I've made some "virtual photography" types of screen captures (i.e., where I've used the free camera feature to get a nice shot of my ships on a planet, in space, or took shots of a cool astronomic feature liked ringed planets, etc.) and I've uploaded a few to an "Elite Dangerous" album on my Flickr account. One of my hobbies is photography, both film and digital, and I upload many of my pictures to Flickr and to my Facebook albums. For my own photography work, I put copyright notices in the picture files, and often on a watermark on the photo itself, and I note on my Flickr account that everything I upload is copyrighted by me, all rights reserved. I also disable downloads. However, for the screencaptures taken during my Elite Dangerous play, I have not embedded nor watermarked a copyright notice, since I assumed this was a derivative work and I shouldn't claim it is copyrighted by myself. My question is - what is Frontier's policy on use of screenshots such as this? Are we free to upload such screen shots to social media like Flickr? Can I put my own copyright notice on them? I would prefer to do so, mostly to dissuade people from trying to use them for who knows what purpose without my agreement. Should I be putting notices on the images that I upload to Flickr that, in addition to my copyright rights, the game developer would have additional rights? Flickr has some content categories that I can apply to these images, such as "screenshot" or "virtual photography," and I am considering tagging them as the latter. Thanks! - Richard (Cmdr OldChE).
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Newcomer / Intro Questions about uploading screen captures to social media sites and copyright
- Thread starter OldChE
- Start date
Thanks for responding. Unfortunately, I checked the links on the bottom of this page, and read through the published terms and rules, before I made my original post. The information I was seeking was not there. Perhaps I should just assume that I can do what I like with the images, and I should copyright whatever "virtual photography" results as my own work. If Frontier has an email address, I would ask them that way. Do you know where their contact information may be found? I looked but I didn't find any.
Oops, never mind, I found their email address and sent them a note. We'll see what happens.
Step 1: There are T&Cs when buying a right to use a software from Frontier or any other company (legally you do not own the game or any of its assets)- have you read them?
Next to this they are likely happy for anyone spreading footage of their brand in a positive way - but naturally not so happy if you claim it to be yours.
Hence step 2: Contact them directly to ask about your exact case. As you plan to do this you are doing the right thing.
