjoyment of the software, ..I think you'll be fine.
You're not attempting to claim anything other than sharing your videos and screenshots taken while playing.

Are licenses and legal matters complicated? Absolutely,
But it is also very complicated, and can be quite costly for people to scour the internet looking for violations of their licensed material (especially, the "little people")
Now, a large entity such as MS (regarding MC).. then you could have problems, because they pay people good money to hunt for this sort of thing.. ( and yet there are countless people posting videos and pics of MC gameplay everywhere, every day.. with no problems)

To sum it up, .. I think you're good t' go, you're stressing yourself in overthinking all of this.
Now, if you like specific/particular texture packs, or mods etc. all you need do is mention the creators name, and the name of their TP/Mod or whatever, and I think you'll find the vast majority of creators will be extremely pleased and grateful and give you a nice "thank you" for promoting their work.

On the aspect of "looking to sell" some product related to any of it, yeh.. then you're going to have some issues if you don't follow the licensing of whichever aspects you're looking to profit from.
.. but not related to having a YT channel or something which is monetized..
And besides, if someone doesn't like what you're doing, they'll put in a complaint, and then you can set to getting things sorted out.. (this is just how things work, and rarely go into a "legal court" situation ..unless you are intentionally trying to profit off other peoples work and especially claiming it as your own.

[Blockhead]

Since there has been a bit of a delay, I want to note that I have read your post Mike1235, however I've simply been struggling to get back to you on it. I thought I had partial progress saved as a draft, however if I look at that today it doesn't look like I have saved everything.

TumeniNodes is pretty accurate here. Monetised video content of Luanti is already pretty well established, e.g. Nathan Salapat (a.k.a Minetest/Luanti Videos), Richard Jefferies and so on. You are not at a big risk for infringement and you are already doing well in doing your research to try to comply.

[Exo]

tldr; just don’t use an no-derivative (and probably no-commercial) license that doesn’t allow ShareALike copying/redistribution. Use a license that is public domain like MIT or (L)GPL.

I haven't covered some of the tangentially related topics like fair use (or in Australia, fair dealing), a concept only present in some countries. I can only speak to my superficial understanding of copyright law from America and Australia and not your own local circumstances.

We don’t actually need to worry about fair use or fair dealing unless we’re dealing with content from Minetest/Luanti that is abusive(such as a video showcasing a mod/game that promotes sexual or abusive behavior) or illegal(like a video that uses Minetest/Luanti to express or show illegal acts/stunts).
Also:
(A): fair use just means that you use it without abusing it
(B): fair dealing is having limited use of a copyrighted content as long as it is “fair”(means that the content you might create from theirs doesn’t break laws or (won’t) have harmful content).
(C): Licensing gameplay of mods/other content from Minetest/Luanti should be under a public domain license, but if not, you will probably get you video taken down for proprietary licensing (or in some cases get into legal trouble).
(D): You don’t need to worry about licensing if you just use a public domain license like I said above or just don’t use a license for your videos, though it can be stolen(but very unlikely).

[Mike12345]

Although some may knock me for stating this, You're making this far more complicated than it needs to be for yourself.

Well, I won't knock, I agree I might. But I feel it's natural, I'm learning, going in the dark until I can get the essence of the whole thing.

There are plenty of other people who have already been doing videos, and posting pics of game play across multiple platforms with no issues.

As far as I agree with you, please note that I cannot know what their legal knowledge thereof is. I'd rather not blindly copy practices, of which I don't know whether they are good or bad, legal or illegal.

As long as you ad the basic License related to Luanti and MTG in the descriptions, and just a short note that you do not own any of the random content (textures/mods/etc) and you are merely sharing your experience/enjoyment of the software, ..I think you'll be fine.

What do you mean by "adding the basic license related to Luanti and MTG"?

Now, if you like specific/particular texture packs, or mods etc. all you need do is mention the creators name, and the name of their TP/Mod or whatever, and I think you'll find the vast majority of creators will be extremely pleased and grateful and give you a nice "thank you" for promoting their work.

Personally, I would always mention the creators of all the content I used! Moreover, I'd always say what I have changed myself. It's nothing special, I think, just the same I'd want in the case of my content (I'm speaking here generally, apart from any particular license I might use). However, I'm aware that such "using and crediting" doesn't need to feel right or enough to every creator out there, even if it feels right and enough to me. Some might have specific requirements as to the use of their content, which I'd ideally conform to.

And besides, if someone doesn't like what you're doing, they'll put in a complaint, and then you can set to getting things sorted out.. (this is just how things work, and rarely go into a "legal court" situation ..unless you are intentionally trying to profit off other peoples work and especially claiming it as your own.

Yes, I guess things work like that. But note that even if there isn't taken any legal action against me, it will be still about taking down of my content, about losing my time and effort put in creating the blog. Compliance is more important to me than starting the blog, but maybe there's a chance I can do both. As I've put it in the StackExchange question, "I don't want to [start the blog] knowing there's a 50% chance (i.e. it's random) that one day a lawyer will approach me and ask to take down all my content".

Since there has been a bit of a delay, I want to note that I have read your post Mike1235, however I've simply been struggling to get back to you on it. I thought I had partial progress saved as a draft, however if I look at that today it doesn't look like I have saved everything.

No problem, such things happen. Thanks for your time anyway!

TumeniNodes is pretty accurate here. Monetised video content of Luanti is already pretty well established, e.g. Nathan Salapat (a.k.a Minetest/Luanti Videos), Richard Jefferies and so on. You are not at a big risk for infringement and you are already doing well in doing your research to try to comply.

Good to have some names, I should check what's their approach to licensing.

tldr; just don’t use an no-derivative (and probably no-commercial) license that doesn’t allow ShareALike copying/redistribution. Use a license that is public domain like MIT or (L)GPL.

(D): You don’t need to worry about licensing if you just use a public domain license like I said above or just don’t use a license for your videos, though it can be stolen(but very unlikely).[/size]

I use no license already on my GitHub, as per https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/. In general, why should a content without a license be stolen, compared to the content with one? I understand "stealing" here as ascribing authorship, you mean the same?

I haven't covered some of the tangentially related topics like fair use (or in Australia, fair dealing), a concept only present in some countries. I can only speak to my superficial understanding of copyright law from America and Australia and not your own local circumstances.

We don’t actually need to worry about fair use or fair dealing unless we’re dealing with content from Minetest/Luanti that is abusive(such as a video showcasing a mod/game that promotes sexual or abusive behavior) or illegal(like a video that uses Minetest/Luanti to express or show illegal acts/stunts).

To be clear, I don't plan to publish any such content.

[TumeniNodes]

As long as you ad the basic License related to Luanti and MTG in the descriptions, and just a short note that you do not own any of the random content (textures/mods/etc) and you are merely sharing your experience/enjoyment of the software, ..I think you'll be fine.

What do you mean by "adding the basic license related to Luanti and MTG"

https://docs.luanti.org/for-creators/licensing/

add this somewhere viewable in your blog:
Complying with the License #

The code of both the Luanti engine and Minetest Game are licensed under LGPL 2.1+ free software license. Other components may be similarly licensed, however this document does not cover them. Note that this document is only intended for informational purposes, for the real legally binding terms you should read the LGPL 2.1+ license.

as for everything else I don't know what else to say or suggest, other than to give my own personal opinion, ..which is "just do it" and learn as you go.
I am fairly certain you're not going to end up in court or a prison over it..
But the choice is yours, and only you can decide your best approach.
you appear to be quite conscious, and thorough, I think you'll be fine.
Good luck

[Mike12345]

Thanks! I'm going to use my own judgment, like I do with everything.

To everybody, I plan to post here a summary of what I understand, as soon as I get the general idea of this all. For the time being, I still welcome your thoughts.

[Mike12345]

I'm posting the summary of what I understand so far.

I now think that all the questions from my first post, and all my doubts so far, could be summarized as "if I want to create such a blog, what can I legally do, and what am I legally obliged to do?"

Before I answer the question, a few general things.

• By "content" I mean "screenshots and videos".
• As for the term "licensing", it is ambiguous to me. It touches topics, of which I don't know how broad they are, and even how they are related. Two main such topics seem to be what content is and isn't licensed by default, and what content can and can't be licensed with particular licenses. These topics are surely too broad to be properly addressed in this single thread, but still I think I need at least an overall understanding of them. As of now, I don't know what I don't know, and so I appreciate any thoughts.
• Just to mention, I have read GNU LGPL 2.1. To say the least, I didn't understand everything. But apart from the understanding of the text itself, I'm still not sure whether I should at all be concerned about this license or not.
• As for the problem of selling my content, I would still love to have it addressed in details. But I'm worried that the details are too complex, "too detailed" for my general understanding of all this. I then think, as I've said already, that we can omit the problem for now, just for clarity. If I ever have a need to get back to it in the future, I will just ask again.
• Just a free thought, I would like to read some standard, a manual, that would tell me exactly what is and isn't allowed, however abstract it might sound. In one PDF, neatly divided into sections, and so on. Sadly I don't expect it to exist. Even if one could call "copyright law" such a standard, I don't know whether this is possible for me to have even a shallow understanding of it before losing my motivation to start the blog.

So now regarding the question from the beginning of this post, what do I know about what I can legally do, and what I am legally obliged to do?

1. I treat my content as "creative work", as meant by https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/. Also, I perceive my work as "creative", regardless of any legal usage of this word.
2. I don't know whether I need to know, or even care, whether my content will be "derivative work" or not (a term mentioned by @Blockhead). As I'm mentioning below, I don't plan to provide any license, so here I assume I don't need to care about this term.
3. I'm not sure whether my content will be under any license at all, but I assume it won't, as per https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/.
4. I'm not sure whether I will need to provide a license for my content. As per https://choosealicense.com/no-permission/, I assume I won't. On the contrary, @Exo said below that "[l]icensing gameplay of mods/other content from Minetest/Luanti should be under a public domain license (…)". Also, what @Blockhead has written, "[y]ou could let such images persist in their default 'all rights reserved' state if you wanted (and your jurisdiction has this as a default, and with exceptions in some jurisdictions for fair use or fair dealing)". This agrees with choosealicense.com if we omit the part about jurisdiction, and I'm going to do it now, since I don't know what my jurisdiction (in Poland) says about it.
5. I don't know whether I could provide a license for my content. I assume I could. But I don't plan to, at least initially. From what I understand, any license shall always give permissions, and never take them, in relation to the state when there is no license. And all I need now is that my content be viewed by others. If I ever want others to do anything more with it, I'll think about asking separately.
6. Regarding the point above, if I wanted to provide a license for my content, I wouldn't know which licenses I could provide, and which ones I couldn't.
7. I still haven't read the terms of service of GitHub and YouTube, the two services I plan to use for publishing my content. I'm planning to read them.
8. I don't know what I need to do regarding particular textures that will be visible, and particular sounds that will be audible within my screenshots and videos. Currently I don't plan to use any mods. This means I will use the "barest" version of Luanti (Minetest) that there is. So, I assume I don't need to do anything about the textures and sounds, e.g. I don't need to include any notices.
9. I don't know what I would need to do if I wanted to alter the screenshots and videos, like changing the colors to black and white, or adding captions. Regardless of any legal requirements, I of course plan to notice they have been altered by myself, but that's about it, I think.
10. As for the name of the game, I will use the name "Minetest" if I play Minetest, and "Luanti" if I play Luanti. Currently minetest --version calls my installation "Minetest", and so that's my choice. However, I still don't know whether it makes any difference in the context of this thread, especially that there is this "Minetest Game", mentioned by @Blockhead.
11. Similarly, I don't know whether it matters or not in the context of this thread what version of the game I'm playing. As per all the information in this thread, and my common sense, I assume it doesn't matter.
12. I don't know of what significance should be the addition of the "Complying with the License" note, mentioned by @TumeniNodes. I don't plan to add it since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with my content.

To sum up this summary post, I'd be glad if anyone could address at least some of my "don't-knows" from the list above. What's even more important, please tell me if some of my assumptions are not correct.

---

PS. Just so you know, I'm closer to start the blog than I was at the beginning of this thread! Even if there are many "don't-knows" listed above, it's perhaps because I want to be as clear as possible, not because I (i.e. we) haven't done any progress.

[Nathan.S]

For what it's worth, which may not be much, I have a semi-popular youtube channel and associated website, and I've been creating content about Luanti/Minetest for close to ten years. I've never provided any license information for the content I'm reviewing/showcasing, although I do provide the link to the source, so somebody could find the license information if they were so inclined.
A small portion of my videos are monetized and outside of a few videos containing music that youtube auto-detected as being copy written I've never had any issues. Probably worth noting that all the content I've shown is under some sort of opensource license, which would give me permission to 'use' it as long as I didn't claim ownership of it.
I don't offer this as legal advice, but there are plenty of people on Youtube creating videos about close sourced games and they monetize that content, so I would expect it to be under fair use, although I'm not familiar with any other countries views on fair use.
My videos are mostly licensed as CC-Attribution, but I doubt if I would even know if anybody was using clips without properly crediting me, and I'm not really too worried about it either.
On my website I do have a small legal page where I do list the licensing for some images used on the site, such as the Luanti logo. If I were to be using a background texture I'd list that as well.

[Mike12345]

Thanks, Nathan, for your reply so quickly after my asking!

Probably worth noting that all the content I've shown is under some sort of opensource license, which would give me permission to 'use' it as long as I didn't claim ownership of it.

You mean the "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License" that's mentioned in the footer of your website?

On my website I do have a small legal page where I do list the licensing for some images used on the site, such as the Luanti logo. If I were to be using a background texture I'd list that as well.

Yes, I've seen that page. I'm considering including similar statements (much as I know nothing about their legal significance). You mean a background texture for the website?

[Nathan.S]

The CC Attribution 4.0 license is for the original content I've created, rather than the licenses of the individual mods/games.

I'll be honest I have no idea if my 'legal' page has any legal standing in court of law, but if nothing else it shows that I acted in good faith. Sorry I should have been more clear, yes a background image for the website, similar to how the forums here use the light stone texture on the sides.

[Mike12345]

OK, @Nathan.S, understood.

To focus our effort a bit, currently the most important from my summary above seems to be what I should do with the textures and sounds present in my content. Having (finally!) looked at the Wikipedia article about Luanti, I can now see the distinction between Luanti and Minetest Game. As said above, I play 5.1.1, and as Minetest 5.8.0's release notes tells us Minetest Game is not the default only from 5.8.0, I assume the game I play is Minetest Game. On Minetest Game's page, in the section "License", there stands "CC-BY-SA-3.0 for media". So I assume that this license will apply for the textures and sounds in my content.

Mystery solved. I must admit @Blockhead has written about it earlier, namely,

Luanti can't realistically be used without additional content. It's like trying to drink out of an empty glass. If what you are saying is accurate and you are on 5.1.1 (which is over 5 years old! whereas 5.11.0 is only 2 months old), and playing a game without having installed anything extra, you must be playing Minetest Game which used to ship with the engine. The licences of that game apply; see the source code for the licence information.

but apparently I didn't understand it until the puzzle has been put together in my head. Now I can continue to reading the license!

[Mike12345]

I have read CC-BY-SA-3.0. I'm going to list below those of my last don't-knows and assumptions that have changed after that.

• I assume my content will be "derivative work", which means "adaptation" in the license's terms. Since the license makes use of this term, it should matter for me to classify my content as such.
• I assume I need to provide a license for my content, as the license doesn't explicitly allow using no license. It lists allowed licenses for "adaptations". I haven't yet made a choice. In general I aim for simplicity. Depending on the license chosen, I might need to provide either it itself, or a URI for it.
• I assume that particular textures that will be visible, and particular sounds that will be audible within my screenshots and videos will be licensed with CC-BY-SA-3.0. At least that's what I understand by the term "media" on Minetest Game's page. Naturally, if I ever use a mod, it may require the use of a different license.

Beyond what's above, to the extent I can understand the license, I'm making the following observations.

• I need to mention the authors of the "media" that's in my content. This seems a difficult task, since I don't see any authors mentioned on Minetest Game's page. I assume it will be enough to provide a note that, to the best of my knowledge, the Minetest Game's page doesn't list the authors, but anyway I acknowledge there must be some.
• I don't know if there is, to quote the license, a "URI (…) that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work". If any, that might be the URI for Minetest Game's page. To me it's fair to provide it irrespectively of this requirement, so I'm going to do it. Let it be https://content.luanti.org/packages/Min ... test_game/.
• I need to provide, to quote the license, "a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Adaptation". I'm not sure what should it be, but I assume it will be enough to say that my screenshots and videos use content, like textures and sounds, that is provided by Minetest Game.

I have a problem with section 4(d). The earlier section 3(b) says that in general I have the right to make "adaptations" (as defined by the license). The first sentence of section 4(d) seems to say that I don't have this right in some cases, but the second sentence seems to say I do have it anyway. So this section seems to be self-contradictory.

Should it indeed be that I don't have this right in some cases, there would be the problem that this section is too general for me to discover whether any content I might publish could make such a case. I cannot know all the jurisdictions where my content would be, to quote the section, "prejudicial to the Original Author's honor and reputation". As such, I assume there are no reasonable means for me to prevent myself from accidentally breaching the license here. And if it happened, most probably I wouldn't even know about it.

Providing I'm not that familiar with law, my assumptions above might be incorrect. But they are right to the best of my knowledge.

To sum it all up, I'd be glad if someone

• could elaborate on what section 4(d) really means,
• could tell me if I'm wrong anywhere.

---

UPDATE. I've asked about section 4(d) on Law StackExchange (https://law.stackexchange.com/questions ... r-reputati).