Are Game-of-Life images under copyright?

[Peter Armstrong]

I have written some music - a short piano piece - based on Dean Hickerson's and Paul Callahan's "Thin Rake"
image, and am now searching to identify permissions needed to proceed with copyright (of a derivative work!)
and publication (which would be by IMSLP's "Edition Ottaviano Pettruci"). So far, my attempts to reach DH
and PC have email-wise failed. My search meanwhile at the Copyright Office, while it turned up nothing, may
have been just insufficient. So, I'll ask the Forum: Is "Thin Rake" itself, or are published Game of Life images
generally, under copyright? Thanks in advance for your time. PA

[drc]

Probably not. i don't know though: I'm not very knowledgeable on copyright, especially with the state of youtube now.

[Sokwe]

I am absolutely sure that neither of them will mind (just be sure to give appropriate attributions). If you want, you can try messaging Dean Hickerson on these forums.

The Life community is entirely built on sharing and building on each other's work.

[Scorbie]

Just out of curiosity, how did you use the "thin rake" pattern in your composition?
Edit: Although I am a novice in music, I am interested in your work. If copyright is not a problem, is there a chance to see/hear it?

[Kiran]

The Life community is entirely built on sharing and building on each other's work.

Agreed! If you want us to help you protect your work from us, don't expect any help.

[calcyman]

I personally publish everything under the licence CC-BY 4.0, which means you can use it for arbitrary purposes (including commercial) on the condition that the author is attributed.

I suggest checking the licence information for Golly, but my best guess is that a similar licence covers Golly (and its pattern collection). It might possibly be the more restrictive and memetic licence CC-BY-SA 4.0, which requires that any derivative work be shared under the same licence.

[dvgrn]

I suggest checking the licence information for Golly, but my best guess is that a similar licence covers Golly (and its pattern collection).

Golly is not too relevant, I believe, since THINRAKE.LIF isn't in Golly's pattern collection -- though it's in Alan Hensel's 'lifep' collection, available through Golly's Help > Online Archives. That 'lifep' collection was put together in 1995 I believe, but the pattern is older than that. The method for constructing the Thin Rake was described in David Bell's Spaceships in Conway's Life (Part 6) in October 1992.

Looks like there's a version of the same rake in various Xlife pattern collections, but it's tricky to read these days because it's in Paul Callahan's #I structured format. Nobody ever taught Golly how to read that format, because very few patterns use it (and they're all in that same Xlife collection)... Turns out rakep960b.life is not quite the same pattern, but definitely the same idea --

rakep960b.life:

Code: Select all

#C Starting with period 120 block layer, we thin 3 times and
#C toss off gliders in the final stage to achieve a period 960 rake. 
x = 1101, y = 268, rule = B3/S23
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$140b2o2bobo3b2o141bo342bobo109b2o2bobo3b2o141bo$139bo2b2o3bo488bo110b
o2b2o3bo$140b2o2bobo3b2o596b2o2bobo3b2o$145bo3b4o600bo3b4o$149b2ob2o
156b2o445b2ob2o156b2o$151b2o156b2o343b2o103b2o156b2o$311bo342bobo262bo
$136b4o514bo89b4o$135b6o602b6o$135b4ob2o601b4ob2o$139b2o187b2o417b2o
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76bo$593bo2$346b2o606b2o$345b2o208b3o132b2o261b2o$347bo207bo55b2o77bob
o262bo$556bo54bobo76bo$611bo$118b2o612b2o$116bo4bo242b2o364bo4bo236b2o
$122bo240b2o208b3o132b2o26bo234b2o$116bo5bo242bo207bo55b2o77bobo19bo5b
o236bo$117b6o451bo54bobo76bo22b6o$103b2o27b2o495bo116b2o$103bobo25b4o
610b4o$103bo27b2ob2o246b2o361b2ob2o240b2o$124bo2bo5b2o246b2o208b3o132b
2o10bo2bo5b2o240b2o$115bo8bo3bo254bo207bo55b2o77bobo9bo3bo248bo$116bo
2b2o2bo4b2o462bo54bobo76bo10bo4b2o$115bo3b2o3bo3bo518bo90bo3bo$120bo3b
o2bo5b2o603bo2bo5b2o$131b2ob2o264b2o25b2o316b2ob2o258b2o25b2o$131b4o
264b2o22b4ob2o179b3o133b4o258b2o22b4ob2o$132b2o267bo21b6o180bo55b2o79b
2o261bo21b6o$424b4o9bo2bo169bo54bobo364b4o9bo2bo$121b2o318bo223bo69b2o
312bo$117b4ob2o313bo3bo289b4ob2o307bo3bo$117b6o295b2o18b4o289b6o289b2o
18b4o$118b4o295b2o10b2o2b3o191b3o102b4o289b2o10b2o2b3o$419bo9b2o2b3o
191bo55b2o342bo9b2o2b3o$429b2o2b3o192bo54bobo351b2o2b3o$438b4o241bo
362b4o$437bo3bo603bo3bo$441bo607bo$437bo2bo204b3o397bo2bo$645bo55b2o$
424b6o216bo54bobo328b6o$423bo5bo271bo329bo5bo$429bo607bo$423bo4bo602bo
4bo$425b2o236b3o367b2o$663bo55b2o$664bo54bobo$719bo3$681b3o$681bo55b2o
$682bo54bobo$737bo2$779b2o$699b3o22b6o47bo4bo$699bo23bo5bo25b2o26bo$
700bo28bo25bobo19bo5bo$723bo4bo26bo22b6o$725b2o13b2o51b2o$738b2ob2o49b
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2b2o3bo36bobo9bo3bo$729b2o2bobo3b2o32bo10bo4b2o$734bo3b4o43bo3bo$738b
2ob2o42bo2bo5b2o$740b2o50b2ob2o$792b4o$725b4o64b2o$724b6o$724b4ob2o51b
2o$728b2o48b4ob2o$778b6o$779b4o!

I'll ask the Forum: Is "Thin Rake" itself, or are published Game of Life images
generally, under copyright?

There's a very long-standing tradition that making a Life pattern available puts it more or less into the public domain, unless the author specifically states otherwise. And that almost never happens. Certainly Dean Hickerson and Paul Callahan put no restrictions on the Thin Gun.

If you want to quote some text written by the author that accompanies a pattern, it might be good to ask permission there. But to re-use the actual pattern in any derivative work, including another Life pattern or a work of art, there's no need to ask anyone to sign off in advance.

As others have mentioned, it's standard practice to give appropriate attribution. This generally means 1) don't imply by omission that you constructed the pattern all by yourself, and 2) provide a good pointer to where anyone interested could find the original pattern. In this case, something like "Thin Rake (THINRAKE.LIF) by Dean Hickerson and Paul Callahan, in Alan Hensel's 'lifep' pattern collection" should be plenty.

[Peter Armstrong]

for dvgrn: Thank you for identifying the Hensel collection. I'll add this to my attribution line.

for Scorbie: I've described in the piece's intro ('NOTES') page. Simply, it's built on a mapping of the individual squares -- horizontally to time, vertically to pitch, with some license re the latter as its range exceeds the piano's by about two octaves. (Tricky was to find transpositions minimizing collision or other pattern disturbance.) And I've superimposed a metrical scheme, so that human players -- two, to get enough fingers -- may hope to keep their
bearings. Once the paint's dry, I'll yell here, and will be posting freely accessible score and audio on IMSLP and SoundCloud.

Thanks, All, for the feedback!

[vyznev]

Is "Thin Rake" itself, or are published Game of Life images generally, under copyright?

This is actually an interesting question in itself. I Am Not A Lawyer, but my general understanding is that:

• on one hand, any original creative work can be copyrighted (and, under the Berne convention, automatically is, if it meets the threshold of originality), but
• on the other hand, mere ideas, facts and mathematical truths are not eligible for copyright.

So the question basically comes down to whether a cellular automaton pattern is a creative work, with a human author whose original creativity the pattern embodies, or a mere statement of a mathematical fact about the behavior of the automaton rule. And the answer almost certainly is "it depends."

In particular, any two-color bitmap image can be a GoL pattern (possibly a Garden of Eden, but still), so technically, it's clear that some GoL patterns must be eligible for copyright. There are even ways to encode arbitrary bitmaps into e.g. GoL still lifes or flotillas, demonstrating that such patterns (if sufficiently complex and arbitrary) may be copyrightable too.

On the other hand, clearly e.g. the existence of small spaceships like the glider (or the *WSS, or even the loafer or the copperhead) is a nontrivial emergent property of the B3/S23 rule (which itself is too simple to be copyrighted), and a pattern showing such a spaceship is merely the natural expression of this mathematical fact (and thus, per the merger doctrine, cannot be copyrighted). Finding such patterns might take a lot of creativity and hard work, but the patterns themselves are mathematical facts, and thus not copyrightable.

So what about large constructed spaceships (or other "functional" patterns, like rakes or puffers or guns, etc.) like the caterpillar or, say, Hickerson and Callahan's thin p960 rake? While the simplest of those might be borderline cases, I suspect that most of them would technically be copyrightable, on the same grounds on which computer software is considered copyrightable. Basically, while e.g. the fact that a 17c/45 spaceship exists (and can be constructed using certain parts and techniques) is not copyrightable, as long as such a ship could be constructed in many ways, the specific choice of how to put the parts together may be considered creative and original, and therefore eligible for copyright.

Of course, as dvgrn notes above, there's a longstanding tradition that published GoL patterns are considered to be freely usable by anyone, at least for the conventional purposes of experimentation, non-commercial distribution and adaptation. Given that such patterns are usually generated by hobbyists and academics, and that there's normally little if any commercial interest or opportunity involved, any motivation for anyone to actually pursue a copyright claim on a GoL pattern, even if they might technically have one, is extremely limited.

Whether that tradition would actually stand up in court as a defence against a copyright infringement claim, should someone decide to raise one, is something that cannot be definitely answered until and unless such an unlikely lawsuit actually comes up. And even then, it might well depend on the specific facts of the case, the jurisdiction it was brought up in, and ultimately the whims of the judge(s) involved. Personally (and still keeping in mind that I'm just a random layperson) I suspect that, on its own, such an appeal to tradition would carry little weight, although it might be enough to let the infringement be considered non-willful, if the accused infringer was acting in good faith under established custom. That said, the kind of uses one would typically make of a GoL pattern (i.e. academic or hobbyist research) could very likely be considered fair use (or equivalent in other jurisdictions) anyway, and a tradition of such use being tolerated in the community might well be weighed as one factor when considering this.

Anyway, my advice to the OP would be that, if they're going to use a complex constructed GoL pattern as part of a creative work, and especially if they may wish to someday profit commercially from that work, the safest course would be to ask for permission from the creators of the pattern in advance. While it's extremely unlikely that anyone would bother to sue anyone else over a GoL pattern, it's still better to be safe than sorry, especially if there might be money involved. Besides, it's the polite thing to do, anyway.

[Peter Armstrong]

Thank you, vyznev, for your thought and time. I just want to note: that Dean Hickerson and Paul Callahan both indicated non-objection to my copyrighting the piece; that I've published it via IMSLP's Edition Ottiavano Petrucci
under Creative Commons' Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license; and that, as IMSLP has posted both score and audio on the internet for free download, I'll be expecting next to zero hard-copy sales.