Sorry if this post doesn’t belong here, but here’s the gist of it:
I stumbled upon this website (using stumbleupon, actually), and it seems they’re using clips from Elephant’s Dream in their promotional video. Did they contribute any work to it, or are they using it without permission?
Did they contribute any work to it
No, but so what ?
or are they using it without permission?
They don’t need to ask permission.
From the official Elephants Dream website
Some re-edited versions of Elephants Dream have started to emerge around the web, taking advantage of the Creative Commons license, which is great to see.
…
All these uses and more are perfectly legal, and encouraged! We’d love to see more of what people get up to with the movie and/or production files
The Blender Institute has taken a hard line against “repackaging” of Blender for commercial gain, especially without attribution - and that includes both the program and any of the creative that’s been attached to blender. And I get CC licenses, but the “so what” is that, if I had worked on the film, I know I would be upset for someone else using it as part of their demo reel. Sure, it follows the letter of CC law, but not the spirit.
See http://www.blender.org/blenderorg/blender-foundation/press/re-branding-blender/
Even copy written works can be used in an educational manor under Fair Use.
The BI encourage other people to use the the open movies (the use in the OP). This is nothing to do with the blender software which that link refers to. If I was so inclined to make a commercial porn movie with the Big Buck Bunny and Sintel models I can and don’t need to first ask permission from BI, or obliged give them a cut of the millions in profits. I may wish to but that would be wholy my decision.
You see BBB promoting all kinds of things basically because furry animals are cute and there are no licensing fees or restrictions in using it.
Thanks Richard Marklew - clears up some issues for me also.
plagurism :mad:
people should always tell others where they got material… even if its not illegal its a durty move
just like the guys selling blender for $$ with a different name to poor innocent folk who wanna learn how to make CG graphics 
I agree, but if everyone played fair, taxes would be far lower and it would be illegal to convince someone to die for another person’s cause, even when it’s wrapped in “doing it for your country” propaganda.
Be very careful with that one. Unless you’re an academic, student or teacher you wouldn’t have too many valid reasons for including another person’s work within your own.
Take a look here:
And it seems to me that the use in question (the OP, as it were), does indeed violate the non-commercial aspect of CC.
think of it this way; you made a game, someone takes your game, gives it a different name, maybe adds a few new things using your coding framework, then goes out and tries to sell it saying “Hey, look at this game we made! Only $15!” and because they had advertising, it gets more attention than yours. That’s how I look at this kind of thing and it really bothers me. I don’t care if there’s a CC with blender’s movies, they should still make their own if they want to show what they can do.
Looks to me like they’re a marketing firm, not a vfx studio or anything. They just used some creative commons licensed material to make a promo video is all. It’s not like they posted Elephant’s Dream itself as an example of the type of stuff they do.
I always like seeing the Open Movie stuff being reused for things.
“The Internet being what it is,” they won’t get very far with such a strategy in any case. No matter how impressive-looking a particular piece of material in your marketing campaign may appear to someone who does not yet know that you did not, in fact, create it … the (very easily obtainable) discovery that you didn’t, is a consequence that you cannot possibly recover from. You are a L3WZ3R, “the little man behind the curtain,” and certainly not the sort of person that you would ever entrust any sort of serious business with.
“I was born, yes, but I was not born yesterday, and if you are not serious about my business(!!!) … (FLUSH_TOILET.WAV)”
“Company?” I see no real company here…
That’s the gist of what I was getting it. There seems to be two issues:
I suppose one strategy to use against this type of thing is to look at the meta-data on any web page where they advertise ‘borrowed’ material and then use THEIR meta words on pages for the real deal. Bring their traffic onto the site where the material originated. Would that work?