Putting fictional species in the Creative Commons

Original post by titleknown. This was crossposted with permission, original post is here.

...God, I will say, I wish people would put their Open Species under a proper Creative Commons license for broader use

Because, not enough people know about it but, you kinda need it to have one of those to have them legally above board.

Cause, Creative Commons licenses aren't really just "for show," they were created because the people behind it realized there was basically no real legal infrastructure for artists to enable people to do stuff with their work.

So, they made some really solid legalese to make it easy to do that, which is important because making it an unstated agreement can be a headache in the long-term.

Hell, even with pre-CC attempts at open licenses for art, those still had some huge holes, see also the clusterfuck with D&D's OGL.

The basic categories are:

• CC0: Basically public domain, people can do what they want with it.
• CC-BY: Basically public domain but you gotta give creator credit and link back if you can. This is the kind I use for most of my work, and I wish more creators would use.
• CC-BY-SA: Same as CC-BY, but with the extra caveat that people have to apply the license to all other extra content in the derivative work, which makes it a bit harder to make money off of derivative works of but not impossible. This is what the SCP Foundation uses, as one of the most successful CC-based works of art ever IMO.
• CC-BY-NC: Same as CC-BY, but you can't make money off of it. This is what Hatsune Miku is under, as are some of the other original Vocaloids.
• CC-BY-NC-SA: Combo of -SA and -NC, you have to apply the license to derivative works and can't make money off of it.

Note these are irrevocable and also don't include caveats for morality. The former is because it'd be legally meaningless if they weren't, the latter is because it's basically a nightmare to define those clauses in legal terms, hell even something seemingly simple as "can only be used by individuals and worker-owned organizations" hasn't been worked out yet!

But, those aside, I think with those worries it's worth it, because the public good of anyone being able to use it outweighs a few bad actors. Because if it belongs to everyone, nobody can take it away from you.

And bringing it full circle, I just wish people would use it for their Open Species more, because the use-cases are otherwise a confusing nightmare and the only one I've seen that does use it are the Synths and their luscious meaty thighs.

And, as much as I like the Synths, I would like more under that license...

Synths look pretty cool - I like how they're leaning into the more scaly end of furry, on top of being robots. Not exactly my thing (imo part of the classic/wolfaboo furry divide is whether you think it's sexy or blasphemy for dragons to have boobs), but it's neat that you have permission to use them for literally anything, even in a published for-profit work of fiction if you want. The available "stable" of public domain robots (whether individuals or "types") is pretty limited compared to dragons, vampires, and other creatures with roots in mythology and folklore. It's going to be a long time before a lot of the most influential and iconic robots of fiction become free for everyone to use...

(And if you didn't know that the six classic Crypton Vocaloids were under a Creative Common license... hey, now you know!)

Y2K virtual collectible animal trading (no, it's not just pokemon)

I've suspected that the modern "adoptable" is a several-generations removed descendant of 90's and early 2000's "cyberpets," but as a kid I mostly only ever interacted with free-to-adopt pets that could be adopted by an infinite number of people; I was aware limited-quantity pets via application submissions and "breeding" were available, but I have fewer memories of them because I didn't really have a website to participate in them with. (I just saved the free pets on my hard drive, lmao.) It's very similar to how limited adoptions have existed in the Petz Community since at least 1998, but I mostly just downloaded free petfiles or breedfiles that didn't require talking to people.

(kalium has talked about similar levels of rarity and scarcity existing with roleplay characters in fantasy animal forum RP of the era, which is 100% a related phenomenon... just one I've been exposed to less on my own end.)

The problem with researching cyberpets? It's hard to find evidence via search engine that they ever existed. I keep getting results for some very recent take on the "robot toy dog" concept being sold under that name, as well as unrelated garbage articles and images that happen to have good SEO. Robot dogs (and other robot pets like Furbies, and virtual pets like Tamagotchi, etc) were part of a general Y2K fascination with virtual animals, but they are not even a little bit the same thing as a cyberpet. A cyberpet is a funny little image file that lives on the internet, got it? Some are just static pngs, some have "mechanics" that are roleplayed by the creator and adopter, some of the later forms of cyberpet whole website backends like Dragon Cave or Neopets. Bunnyhero Labs even had interactive Flash-based cyberpets. But a cyberpet is, at its core, an picture of an animal on a website, with some kind of certificate or verification showing that you've "adopted" it and that it's yours. (Even if it's one of the ones can be adopted by infinite people, you often get a little adoption certificate to put on your page next to it.)

But... I think I just found some evidence that backs up my theory of adoptables being an evolution of cyberpets?

There was a cyberpet marketplace. They used fake currency, not real money, but still. You have the concept of character designs as a good that can be bought, sold, and traded! Right here at the dawn of the 21st century!

The Market

Welcome to the Market, a unique place where one may buy, sell, and trade various creatures.

How it works
If you wish to participate in the market you must send in a form requesting registration. After becomming a member, you will recieve a certain number of credits. Credits can be used to purchase goods and livestock of many varities. As a member, you will recieve 100 credits(c.) on the first of each month. That means everyone gets 100 credits every month just for being a member! Yes, I did change it back from three to prevent inflation. Credits can be obtained in many ways:

Wyvern Breeding- Breeding wyverns is an interesting and profitable buisness. You start by purchasing a pair(or more) of the creatures from the market. Females may lay eggs once every month, after paying a small fee. They may lay up to 10 eggs and the owners have the option of selling the eggs or hatchlings to other members of the Market. Wyverns, if they are available, can be found in the Roost.
Selling Livestock- Selling a creature that YOU MADE. Adds for creatures may be placed on the board below. The livestock auction is now open! If you wish to sell an item, please do so on the Livestockboard.Also, auctions are to be posted ONLY on the auction board.
Doing a Favor for Yours Truly- If you wish to do a trade with me dirrectly or if I ask you for help with something, you can earn some credits. Just dont bombard me with a hundred trade requests please ~.~

I, DragonSpyrit, must be notified of ALL transactions via the form that will soon be posted below or Email. You must tell me how many credits a person spent, who they were, and who you are. The 5c. selling fee has been deactivated. I will also be keeping running lists of your credit totals.

Also, please keep in mind that the Livestock board is the main part of The Market, not the Roost.The roost is down again due to the fact that DS is overwhelmed with stuff to do. Id appreciate it if no one complained, concidering that I get no money fro wyvern sales and it takes 20 minutes to draw, scan, color, upload, and put each wyuvern up on the page.

(I've left all of the misspellings on the original page as is...)

Here's an example of a "market stall" for boutique cyberpets. You can definately see how the concepts at play here have evolved into new forms later down the line, right? And here's another market stall, and yet another.

BTW: That last site, Clearwater? Also has a bunch of free-to-take cyberpets, which is the main thing I remember it for. If you have a website, consider adopting one! I always liked the Glerit on the "canyon" page of the site. There's also two secret pages with secret pets...

If you're into smallweb/oldweb stuff, consider adopting and making free cyberpets! They're such an iconic part of early web culture for me, as irremovable from my nostalgic conception of my childhood as dubbed anime and Nintendo games are to a lot of my age-peers. And you know what? I never see them acknowledged on the intentionally nostalgic throwback sites people make at all. Never! They're literally collectible gifs, don't people love those? Cmonnnn you wanna make a web page for magic animals so baaaaad