Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

You can talk about almost anything that you want to on this board.

Moderator: Moderators

tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by tepples »

A discussion about the unsustainability of ROM hacks and fan games led to discussion about alternative shared universes to replace those owned by Nintendo and other proprietary software publishers. But the topic appears to have been taken over by a digression about how a morality-preserving copyright license could interfere with the practicality of such a universe.

In this post, 8bitMicroGuy offered to release his video games under a permissive license with the added condition that no derivative works contain "porn" or "blasphemy".
In [url=http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=187041#p187041]this post[/url], 8bitMicroGuy wrote:I wouldn't like any strong language, obscene blood/gore, blasphemy or Satanic elements. The reason of this discrimination is that I want all Google searches, when a kid fan of my assets searches, show clean family-friendly and Christian-friendly content. I'm sick and tired of the impurity of everything, starting from the anthropomorphic fandom. Kids deserve a clean environment for anthropomorphic self-expression like I did when I was young.
As others pointed out, this would be incompatible with all licenses that conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines or the nearly identical Open Source Definition. In particular, a ban on "blasphemy" would violate section 5's non-discrimination guarantee. Thus it would conflict with reciprocal licenses that require all derivative works to be free, such as "copyleft" licenses for computer programs and "ShareAlike" licenses for cultural works. Furthermore, "porn" and "blasphemy" would be hard to even define in such a way that licensees can understand their rights.

The so-called rule 34 of the Internet asserts the existence of fan-made porn of every notable subject. Some brand owners claim harm from the presence of sexually explicit results in web searches for their brands, especially searches performed by children for brands marketed to children. The porn ban clause is intended to reserve an author's right to assert legal claims against those who produce or distribute porn related to a work's scenario and characters. But is it "indecent" to show a man's bare knees? It is to Muslims, who believe a man must be covered at least from navel through knees. This makes Nintendo's Punch-Out!! indecent. For a more recent homebrew example, the Mojon Twins' Cheril the Goddess has been called questionable.

Established religions also differ in their beliefs. For two and a half years, I studied the Bible with a Christian denomination that taught that YHWH the Father and Jesus the Son are separate persons, with Jesus the first created being, mighty but not Almighty, and the Holy Spirit not a person but the mechanism through which the Father interacts with the physical world. It also taught day-age theory, that the "days" in Genesis 1 are metaphorical, with durations thousands to billions of years long. And to them, the human soul is unconscious in the grave and completely destroyed in the lake of fire, not subject to eternal conscious torment. Is that "blasphemy"? Another denomination teaches that Jesus's surrogate mother Mary is the "queen of heaven", encouraging believers to pray for her intercession, and that an alcoholic beverage actually becomes Jesus's blood rather than representing it.

An incompatibility between a copyleft license on the engine and a morality-preserving license on the assets was perceived. This can be solved in a way that parallels how the Doom engine is separated from the WAD files that it displays. If the engine is under a free software license, and the assets are under a (technically non-free) morality-preserving license, a linker script can specify separate memory areas for the engine and assets to make them an aggregate. If there is asset-specific code, such as enemy behaviors, the author of a copylefted engine can grant an exception to link asset-specific code to engine code through a controlled interface. But elements under a ShareAlike license, which requires all derivatives to be free cultural works, would still need to be kept separate from elements under a morality-preserving license. Something like a crossover fighting game still couldn't combine the two.
User avatar
dougeff
Posts: 3078
Joined: Fri May 08, 2015 7:17 pm

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by dougeff »

The restrictions seem vague, and relative.

One man's porn is another man's art.

From location to location, standards vary...even in the same location at different times. (Historical)

I can't imagine what future generations will consider offensive. It literally could mean anything, or nothing, in 1000 years.
nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES
User avatar
Myask
Posts: 965
Joined: Sat Jul 12, 2014 3:04 pm

Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy are a bad idea

Post by Myask »

This makes Nintendo's Punch-Out!! indecent.
King Hippo has always been about using his decency to force him to expose his weak point: his belly. Nice example, though, highlighting the relativism inherent in these definitions.
a ban on "blasphemy" would violate section 5's non-discrimination guarantee.

a morality-preserving license
A ban on "pornography" and "blasphemy" is immoral and I oppose it in the strongest terms. I'd do advocate boycott of any product or company incorporating such license terms.

As a Pope[ss] of Discord I declare such blasphemy and pornography bans to be blasphemous, individually.

@dougeff: US obscenity guidelines are explicitly location-relative, per Miller v. California. It's a travesty. On the other hand, it does seem at least a bit fact-based, as with that case where the witch-hunting failed because, in fact, Utah has the highest porn subscription rate of all states (and thus "acceptable" to local sensibilities contra the prosecution's argument).
8bitMicroGuy
Posts: 314
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:23 pm
Location: Croatia

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

Here's a good definition of pornography on deviantART. This means that the player's sprite in Binding of Isaac (I don't support the game, I think it's awful) is not pornographic because there's no private parts (well, as much as I've seen; except for the intro). Likewise, all anthro cartoons you see on the TV and on deviantART from famous artists like phation are clean even though they don't have any clothes, but it's because they don't have any private parts either. Now, I don't have to explain what IS porn because when you search for porn, you know exactly what you're looking for. If this hasn't been enough, look at what this girl has to say about all of this.

Also, relativism will get you guys nowhere. With relativism, logical fallacies are made to do things that would be immoral to a child. Now, don't jump to the conclusion that I'm using a slippery slope fallacy because it's a fact that one sin leads to another. Now, I'm not gonna go into theology, but I'm pretty sure that everyone knows that relativism has its issues because of which porn can easily be accepted through logical fallacies and using those magic words "discrimination", "bigot", "intolerant", "equality". Basically, if porn isn't in childrens' cartoons and comics and video games, it shouldn't be in my game or anywhere near/on/in my characters. That is my point.

Back to the licensing issues, I'd like my game to be commercial, but allow everyone to reverse engineer it and mod it if they have the license. If there's a demo version, and they didn't buy the full version, they can only have the rights to the demo. If a user without a license is at a friend's house or over TeamViewer or something; basically on one PC, and that friend has a license, it should be legal for them to share rights. Same how you don't need to have a license to play a PSX game or an NES game with the owner of the physical copy. Multple users on one copy or one user having multiple copies running, but multiple users and multiple copies is not good if not everyone has the license. The game may be only distributed only to those with the respective license of the distributed version. The license may be transferable in a way of lending and borrowing the physical copy or a DLL file that's the license. Some of my anti-P&B-licensed characters will be in the game, but the game will allow other characters to be in the game too. Now, which licenses of these other characters would be incompatible with this? The ones of Club Penguin characters and Floraverse characters?

I'd really need someone to write an EULA for me.
zzo38
Posts: 1096
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:46 pm

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by zzo38 »

You say "The reason of this discrimination is that I want all Google searches..." and I think that doing this way probably isn't going to help to fix that problem anyways.

I think that tepples makes many good points. When making Free Software, I will accept the Doom way as a compromise if someone want to do that though.
8bitMicroGuy wrote:Basically, if porn isn't in childrens' cartoons and comics and video games, it shouldn't be in my game or anywhere near/on/in my characters. That is my point.
I agree with you (as I would hate to see such porn too), but still I would do prefer not to put into the license like that.

Also, it is unclear to me if such a license would even do such things, because it is not necessarily even a mod of the existing game. Many similar thing can be make and it just becomes very confusing because there is so much of copyright and stuff and to see what exactly it applies to, and so on.

I would refuse to include these things if I make a cross-over fighting game too, prefering to use only FOSS, but I would allow other people to make their own plugins whatever they want, if they want to do, I don't care. (This is hypothetical. Of course I am not making a cross-over fighting game too.)

But I can think of another idea too, which is that the official wiki for a project can have guidelines not to link to pornography and so on. This not only will stop it from preventing compatibility with Free Software but also to avoid legal fees and avoid the problems with ambiguities and so on, since the wiki administrator can just to do such thing, it work much better, I would think. (But, it is my opinion.)
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
User avatar
NovaSquirrel
Posts: 483
Joined: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:35 pm
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Contact:

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by NovaSquirrel »

8bitMicroGuy wrote:Now, which licenses of these other characters would be incompatible with this? The ones of Club Penguin characters and Floraverse characters?
For Floraverse specifically, the artist also has an adult comic they draw that uses the same characters and world, and you can get to it from the main comic indirectly with a few clicks (comic → twitter for the comic → the artist's twitter → link to both comics), so you wouldn't be using it at all if you're that worried about that kind of thing.
zzo38 wrote:Also, it is unclear to me if such a license would even do such things, because it is not necessarily even a mod of the existing game
With how many companies freely violate the GPL I think that makes it pretty clear that licenses do a horrible job at actually preventing anything, and unless you actually go through all the cost and effort to sue someone then it doesn't do anything.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by tepples »

Software Freedom Conservancy has taken the initiative to sue GPL violators. But I'm not quite as sure that there exists enough of a movement around free non-program game assets to sustain such an organization.
User avatar
Bregalad
Posts: 8055
Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:49 pm
Location: Divonne-les-bains, France

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by Bregalad »

I'd do advocate boycott of any product or company incorporating such license terms.
Then you probably want to boycott Nintendo and their NES.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by tepples »

Boycott Nintendo's franchises? Likely, given what went on in the topic from which this was soft split.

Boycott the NES? That ship sailed when the patents expired and Lexmark v. Static Control Components (2004) established the legality of things like CIClone.
8bitMicroGuy
Posts: 314
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:23 pm
Location: Croatia

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

NovaSquirrel wrote:
8bitMicroGuy wrote:Now, which licenses of these other characters would be incompatible with this? The ones of Club Penguin characters and Floraverse characters?
For Floraverse specifically, the artist also has an adult comic they draw that uses the same characters and world, and you can get to it from the main comic indirectly with a few clicks (comic → twitter for the comic → the artist's twitter → link to both comics), so you wouldn't be using it at all if you're that worried about that kind of thing.
Floraverse has impure things? I hadn't known! Alright, no more Floraverse for me.
zzo38 wrote:I would refuse to include these things if I make a cross-over fighting game too, prefering to use only FOSS, but I would allow other people to make their own plugins whatever they want, if they want to do, I don't care. (This is hypothetical. Of course I am not making a cross-over fighting game too.)

But I can think of another idea too, which is that the official wiki for a project can have guidelines not to link to pornography and so on. This not only will stop it from preventing compatibility with Free Software but also to avoid legal fees and avoid the problems with ambiguities and so on, since the wiki administrator can just to do such thing, it work much better, I would think. (But, it is my opinion.)
So if someone makes a GPL/ShareAlike licensed character, does that force all other characters to be under that license? I wouldn't like that. Every character will have a separate license and the game will have the license as I explained, but without the anti-P&B because it seems to be better to not cause legal issues.
zzo38
Posts: 1096
Joined: Mon Feb 07, 2011 12:46 pm

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by zzo38 »

8bitMicroGuy wrote:So if someone makes a GPL/ShareAlike licensed character, does that force all other characters to be under that license?
I don't know, but it might need the game code to be licensed under the GPL-compatible license, and it is probably a good idea to license the game program code under a GPL-compatible license anyways, even if some of the assets (such as characters) aren't. I will not complain at least, if the code is GPL-compatible (but if I wrote the program, I would distribute it with only the GPL-compatible assets included).
Every character will have a separate license and the game will have the license as I explained, but without the anti-P&B because it seems to be better to not cause legal issues.
I am fine with that; I do not have a problem with that. Don't put any anti-P&B clause in the program code, but for characters and for wiki you can do if you really insist, I suppose (like what tepples mentioned with Doom, I suppose).
(Free Hero Mesh - FOSS puzzle game engine)
8bitMicroGuy
Posts: 314
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:23 pm
Location: Croatia

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

zzo38 wrote:
8bitMicroGuy wrote:So if someone makes a GPL/ShareAlike licensed character, does that force all other characters to be under that license?
I don't know, but it might need the game code to be licensed under the GPL-compatible license, and it is probably a good idea to license the game program code under a GPL-compatible license anyways, even if some of the assets (such as characters) aren't. I will not complain at least, if the code is GPL-compatible (but if I wrote the program, I would distribute it with only the GPL-compatible assets included).
Every character will have a separate license and the game will have the license as I explained, but without the anti-P&B because it seems to be better to not cause legal issues.
I am fine with that; I do not have a problem with that. Don't put any anti-P&B clause in the program code, but for characters and for wiki you can do if you really insist, I suppose (like what tepples mentioned with Doom, I suppose).
If I license the characters under anti-P&B, then they should not be affected by GPL.

Now, the problem is what if Let's Plays and screenshots are made of the game while playing with GPL characters. Would that make the Let's Plays and screenshots GPL? If yes, then that means legal issue because anti-P&B license is incompatible with that. Same goes with Club Penguin. Now, I'm not sure if an external Club Penguin character that someone makes under ShareAlike, which is not bundled with the game; affects the game's license or not. I hope not. I also hope it doesn't affect my characters.
tepples
Posts: 22705
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:12 pm
Location: NE Indiana, USA (NTSC)
Contact:

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by tepples »

No matter how you license to fans in general, the option remains open to negotiate a license directly between an upstream author (you) and a reuser. It's called a "dual license" or "selling exceptions".
User avatar
pubby
Posts: 583
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2016 11:15 am

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by pubby »

If I was a furry porn artist and I heard that some guy was releasing a game with a "NO PORN; ONLY CHRISTIAN IMAGES" license, you can damn well be sure I'd pump out as many furry porn parodies as possible. The Streisand effect is real and you have to respect it.
8bitMicroGuy
Posts: 314
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:23 pm
Location: Croatia

Re: Software licenses that ban porn and blasphemy

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

pubby wrote:If I was a furry porn artist and I heard that some guy was releasing a game with a "NO PORN; ONLY CHRISTIAN IMAGES" license, you can damn well be sure I'd pump out as many furry porn parodies as possible. The Streisand effect is real and you have to respect it.
Aaaaand I'd sue you and petition that furry porn gets banned from Google searches. :D

Edit: And if anyone needs respect, it should be children's eyes. Furry porn appears when searching for a simple term such as "furry" or "anthro" or "anthropomorphic" or just "Sonic and Tails". Google searches must be clean for all families.
Post Reply