Can I even make YouTube videos based on TV Tropes stuff? Licensing questions

I just got approved for monetization on You Tube. Recently (prior to even seeking monetization), I ran a couple events wherein I got friends and family together and we played games and recorded them with the intent of me later massaging the content into You Tube videos.

For one of the contests, I grabbed a bunch of Better Than It Sounds entries, categorized them, reworked them, rewrote a lot of them, added to them, all sorts of stuff, but it's still very much a bunch of stuff from those pages (and even if it were unrecognizable, it's still based on that material). We formed up into teams and I asked the kids questions and awarded points and all that.

I've been working on the video and suddenly thought to check how to handle the licensing... but now, after reading this page and some related FAQ's, I'm wondering if I can even use the material we recorded at all.

First, You Tube's videos are released under one of two licenses, and neither is the CC-BY-NC-SA. Wikipedia says that CC-BY is compatible with CC-BY-NC-SA, though I can't see how they can be, given that You Tube has ads up (unless ad-revenue doesn't count as commercial) and it's got that You Tube Red membership thing now (dunno how that plays into the mix)... so the first question is whether I would break the license by uploading the video to You Tube in the first place.

Secondly, do I have to keep it unmonetized, or is it okay to have ads on my video?

Thirdly, does Fair Use factor into this anywhere? This is footage of a family enjoying a game based on TV Tropes material. Aside from the question of trademarks (the footage doesn't mention TV Tropes), is it substantially different from me recording us playing Monopoly or Pathfinder? The fact that I changed/made up a bunch of the wording on the questions, is that a factor here?

So, how does this work? What do I need to do to make it work? Can I even make it work?

For future reference, what of videos discussing tropes? I mean, the tropes themselves aren't copyrightable. Is calling them the same thing TV Tropes calls them a problem? Or is it just using the text from TV Tropes (without making it seem like just a quote used to support the idea), is that the problem?

Tangentially: I've always thought it would be neat to make a card deck based on a variety of our tropes, like character tropes. Is this nonviable as a project? Or is it just that I can make the project but can't actually publish it for sale — have to release it on Deviant Art and call it good? Or can I sell the cards so long as the full set is freely available for anyone who wants to make or print-on-demand their own?

Please help me figure out the answers to these questions. It feels like a major roadblock to being able to use the footage we recorded.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

I'll contact them, yes. Although I am a little troubled by the thought that submitting stuff under an NC license allows the people I submit it to to agree to a less restrictive license, because that is all kinds of weird and I have enough trouble wrapping my head around copyright guidelines as it is.

As far as I understand you: The tropes themselves, and the fact that they exist in a given work of media, is uncopyrightable. The text itself is copyrightable (this meshes with my understanding of how recipes work: You can reprint all the recipes you like, but have to use your own words).

What about the names for tropes? I know some names existed outside the wiki, but are the names that TV Tropes came up with the property of TV Tropes (trademark or something)? Because I kind of thought part of the point of this site was canonizing terms that everyone can use, finding the best possible term for a concept — the very reason we stopped referring to tropes by character names. At what point are the names the property of society, no permission needed?

If names aren't a problem, it sounds from your description that making a card game / card deck is doable, if I word it my own way and don't use passages from TV Tropes directly. (Though... what of those quotes on Magic: The Gathering cards? Did they have to get permission for each of those quotes?)

Now, if excerpts can be Fair Use, is taking a few dozen excerpts (from the hundreds that inhabit Better Than It Sounds) and using them for a game just Fair Use (citation appreciated)? Does it matter if I altered them or not? If altering them is a problem, would coming here, altering them on the wiki (regular updating of / adding to the site), and then using my altered versions be better? (In the cases where I altered them, most of the time I think my version got the concept better in some way. Not in all cases — sometimes I dropped parts because the participants were as young as 10 and I was anticipating a three-year-old too.)

Lastly, it's my understanding that submitting content to this wiki doesn't get rid of my right to utilize my content in other ways. Is there a page where I can look at my submissions, like all of my submissions over the years, so I could figure out if there's anything I'd like to use elsewhere?

(I'm still proud of the fact that I designed the original lampshade logo. Even though by now you've changed both the style and the font I chose, it's probably the strongest effect I've had on the internet during my entire time on the internet.)

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Covering a few of your points:

• The license governs what other people can do with our content, not what we can do with our content. We can enter into specific agreements whenever we want; that's our right as copyright holders, just as you could, for example, insist that people not perform a musical piece you've written, but then license the performing rights to a specific artist. The owner of the content makes the rules (as long as those rules comply with general law).
• Trope names are neither copyrighted nor copyrightable (as far as I know). It would be nearly impossible to make the claim that we invented the names for most of them, anyway, and you could go crazy trying to prove it one way or the other.
• Excerpts, such as quotes from famous works or individuals, are generally Fair Use, as long as (a) they are cited, (b) the work that they are from is not substantially reproduced, (c) no attempt is made to claim that the person using the excerpt is the original author.
• The use of a significant amount of content that is explicitly from TV Tropes in a work of your own could be considered infringing, even if individual uses might be considered Fair Use. Intent is very important in these cases. If you want to make a card game about tropes and use any of our content in it, I would advise you to get permission directly, since a reasonable third party looking at it without bias might conclude that you were violating the license.
• All user contributions are irrevocably and nonexclusively licensed to TV Tropes, with no right of attribution or deletion. In other words:
  • By submitting any content, you license it to us forever and completely; we may do anything we want with it, and we don't have to credit you or ask your permission.
  • You may use content you submit in other works you create; you don't need to ask our permission. However, if you have published your content elsewhere or intend to publish it elsewhere (example: you submit a trope description which you then wish to also publish in a commercial article), you should be able to demonstrate original ownership of that material, or else eyebrows might get raised.

You can track your edits (up to a certain count) through the edit history tool: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/el.php?findfor=Kilyle. This does not, of course, guarantee that your edit would still exist as you submitted it, as it may have been moved, deleted, or changed. The article history may allow you to identify your original edit(s), but it may be wiped from time to time.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I guess I somehow expected — maybe from an earlier state of the rules? I've been here a long time, not very active lately, and I know things have changed, but I don't recall what they used to be — that the NC part was required somehow because of how the community contributions were managed. Like there was only one way to properly work out the rights, and now that we had an NC part on it, there was no changing the license and no going back.

If the NC part is optional (if the site admin could waive it), well, it feels kinda weird that it's even there. Or maybe that's just my mindset on account of being a content creator myself these days: I can understand things I can't use (copyrighted — often completely outside price range for a hobbyist creator), and I can understand things that are free to use (Creative Commons and Public Domain), and I can understand reasonable additions to the CC freedoms ("Tell other people where you got it from" and "Don't be more stingy with your designs than we were, since you're copying from us")...

...but I find the NC stipulation to be a weird condition that goes against the CC mindset, because it drastically narrows the possible ways the material can be used. (Like, no t-shirts, unless you create them yourself at home?) And the additional consideration of ad revenue on otherwise free sites calls up other considerations, because, as even TV Tropes had to deal with at some point, the internet is free because of ad revenue.

(I find it kinda hilarious that the ad on the side of this page is for Citibank, the bank I most hate right now because I get paid through one of their cards and they ding me for every little thing including letting their own ATM tell me what my balance is (35 cent fee). Stupid targeted advertising.)

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Licenses are always negotiable by the licensor. That's kind of obvious and I don't see why it should surprise you. Licenses constrain the users of content, not the owners (generally speaking, anyway).

The "NC" clause means that you can't use our content commercially without first asking permission and negotiating specific terms. You cannot simply copy TVT articles and print them on t-shirts unless you negotiate the rights with the site's owners. Again, that's fairly obvious.

Yes, it was added a little while back, largely because people were making unauthorized rips of our site and trying to steal our readers.

Valid point. Printing the t-shirt wouldn't violate the license, but selling it would.

edited 29th Sep '16 9:29:43 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Trope names are short sentences at best and these are not considered to be copyrightable.

(And technically speaking, printing our articles on t-shirts does not violate the license if you attribute TV Tropes somewhere. Selling them for money would.)

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Ah, was it in response to that copycat site that I ran across and asked about on the forum and my thread got immediately stomped on because people don't want them to get any notice? Yeah, that site made me feel really uncomfortable. It's one thing to take someone's work and transform it, and another thing to just wholesale repost (plagiarize) what others have done. (Exceptions granted for Keep Circulating the Tapes.)

I guess the part that is a little hard to wrap my head around is:

Bob: Hey, guys, want me to make a site that collects all the work you're doing in one place? Alice: Sure, why not? Jim: Sounds cool. Carol: Yeah, go for it.

Bob: All right, in order for me to do this, you have to sign over the freedom for me to use the stuff however I want, in whatever way I want, including commercial usage. Gang: I guess that makes sense.

Alice: So hey, now that we've got all our work in one place, I'm gonna take some of it and go make a commercial thing. Bob: You can't do that! Alice: Wait, what? Bob: I have the rights to the collective stuff now, and I don't want random people making commercial use of it without running it past me. Alice: Wait... you're making commercial use of our stuff. Bob: Right. Alice: And we signed over the rights so you could do that. Bob: Right. Alice: But now you're not extending that same commercial usage to others— Bob: Unless they run it by me and I deem it an okay usage. Alice: And that doesn't seem at all odd to you? Bob: What do you mean? Alice: ...huh.

I realize it's technically possible to track down who submitted what and to come to them directly for the rights to that part of the wiki, but that's... difficult, and doesn't account for those things created prior to that part where we erased all the records of who made what from the early history of the wiki.

I'm not hugely objecting to this way of doing things, and it seems like it might reasonably handle cases like those jerks who just reposted the entire contents of the wiki, but my reaction is pretty close to Alice's up there: "...huh."

ETA: Also, not minding the negotiation part. I'm sure it'll be less onerous (and more reasonable, from my limited resources) than copyrighted stuff. It's just surprising coming from a Creative Commons "let's make stuff everyone can use" mindset.

edited 29th Sep '16 9:13:46 PM by Kilyle

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

"Possible" is a big stretch. Even if it were, all content submitted to our wiki is irrevocably licensed to us without right of attribution and without the need to seek permission for any use of it, unless some other agreement is made and with exception for direct quotes and images that fall under Fair Use.

Alice, in your example, has no reasonable expectation that Bob would ask her permission or seek her approval for any use of the content she contributes, nor is she entitled to any compensation for commercial use of that content.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Posting my content here does not remove my freedom to do other things with my own content. That is a basic right that the CC licensing affirms and that I understood from the beginning: I am certainly signing over the rights for TV Tropes to do things with what I have written, but I am not removing my own freedom to use the stuff I write.

That includes two or more tropers negotiating with each other for the rights to use the material that specific small group of tropers created. This doesn't reduce TV Trope's freedom to use the same material, but it allows tropers to make commercial use of the things they wrote without having to go through the gatekeeper of TV Tropes.

But, as you say, it's a big stretch — it would be difficult, if not impossible, to track down the correct contributors, to make sure it's not based on stuff written by previous tropers, and so on and so forth. And that's even assuming that the tropers who wrote the original material are still around and willing/able to communicate with someone who wanted to use their material.

Alice, in your example, has no reasonable expectation that Bob would ask her permission or seek her approval for any use of the content she contributes, nor is she entitled to any compensation for commercial use of that content.

I'm not sure that the point of that little play came across very well.

Alice is not saying "Hey, Bob, you owe me money." That was never in question.

Alice is not saying "Hey, Bob, why didn't you ask me before you did commercial things with my content?" That was implicit in signing over the rights to use her content commercially.

Alice is saying "Hey, Bob, don't you think it's the least bit weird that you convinced us to let you make money off our shared content, but then when one of us turns around and would like to make money off our shared content in a different fashion, suddenly it's a problem?"

I understand part of why it's a problem, given the copycat wiki. I also understand that people who contribute to this wiki sign over the rights for this wiki to use their content, not for everybody everywhere (even other tropers) to use their content. It just leads to some mental gymnastics about how all the details of this licensing works together.

Obviously, TV Tropes needs to make ad revenue in order to continue hosting the content — and I truly hope this wiki is still alive when my nephews and nieces have grandkids, so I have absolutely no beef with that. (Regardless of occasionally intrusive ads.) Though by the same token, the point of ad revenue on You Tube is to allow You Tube to keep functioning as a "free" service that anyone can use, and to allow the channels that create You Tube content to be able to sink time into making that content, ideally to the point where they're making a living from that content. It takes more time and effort and troubleshooting than I ever expected, just to be able to put videos together, and trying to get my channel started has made me aware of the distinction between videos I can get paid for, and videos I can't, even if the pay is minuscule at the moment (I have so far made five cents).

Anyway, regardless of anything else: Still waiting to hear back from the staff about whether my videos are okay to post on You Tube. Hesitant to even put more time into editing them if they might just be vetoed on account of using text clips in the first place :\

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Am I, like, emailing the wrong address or something? I've sent emails to thestaff@tvtropes.org, back in late October, and haven't heard back.

I think I also tried the Contact page here. Nothing. Not even private messages.

Is the staff on hiatus or something? Did the addresses change? Is this question so weird that they don't know what to do with it? What's going on?

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.

Okay, so... if I understand this correctly... load one of the sample videos to You Tube (private) or Google Drive or the like, get you guys a link, and fill out the form, and you'll get back to me on whether I can go on to make it public, and whether or not it falls under Fair Use (no further negotiations needed) or not Fair Use (further negotiations needed)?

(Also: "Transitional time for the staff"... hope everything's all right with you guys! This site is such a staple of my internetting and a foundation for tons of what I now understand about media that stuff like that can make me worry.)

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.