Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: General Battuta on July 11, 2008, 01:17:34 am
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I'm worried about this:
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/07/good-old-games.html
Notice that Freespace (2) is among the games offered for download under ten dollars.
D'you think we could have a problem here? I guess we'll just have to wait and see. It could be a blessing -- at worst, we'd have to stop offering retail downloads.
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I saw problems in putting FS up for download the second it started (well, when I found out).
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The mediavps and SCP does not belong to them. The source code does, but what the SCP and FSU teams have made/done with it don't. So all we have to worry about is staying silent about "GET FS2 HERE".
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I don't think this is a big issue just yet. Gametap has also had it available for a while now and there has not been any trouble.
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:nervous: Uhm hehe, I guess that means I should take the link to turrey's installer out of my sig on one of the other forums I go to.
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methinks that would be good.
now just out of curiosity what could they do it they decided we were cutting into their sales?
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as far as I know, they have no right to prevent us from using our copies the way we want... I think they should be worried not us.
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If anything, the site is good advertising for GOG and the new sales of XP/Vista compatible FS2 brings in new blood. In the event of legal action, offer to cooperate with a link directly to GOG in exchange for a nod to route purchasers here. Link exchange and co-marketing for the win!
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as far as I know, they have no right to prevent us from using our copies the way we want... I think they should be worried not us.
Interplay and Volition retain a lot of intellectual property rights that are pretty regularly violated by the FreeSpace community. I'm no IP lawyer, but nowhere has either company granted any of our unofficial the right to distribute or create and distribute derivative content. In fact, the final version of the FS2 EULA (that is, the one without the 'friends' clause) pretty explicitly prohibits such activities....
Interplay Entertainment Corp. and its licensors retain all right, title and interest in the Software including all intellectual property rights embodied therein and derivatives thereof. The Software, including, without limitation, all code, data structures, characters, images, sounds, text, screens, game play, derivative works and all other elements of the Software may not be copied, resold, rented, leased, distributed (electronically or otherwise)...
I know part of that has been revised by the license under which Volition released the source code, and though I need to double check, I believe that that only grants the right to distribute the source code itself and works derived directly from it. That would include the FSO and FRED_Open executables, but not the MediaVP content, which is rather plainly derived from the retail FS2 content.
I'm no IP lawyer, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say that, if continued community distribution of FS2 is seen as cutting into a legal distributor's profit margin, server owners and administrators with FreeSpace content would receive cease-and-desist letters, with a court date to follow, should they not comply. If unsatisfied with that, they could then attempt to track down individual users, in much the same fashion as the RIAA goes after individual users of filesharing networks.
That's a worst-case scenario, rolling through my mind, though. If I remember those titles correctly, they're all games that Interplay distributed. It seems as though they're trying to reestablish some normal cashflow through digital distribution of some of their classic titles, which means they might be satisfied taking whatever they can get with a minimum of cost and effort, and lawyers are never cheap or easy to deal with. At the same time, I'm making a point not to lose my FS2 CDs, just in case someone in a suit comes knocking, asking questions.
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Yep, they can cease and desist us any time they decide to do so. However it would be smarter for them to work out some kind of exchange whereby we send users to them to buy the game and they send people to us to download FS2_Open.
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Not many people are that reasonable or smart.
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Should note that they can do nothing to the SCP and they can do nothing to any total conversions. It's only the distribution of retail Freespace art assets that could be C&D'd.
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I just hope that if they do send a C&D letter, it comes with that "By Gamers, For Gamers" logo in the corner.
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new players who get freespace will come right at this forums... as it has always happened, this place can get the best out of this game and no player will resist the temptation... It seems whatever they do about law issues will eventually hurt them as well.
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I've read people commenting on the Gamespot article about this that "the FS2 open-source project is already free." Methinks our advertising efforts are getting a bit twisted. :p
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They don't care about us. They're charging less than 10 dollars for the game; it's clear they don't intend for this to be an actual attempt at making big money. I could understand if the game was rand new (or even a couple years old) and they were selling it for 50 dollars, but prosecuting us for a 5 dollar, 10 year old impulse buy game is just ridiculous.
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They don't care about us. They're charging less than 10 dollars for the game... ...prosecuting us for a 5 dollar, 10 year old impulse buy game is just ridiculous.
For comparison, the RIAA goes after people illegally downloading songs otherwise available for a dollar on iTunes.
I'm not arguing that we're definately going to be taken to court, but the possibility most certainly exists, and even if they don't intend to sue, Interplay or one of these distributors could use the threat to muscle the community into changing the way it operates.
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This actually sounds like a fantastic idea. All the good games by only under 10 dollars.
That is, if I would have 10 dollars.
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For comparison, the RIAA goes after people illegally downloading songs otherwise available for a dollar on iTunes.
(A) People buy (by that I mean acquire in one way or another) music more often than games.
(B) The relative quality of a song doesn't diminish with time, it does with games. (open-sourceness notwithstanding)
(C) The music industry functions in a way that logically merits that. The music industry is too different to compare these two instances.
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If they are selling the game who's supporting it?
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Sizzler, the point wasn't to make some hard-and-fast comparison between music and video games. I was just pointing out that big corporations have had their legal departments go to amazing lengths with less (in a fiscal sense) cause. Again, I'm not arguing that the community is going to get sued or bullied or suffer some other calamity, courtesy of the Interplay legal department, just that the possibility exists.
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No, you aren't. Nobody has argued that the possibility doesn't exist, but you keep on trying to refute their points and disagree with them.
I don't think it's very likely, either, since Interplay wouldn't be getting anything out of it. It's an old game, the community is mostly self-contained, and a lot more people are playing with the engine because of the community than are playing because of anything else. If Interplay wants additional profit at this point, their main choices are to work with the community, or make a new game based off of the publicity of this community. FS2 stopped getting published because of lack of demand, not because of lack of supply. And the game's too old for them to do some retroactive advertising.
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No, you aren't. Blah, blah, blah....
Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1113787.html#msg1113787) I respond to a post that implies there is no legal basis for a suit over unofficial distribution of FS2.
Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1113980.html#msg1113980) I respond to a post that says such a suit would be "just ridiculous," which I interpreted to mean as nearly or completely impossible. If that interpretation was in error, I apologize to Sizzler, but my point otherwise stands.
Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1114075.html#msg1114075) I respond to Sizzler's attempt to undermine a premise of my second post.
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Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1113787.html#msg1113787) I respond to a post that implies there is no legal basis for a suit over unofficial distribution of FS2.
Actually all he said was that "they have no right to prevent us from using our copies the way we want". I read that to mean copies that we already own, I don't see anything in looking over that post again which suggests that my first reading wasn't correct.
Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1113980.html#msg1113980) I respond to a post that says such a suit would be "just ridiculous," which I interpreted to mean as nearly or completely impossible. If that interpretation was in error, I apologize to Sizzler, but my point otherwise stands.
I'd try not to make the assumption that "ridiculous" means "impossible". It's not guaranteed and it's not easy to understand from the context of a post. Plus thesizzler clarified his statement by saying they didn't care about us, not that they couldn't go after us.
Here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55078.msg1114075.html#msg1114075) I respond to Sizzler's attempt to undermine a premise of my second post.
Which was in response to you attempting to undermine a point in his post, which was not a direct response to any of your posts. You were the aggressor in that exchange, not him.
Thank you for proving that telepathy has yet to develop in humans.
You're claiming to argue a point that nobody can rationally agree with so that you can present evidence to suggest that the possibility is much more likely than other people feel it is. And when people disagree with those statements, you jump back to saying that you're just arguing it's a possibility.
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Clearly you understand my intent better than I do, so I'll just PM you my password, so that you can write my future posts for me.
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Unless anyone has a particularly good reason as to why this should continue, I think it's better off closed.