License clarification question
Tav
Posts: 46
Hi, I'm new and I'm probably posting this wrong and I fully expect an admin to remove this post, but I'd like to clarify some confusion on my part. Some people who post their freebies here do not mention if they agree to commercial renders. My general assumption so far has been that if they say nothing, then the default rules of DAZ apply (commercial renders OK, no redistribution). However, later in the readmes, I noticed I might have been wrong. Having to go through every single readme after downloading, looking for license info, is a hassle and sometimes there is no info at all. Is it fair to assume the default I mentioned before? If not, could we stick a rule post that explains it and maybe asks the posters to mention the licensing in their posts? I found myself downloading files only to delete them a moment later because of this issue.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Any freebie that you actually down load by "purchasing" it through the Daz store carries the normal Daz 3d EULA.
3rd party freebies, ie freebies offered by other members, it is entirely up to them as to what licenses they use. It is nothing to do with Daz, and Daz cannot dictate how they license them.
If you are really worried the best way of dealing with it, in all honesty, is to not use Free content in Commercial projects.
Thanks for the response. I suppose the "freepository" tells everyone to mention restrictions when they post, just not everone does that. Still I would have a followup question - if there is absolutely no license info whatsoever in the post, hosting site or file itself, is it "unrestricted use" by default? Does anyone know the answer?
NO if they have not given any details, by default you have to assume that it is fully restricted for personal use only.
We do request in the "Welcome to the Freepository" thread that they do include a note of any restrictions in their post, but it is a request rather than an actual rule.
I have always had a very open EULA in my readme, but I know others are more restrictive.
Mine say
In order to be allow this in my eula I have to make sure that the materials I use to produce my freebies are equally open, so I actually buy texture packs to use to make freebies.
BTW I am now going to move this thread out of the freebie forum, as that is fo offers of freebies only, with the exception of the one request thread at the top of the forum. You will find it in the Commons.
Thanks, I figured it's not the right place for it. Your answer was very informative, might I suggest that you add it to your "welcome to the freepository" thread? It might be helpful to newcommers like me that are looking for freebies.
I will check with the forum team and see if they think it is a good idea.
I've been working on a sci fi comic I intend someday to publish, and originally had TONS of freebie assets in use. Then I started noticing the personal use only in most of the readmes, so my policy now is to CAREFULLY go over any info I can before I get a freebie I intend to use in the comic, and in a few cases I've even contacted the artist to get permission from them. My general policy though is not to use freebies for my commercial stuff, especially if there's uncertainty on the usage rights, or in some cases no info at all.
I guess that's the safest way. I'm in a slightly better situation, since I'm making a 2D game for Patreon and that isn't really considered strictly commercial as far as I know, even though some see it that way. Still, I'm checking all the readmes and so on just in case, but if I miss something, I should still be ok since it will be a free game, that's only given to patrons earlier.
It is absolutely the opposite. The default is if there is no mention of rights, then the right stay with the creator. Content creators license their products to the end user, we grant certain rights and most the time only certain rights. . If we don't grant them then you don't have them. That is the default. So if there is any uncertainty, you should not use them in a commercial game.
Yeah, the #1 rule about content is that you need a license to use it. If you don't have a copy of a license, then you cannot use it, not even for personal use. We take for granted that if someone published a freebie that you can use it at least for personal use. But if there's no license, you can't use it at all, not even for personal use. I know this because it's the same laws for programming. Someone can post code online in a blog for example. You can see it, but unless they post a license, you cannot use it.
I usually contact the author if there is no license and I want to use it. Most people are happy that you want to use their stuff and will say you can use it, even commercially. I've had people ask me about my own freebies (mine are essentially public domain) so it's common practice to ask even when they have a license. And yes, you have to check every single product. Every morph, every pose, every character, everything you obtain. At least on sharecg, there's a section you have to fill in with the license restrictions when you publish something.
One weird situation I've been in is fan products. I made a product that looked like the female judge dredd outfit. I only did a render that I posted in one of the competitions here and never released the outfit. Someone wanted to use the product itself. I said no because I don't own the rights to Judge Dredd. You'll find many products on sale both here and other sites that even if they give you the rights to use something, they may not be the copyright holders and you still can't use it. Fan art is usually ok as long as you don't profit from it. It's good advertizing for the copyright holders. They'll just give you a cease and desist if they want you to take it down and those are easily resolved. But where they draw a limit is where you start a business from it. This is what happened with the Star Trek fan film Axanar (which is really great), but they were funding their business with it. But the problem with the fan products is that they don't even mention it's a fan product. Someone who likes a character for example and uses it, but is not aware of the original intellectual property will get burned.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. Nothing in my comment is legal advice. If you want legal advice, seek a lawyer.
You should get rights clearance for every asset you use. I don't believe indirect funding vs. commercial usage has ever been tested in court, but I think its a very murky area since you are profiting from the use of the material in a lteral sense. Even if you argue "My Patreon money goes toward buying pizza, not making my games!" a legal argument could be made that the income is still a benefit/profit for you. Better safe than sorry.
I have made a separate directory for freebies to help avoid using freebies in commercial renders. I wish I had made the directory sooner, as I have a lot of freebies from when I first started downloading 3D content littered throughout my main directory. It's a pain to have to go back through my main directory and separate them out - so I wish I had made the directory sooner. But keeping them separate is good, imo and might save me some headaches later.
EDITED
I downloaded hundreds of assets (all freebies) and I suppose I can double check each one that I'm actually going to use. Most of the stuff I got is either from this forum, renderosity, sharecg (under specific license searching) or deviantart. Sometimes they are better than the stuff you can buy, for example the free hair by Kayleyss looks better than a lot of paid products. Deviantart can be tricky, but I guess if someone says "go ahead" or "use it" or "do what you want with it", that's written permission? I'd think so. For example this file https://forged3dx.deviantart.com/art/Cigarette-forged3DX-697543535 - the author writes "download it, use it". The situation I'm also unsure about is when they write what you CAN'T do in the readme, but nothing about what you can, thus implying you can do anything else. Right? It's always safer to err on the side of caution, but all that legal stuff can be confusing. I believe that if someone posts their work as "free asset", then that at least constitutes some ground for usage unless expressly prohibited. And if they post something as a free asset, mention no restrictions, and then have a problem with it, that is malice in my opinion. Still, it's not about what I believe. Anyway I'm getting confirmations when in doubt, though apparently the person from the link above got their account suspended so I can't get that.
It also specifically says it can't be used commercially.
Generally.
No, no, no. What it says is "Download it, use it, link me in the final render" (emphasis added). So linking in any distributed final renders is a condition of use.
Further, check the license at the side. The work is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Since the author doesn't further unrestrict the use of the item anywhere I can see, you can only use this for non-commericial works, and only with attribution.
On the other end of the scale, look at one of my freebies. http://fav.me/dbm64v0
The linked license is Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License because DeviantArt does not allow side-linking anything less restrictive. But you see in the main body of the text that I have added "No attribution required." So you can generally do whatever at all you like with it.
You need to pay close attention to what is actually written on freebie downloads.
In case of the hair I was unsure and asked for his permission.
As for the cigarette and generally Deviantart - thank you, this is very helpful, I almost never use Devaintart and I never noticed the license text on the bottom! Though I looked through a few more and not all pages seem to have that license bit. You just saved me the time required to find a way to contact that artist, I'll be deleting their files now.
Anyway when I read my previous post back, it sounded rude in my head. If it was, I'm sorry.
Sorry for the double post, I wasn't sure if quoting in edit notifies the quotee.
It took me a day, but I decided to follow your advice partially - I went through every single free asset I have and deleted those that did not have clear information. For others that only have info e.g. on the file page in sharecg, I saved a copy of that page. Whef, lots of work. I skipped that for Pusey/Wilmap because it's very clear for all those assets on the website. Still there are some bits that confuse me. For example DigiDotz (great freebies btw) usually has the line "You are free to use in commericial and non-commercial renders only" in documentation, but in some documents it was replaced by "You may not redistribute the the files in this product or files derived from this product in any way other than commercial and noncommercial artistic rendering/renders". That's the same, thing, just written differently, right?
That's some nice skydomes you got there, but I still haven't learned how to make a skydome look good and emit light at the same time. I just started though :) Right now I'm amazed at how good ghost lights make everything look and how the Linda Ponytail kills my GTX970.
Yeah, those mean the same thing. They both say you can make renders for whatever you want but not give away the files from the package.
You have to play with tonemapping a lot, or render the scene and sky apart and stack them on top of each other. Unfortunately like in the real world it tends to be difficult to expose both a sky and a main scene nicely at the same time.
I found the answer in this thread: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/825818/ - pretty helpful