[SOLVED] Red Cross logo is copyrighted.

Well that actual point the RC has is that having "Red Crosses" in an Shooter game desensitizes people in regard to that symbol, which under the Geneva Convention is used as a protective sign for Ambulances and Medics during wartime (e.g. you are not supposed to shoot on those).
However the point is a bit moot nowadays, as "red cross protected" vehicles have been sadly used for troop transports in some conflicts lately and the old Geneva convention consensus of doing warfare in a "civilized" manner is pretty much a thing of the past in todays "asymmetric" wars.

Well that actual point the RC has is that having "Red Crosses" in an Shooter game desensitizes people in regard to that symbol, which under the Geneva Convention is used as a protective sign for Ambulances and Medics during wartime (e.g. you are not supposed to shoot on those).

Do you have a source for that?

http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=388d...822e3db23f
(or the article linked before in this thread)

Or do you mean the "desensitize" part? For this there is currently a scientific controversy and I was just mentioning it as what the RC is saying.

In my humble opinion one does not have to bow to everyone just because he is in an "official" position. That said, xonotic is a free game and we don't have to follow every trend just because someone who has obviously no clue about video games mentions it in an interview.

In my humble opinion one does not have to bow to everyone just because he is in an "official" position. That said, xonotic is a free game and we don't have to follow every trend just because someone who has obviously no clue about video games mentions it in an interview.

We do have legal obligations, as we're licensing the project files under the GPL.

But again, gray area, unlikely events, yadda yadda.

The Geneva Convention point is the most serious however there are problems with this. Unfortunately J&J already held the copyright on the red cross symbol for many decades and was not compensated in any way for having the symbol taken away from them. They ended up taking the Red Cross to court and lost.

For the copyright issue, what you have to consider is that there always exits fair use terms (not just in the US). One example which is international is product identification. If you want to show a picture of some copyrighted article just to identify it then you can do - the limit is that you can't sell the picture itself.

A case in point is if you want to sell something you can automatically use the manufacturers picture without seeking their permission as you are using the picture for product identification. On eBay there have been scams where someone trys to sell a picture of an XBox, iPod or whatever other item people will bid on without reading that it's a picture. eBay pulls these listings down as they break the copyright on the image.

Another limitation on copyright is the length. I'm not sure where and when the orginal copyright was made but if it was Switzerland (Geneva) then they only have 50 years copyright and 1957 was 66 years ago. If this is the case then copyright is irrelevant.

In the game, medical packs are shown with a depiction (not exact) red cross symbol on them to identify them as medical supplies which, lets face it, are only ever shown in combat zones which totally fits in with the use of the red cross symbol as allowed in the Geneva Convention.

For the copyright issue, what you have to consider is that there always exits fair use terms (not just in the US). One example which is international is product identification. If you want to show a picture of some copyrighted article just to identify it then you can do - the limit is that you can't sell the picture itself.

A case in point is if you want to sell something you can automatically use the manufacturers picture without seeking their permission as you are using the picture for product identification. On eBay there have been scams where someone trys to sell a picture of an XBox, iPod or whatever other item people will bid on without reading that it's a picture. eBay pulls these listings down as they break the copyright on the image.

Does that have no impact on the GPL licensability of our texture packs containing the emblem?

Does that have no impact on the GPL licensability of our texture packs containing the emblem?

Maybe. As I said before, it would be considered outside of fair use for you then to sell it. While Xonotic is available for free, the terms of the GPL allow for you to charge as much as you like for it and in that circumstance copyright could be seen to be broken.

If however the copyright has already expired then you can safely ignore the copyright point.

No, don't care. Red the color and plus sign the symbol are the most widely associated with health and well being, and there is no way you can enforce a copyright on a single symbol of the alphabet in a particular color... Society owns that "brand" now, not just a single company. Additionally, we should not be worried about this at all. If Quake (and LITERALLY COUNTLESS) other games have no issues with this, then we're in the clear as we're certainly not of higher priority to anyone who cares about this. Either way, as I said, they have no legal grounds to copyright an ascii character with a specific color.

Although I would be fine with removing the symbol from the health pickups themselves, we still need SOME symbol to refer to health in the HUD and in other places, and a red plus sign will ALMOST ALWAYS be that sign.

As for Red Cross wanting logo out of violent media: Go cry a river you whiny babies-- you'll have LITERALLY hundreds of thousands of lawsuits to do if you actually want this done... and really, the only thing you'll accomplish is hurting your own brand. You know what else? I don't understand how they're afraid of people associating the symbol with violent images and foul language, when in real life it's *ACTUALLY* associated with bad things like war and terrible emergencies! Video games are worse than war now? Are they saying that association with fantasies (which people know are fake) is WORSE than association with war zone supplies, death of loved ones, disasters, terrorist attack responders, etc?

"Pratt said the Red Cross is hoping voluntary compliance in the games industry will allow the agency to spend its money "helping people'' rather than fighting court cases." Or you could just stop being a fucking moron and THEN continue helping people. Personally, my message would have to be: Go fuck yourself, Red Cross.

No, don't care. Red the color and plus sign the symbol are the most widely associated with health and well being, and there is no way you can enforce a copyright on a single symbol of the alphabet in a particular color... Society owns that "brand" now, not just a single company. Additionally, we should not be worried about this at all. If Quake (and LITERALLY COUNTLESS) other games have no issues with this, then we're in the clear as we're certainly not of higher priority to anyone who cares about this. Either way, as I said, they have no legal grounds to copyright an ascii character with a specific color.

Thank you, mr. trademark lawyer. Now see an example of something thou you might say "has no legal ground". Trademark law is nuts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitex_C...s_Co.,_Inc.

Now look at article 44 of the Geneva Convention
http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/7c4d08d9b287...1e004a92f3
Wikipedia lists some examples of actual law enforcing this: link

As for Red Cross wanting logo out of violent media: Go cry a river you whiny babies-- you'll have LITERALLY hundreds of thousands of lawsuits to do if you actually want this done... and really, the only thing you'll accomplish is hurting your own brand. You know what else? I don't understand how they're afraid of people associating the symbol with violent images and foul language, when in real life it's *ACTUALLY* associated with bad things like war and terrible emergencies! Video games are worse than war now? Are they saying that association with fantasies (which people know are fake) is WORSE than association with war zone supplies, death of loved ones, disasters, terrorist attack responders, etc?

Did anyone say anything about violent video games? They don't seem to have anything against the use of the emblem in video games in particular, it's just a trend that's more prominent than the other abusive use they've seen.

Personally, my message would have to be: Go fuck yourself, Red Cross.

Thanks, you've convinced me that we're not infringing anyone's trademarks/whatever by licensing the game under the GPL (/s). Seriously, how constructive is that?

I'm with MrBougo on this one.

Also remember there's no reason to immediately counter opinions you don't share or understand with aggression. Haven't there even been court trials about Deutsche Telekom registering rights on the letter "T" in magenta color? IPR can produce rather exotic views on reality...

and I guess now we have to scour our textures and change any pixels that might be reese's orange

http://www.foodliabilitylaw.com/2011/01/...or-orange/

:/

yeah ... this is stupid

and I guess now we have to scour our textures and change any pixels that might be reese's orange

http://www.foodliabilitylaw.com/2011/01/...or-orange/

:/

yeah ... this is stupid

And Orange's orange and T-Mobile's magenta and Nokia's blue, and numerous other colors... Good thing we got 2^24 colors available so cutting those couple of hundreds from the palette doesn't make much difference. Oh yeah, also make sure that in-game the other colors are not modified by lighting so they look like those copyrighted ones... Copywrong is just wrong :-P.

Anyway - back on topic. It really is interesting how all the other games that use the symbol get/got away with it. Maybe it's enough to change the background like in Quake? As in not red + on white, but red + on brown? (in that case Xonotic is clear cause it's red + on gray)

Yes. Or make it clearly red on white as a peacefull protest against copywrighting things that are national property of humanity.

Just do red on grey.

How about a a cross with a weed leaf

EDIT: I also don't quite follow how our health pack items are protected by the Geneva Convention.

Or the Star of Life, a modifed Caduceus used on ambulances:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Star_of_life2.svg

You're doing this on purpose, are you not.
[/quote]

The whole reason in any game why red is used for health is because of the red cross, not the other way round. We're kind of stuck here if green is armour.

I always thought that red was used because our blood is red (usually). I have never ONCE thought about the red cross when seeing red health in games. To me, it will always represent blood, not the red cross.

Also, this is now solved it says. So what is the consensus?
EDIT: Nevermind. I think the consensus is, not to do anything about it as it's not a problem. Am I right? Personally I share Samual's view. All things that's ridiculously copyright (such as common symbols, crosses, letters, colors, genes) can go fuck themselves (they clearly need to get laid).

Hello guys.

How about a green cross? Like the one used in medical kits.

Greetings.

Hello guys.

How about a green cross? Like the one used in medical kits.

Greetings.

This has been suggested earlier in this thread, look it up

Hello guys.

How about a green cross? Like the one used in medical kits.

Greetings.

This has been suggested earlier in this thread, look it up

Ooops, you're right, sorry!

Based on the article provided by Mr. Bougo (http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=016637&tid=001), I think that it's not actually copyrighted, it's just a special case in international law. The reason would be that, as Samual said, it's just a character with a specific color scheme. According to wikipedia (the actual organization, not just someone on wikipedia), that means it's "ineligible" for copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-textlogo

I fixed your links, you managed to break both of them

Anyway, what matters is that its use is protected, copyright or not.