Is Releasing a Mod with Copyright Music Prohibited in the forums?

[HolyWinter]

I'm curious of this.
As a mod is it alright?
Must it be Royalty Free?

Thanks for any posts that may enlighten me on this.

[1000101]

Like anywhere in the world (both physical and digital), as long as you have the legal right to redistribute the assets be it music, art, software, source code, etc there is no problem.  If you do not, then you can not.

[Admiral Obvious]

The likely answer is no.

It's unlikely anyone will stop you here, but the best bet is that you shouldn't.

Copyright/Royalties aren't stuff to be messed with. If you want to use copyrighted stuff, you can, so long as you don't publish it here, or anywhere really, without going through the usual legal avenues.

[Mightyrick1]

Copyright is tricky. It's certainly not in the realm of possibilities that you will be able to get away with it, it's not like the FBI or anything is scanning every single game forum for copyright infringement. That said, I still wouldn't recommend it. I have a music mod, but the only reason I made it was that the rightful owner of the music actually joked about having it modded in the game, so getting permission to use it was pretty easy. I wouldn't have considered making it a mod otherwise, because it's always better to not infringe on copyright if you have the choice.

There are some exceptions however, for example : I'm pretty sure you can use the Endless Space soundtrack as long as you provide credit on the mod page itself, wether you think the Endless Space soundtrack is a good fit for Rimworld is up to you. You can always try searching the internet to see if you have permission to use something or not, and despite the fact that you are probably able to get away with it, I wouldn't recommend doing it without permission.

[HolyWinter]

Thanks a million guys!

This will help me weigh my options available to me.

As long as I can obtain permission and typically give credit where it is due then and usually only then can I use copyright.

[Admiral Obvious]

Thanks a million guys!

This will help me weigh my options available to me.

As long as I can obtain permission and typically give credit where it is due then and usually only then can I use copyright.

Yup. The easiest way is to just ask the author of whatever you are trying to use if you can use whatever you want.

Most of the time, unless they are a major corporation, they will say yes, provided credit is given, where credit is due. Same holds true for mods in general. You tweak someone's mod, and republish it, you're supposed to give the original mod author credit.

[Reaper]

I am no lawyer but I believe you can use anything with a non-commercial license like creative commons or gnu Most stuff you can use in this way is marked as such.
Now on ad revenue depending on the license it may or may not be considered profit so I would avoid using anything that pays you back for ads.
Just do as the author tells you your allowed to do and you will have no problems.

[Fluffy (l2032)]

That does raise some interesting questions. The RimWorld EULA basically gives Ludeon the right to redistribute and/or sell any and all parts of all mods created for RimWorld. So, whose responsibility is it when a mod includes content that is not public domain, or one that has a share-alike clause? Should I make sure all content in my mods is allowed to be used by Ludeon, or is it Ludeon's responsibility?

[HolyWinter]

That does raise some interesting questions. The RimWorld EULA basically gives Ludeon the right to redistribute and/or sell any and all parts of all mods created for RimWorld. So, whose responsibility is it when a mod includes content that is not public domain, or one that has a share-alike clause? Should I make sure all content in my mods is allowed to be used by Ludeon, or is it Ludeon's responsibility?

You've kind of peaked my interest with this. Keep me posted if you find your answers?

[Mightyrick1]

You raise an interesting point Fluffy, I believe we saw a part of this when Valve tried to introduce paid mods, and I think that the responsibility lies with the developer once money is part of the equation, especially if they get a part of the profit. A good paid mod system by my standards would include a manual check by someone who would basicly do QA, they would check if the mod works as advertised, if it contains any malware, and anything that might be copyrighted. If any of those tests would not be passed correctly, the mod wouldn't go on sale.

But that's just my fantasy paid mod system which would actually work

[HolyWinter]

After asking Tynan the questions Fluffy pondered earlier this was word for word Tynans response.

"I don't have a problem with you using whatever content you like in a mod. That's pretty much it.

That said, if you're using copyrighted content the original copyright holder might not be happy about that. " -Tynan

I guess based on this it's more or less like Mightyricky1 was saying before.

[milon]

https://ludeon.com/rimworld/EULA.txt

Your Mods must not contain any material that violates copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property restrictions.

I'm no copyright lawyer, but my reading of the EULA makes me think that 1) you must have permission for all content that you did not personally create, and 2) if Ludeon chooses to acquire/utilize/etc anything from a mod you create then it's Ludeon's job to ensure that Ludeon's actions don't violate any other license agreement. Any well-formed mod will give credit where credit is due, which makes #2 a trivial task.

But again, these are just the assumptions of some guy from the internet.

(Edited for clarity)