Say I made a little scene, and I wanted to distribute it, as a scene. but also prevent people from using the individual assets, such as meshes, materials, whatever. Like say for example I made a ground using True terrain and wanted to sell the object, but someone took a lot of trouble to make those materials, and I wouldn’t want to just hand them over to whoever bought the scene, because that would be ripping off the guy who made the material. Anyone know of a way to do this?
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Probably the best way is to include the licenses for those materials and assets with the file. Depending on the asset and the license, you may even be required to distribute the license along with them. This won’t “stop” someone from using them, but it will remove the legal responsibility from you and put it squarely on them. I.e., you won’t be sued because you followed the terms of the license, they will be sued, because they didn’t.
Also- speaking of licenses- you may want to check the licenses before distribution and make sure you can actually distribute this scene with those assets. Especially since you’re planning on commercial distribution, there’s a good chance those assets aren’t licensed for commercial distribution. In that case, the legal onus would be on you, and you could very feasibly face legal penalties
I noticed there are a variety of licenses that come with various assets and add-ons. Most of them you can freely distribute, but even those I would feel kind of bad just giving them away as part of a scene. One thing I have noticed is that some people will simply take an object from a collection as is, and sell it without any modification or anything. I guess they are allowed per the licenses but it seems kind of shady!
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If you intend to commercially distribute “intellectual property assets,” you really need a lawyer who is trained in this field. Both to properly protect your interests and to ensure that you do not infringe upon the protected rights of others. For a fee that is actually much less than you fear, a qualified counselor can put you on the right foot and keep you there, because “(s)he knows.”
"IP is a very complicated area of the law and full of (nasty) surprises.
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