Copyright questions for Barocca and LK

[Wellington]

Barocca/LK,

As the moderators of this group I just want to pick your brains re- what is acceptable or not for download from The Org.

I own many games and can happily play around in terms of swopping images/graphics from one game to another (in some cases)
without breaking any copyright. Obviously, as I own the games I also have a "free reign" to swop around whatever I wish on MY computer and solely for MY own use.

What is the copyright/legality situation if I wanted to download some images (to The Org - as a repository) from one game for use in a modded version of MTW?

For example, if I wished to download new BIFs, that were created from images from a game such as "Age of Empires", would The Org find this ok or not? To my mind there are 3 considerations -

1) it's ok (copyright wise) if the recipients of such a download already own "Age of Empires" - no copyright infringement there as the recipients are merely receiving components (ie: images) of a game they already own - and therefore already have a copyright permission for.

2) it's less clear if the recipients did not own a copy of the game from which the images were extracted. However, if these images were freely available from a demo version of a game (either downloadable at a site or from a magazine CD) the copyright is less clear. Anyone who may NOT own a copy of a game, but downloads images from a game (these same images being freely available via several sources) does'nt appear to break any copyright rules (IMHO&#33http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif.

3) if such a download included images from a game (these same images being unavailable to anyone who has NOT purchased that game - ie: they are NOT aquirable from demo's or CD's) is this a breach of copyright? Bear in mind, such images are completely useless in there own right - it's generally a games "ideas" and "engine" that are protected - not (to my knowledge) any images contained within the game package.

Any thoughts/advice on this would be welcome (before I go into a long winded spiel of how we, ie: this community, can really extend MTW). Please address replies in respect of the 3 examples I've quoted above (if possible).


All replies/opinions welcome. I'd really like to know what is permissable and what is not.

regards,
Welly

[King David]

I spent the money for AOE and the two addons so no problem here. Our fellow moders in the AOE AOK world share templates and other things in the game in order to make their mods work (I made the Sparticus Mod.) with no problems that I know of. My understanding is that as long as you are not selling your creations derived from these games you are safe. It all has to do with marketing as far as I know. As long as the developers dont raise hell about our modifications of their game we are fine.. They have biger fish to fry...

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (King David @ Nov. 22 2002,20:08)]I spent the money for AOE and the two addons so no problem here. Our fellow moders in the AOE AOK world share templates and other things in the game in order to make their mods work (I made the Sparticus Mod.) with no problems that I know of. My understanding is that as long as you are not selling your creations derived from these games you are safe. It all has to do with marketing as far as I know. As long as the developers dont raise hell about our modifications of their game we are fine.. They have biger fish to fry...
Fair points KD,

BUT ... your only talking in repect of games from 1 supplier. AOE and AOK are from the same source. Any swopping of images between such games is NOT a problem as the recipients of such mods MUST HAVE/OWN THE ENGINE/GAME.

Likewise we have othe gamimg communitis on the WWW that swop files about in respect of other games in a series "Baulders Gate/BG2/Icewind Dale etc). This is NOT a problem. All recipients MUST have the game(s) in order to utilise the provided mods.

What I am asking is ...

"what is the position/situation in providing images from one game (from one supplier/company) for use in a completely different game (from a different supplier/company). The Copyights/legalities become less clear

[barocca]

To the best of my knowledge as long as you make the download with a license.txt file that states the mod (including pieces of the content therein) is NOT to be distributed for any form of finacial or material reward whatsoever, NOT EVEN for the recovery of media costs, then we are fairly safe.

If you know definitavely the source of the images you could also place that information in the documentation in a manner fitting promotion of the game you "borrowed" them from.

Major softweare developers do search sites such as ours, and if they find any content they think infringes their copyright they will ask us to remove it, and we will.
This has worked in the past, and will continue to work in the future.

This is a non profit fansite, we don't make a penny out of it,
all advertsing income is the properety of TeleFragged and pays for our hosting, we have no control over the amount of advertising they "assign" to our site.

As such we can host almost anything, as long as we don't sell it.

[fenir]

Ok wellington Spill the beans http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

you have me waiting with bait breath.

fenir

[Lord Krazy]

Just like Bar said, if it's free it should be ok http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
I work on this principle.
We only wish to add to the fun of it all.
As long as you don't infringe the right
to profit of the owner I can't see the problem.
My lawyer got his licence back the other day
and he said no problem http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

Disclaimer:
This is not an official statement
on behalf of the org. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

[Lord Krazy]

Ye my lawyer has told me that some guys in England
use the name the lords http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
These guys even have a big club house
and they know loads about war games.
Small world ahh.
So we will be known as the lordz now http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/joker.gif

[King David]

Quote[/b] (Wellington @ Nov. 22 2002,20:31)]
Quote[/b] (King David @ Nov. 22 2002,20:08)]I spent the money for AOE and the two addons so no problem here. Our fellow moders in the AOE AOK world share templates and other things in the game in order to make their mods work (I made the Sparticus Mod.) with no problems that I know of. My understanding is that as long as you are not selling your creations derived from these games you are safe. It all has to do with marketing as far as I know. As long as the developers dont raise hell about our modifications of their game we are fine.. They have biger fish to fry...
Fair points KD,

BUT ... your only talking in repect of games from 1 supplier. AOE and AOK are from the same source. Any swopping of images between such games is NOT a problem as the recipients of such mods MUST HAVE/OWN THE ENGINE/GAME.

Likewise we have othe gamimg communitis on the WWW that swop files about in respect of other games in a series "Baulders Gate/BG2/Icewind Dale etc). This is NOT a problem. All recipients MUST have the game(s) in order to utilise the provided mods.

What I am asking is ...

"what is the position/situation in providing images from one game (from one supplier/company) for use in a completely different game (from a different supplier/company). The Copyights/legalities become less clear
I see your point in that. And I am sure that The individuals who provide us with resources to create modifications of MTW do so soberly and responsibly within the limits of copyright law. I wonder if the devs ever try out our mods or if they are too busy creating another game to be modifyed by men and women like us. Just think of the business they get just from our interest in their game. We moders of MTW are what keep the player playing, otherwise the game goes on the shelf along with AOK and AOE or even worse, on sale at ebay...

[Wellington]

Quote[/b] (fenir @ Nov. 23 2002,00:48)]Ok wellington Spill the beans http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

you have me waiting with bait breath.

fenir
Fenir,

The reason I asked this question re- copyrights was to ascertain whether or not "The Org" would be happy serving as a "repository" for BIF's/frames that have been built out of images that -

1) originate from another game
2) are 'suitable' for usage by the MTW Total War engine

There are many people who peruse this forum, have a major interest in MTW Total War, have other interests in certain othert specific gaming areas, and pick up a few things from this forum (although they may not be regular posters themselves - does'nt really matter).

I've had a few E-mails from people who are really interested in such a mod, and have seen the enthusiam expressed by individuals on the various "Fantasy" threads that have arisen over the last few months.

Such individuals have one thing in common - ENTHUSIASM, and to my mind this quality surpasses all other considerations It really does'nt matter what you know - what you WANT TO KNOW is far more important.

Anyway, there appears to be a lot of people who are both interested in MTW and modding and also have an interest in Fantasy/Dungeons and Dragons/LOTR etc, but the current projects/ideas appear to have hit a brick wall. I have a lot of ideas in this respect and know that many of the problems that have been encountered are circumventable ... principally (in respect of units/animations) by utilising images from other games.

Basically, I hate to see enthusiasm die a death, because all aspects of modding can be learned/picked up depending on the recipients interest. Therefore, I'll be posting a new thread in respect of how to go about a Fantasy type mod and what is currently available (from other games) in order to make such a mod using the MTW engine.

[dclare4]

How about stuff on the internet like shields (for my War of the Roses mod) coats of arms, banners (like Freezywater Publications does). Also I have a female spy mod to accompany my WotR mod w/c changes all the pics of the spies to females. Some sources are, shall we say, less than reputable. Will this last one be a no-no for distribution? It doesn't show any gratuitous skin or what have you but it does have the model's face, often with a background of a heraldic flag of some sort.

Gloucester

[Kraellin]

what barocca said is how i view this, for the most part. if you were attempting to sell your mod, then it's a totally different matter.

the old adage of 'give credit where credit is due' also applies here. and frankly, this is where i fall down. i've ripped off images from other sites, other games and so on and have used a few of those to make avatar images and have forgotten to give credit to the author or site or game or whatever. in retrospect i usually try to credit whomever when i finally post such an image, but by then, i've usually forgotten where i got the original image. by giving credit in some form you are indeed promoting that site, game, or whatever, and this 'free advertising' normally offsets any infringement of copyright, particularly if you're not making any monetary gain off it, or depriving the author of monetary gain. it's the last part, depriving another of monetary gain, that can get tricky. it can be argued that by posting another's work somewhere else, you are depriving them of the traffic they might have gained by your posting their images somewhere else, but it's also true that others wouldnt even know that these images existed if you hadnt posted them in the first place. this is sort of what we do in the babiest babe thread. by linking those pics here, we're depriving whatever site of traffic because there's no reason for someone to go elsewhere if they can get them here, but at the same time, all of that exposure on this site promotes the other site, particularly since you can right click on any image and see in the properties list the link to that other site. and, some pics even have the site listed on the picture itself.

for the most part, you dont hear of anyone being sued over these things until someone tries to sell something that belongs to someone else. that's when the hair starts to fly. so, in our little world of free mod exchange there's little risk of being nailed to the wall by lawsuits.

if you're really concerned, however, read the EULA (end user's license agreement) that came with the game in question and abide by that, or write the author for permission.

we also somewhat take it for granted that with a game like mtw that we can use their images in our mods for the game, particularly since the authors specifically wrote the code with modding in mind. this is a more or less tacit agreement that this is acceptable to them, so long as we also abide by the EULA.

for me personally, if i'm making an mtw mod and wanted to use an AoE image within it, i'm going to credit the images from AoE in my readme file and go ahead and post it. and like barocca said, if they then object, i simply remove it. chances are they are not going to object because of the promotion to their own game you gave in the readme.

it can, technically, be a grey area legally, however, since no money is changing hands around here, as far as we know, then it's really a pretty minute legal matter and not going to attract very much attention nor warrant a company's legal department going into action. in the long run, a company that did that is going to suffer far more 'bad press' over such a trivial matter than they could possibly gain from a legal lawsuit. but, also dont fall into the justification that you can just rip anything you want from anyone and use it however you want, just because you 'paid for the game' or 'i'm not hurting anyone', or 'hey, if it's posted on the net it's public domain'. these mental justifications are not always correct. the bottom line is, legally, you DONT own the game; you are leasing the rights to use it, and everything within belongs to the authors, copyright holders, trademark holders, etc, and the courts will uphold that if push comes to shove.

aside from any legal matters, it's just plain courteous to give credit where credit is due and to NOT rip off from the hand that feeds. and if you really have any concerns about this, then write the authors and ask. to me, that's the bottom line; i just need to get a bit better at it, myself ;)

K.

[Mithel]

I don't wish to be negative about creative modifications but companies do have a right to "protect" their "intellectual property" whether or not you are trying to sell your mod or just give it away free. A company may argue that your mod is taking away from their sales (and thus causing financial harm to them).

You can do virtually anything for your own entertainment, the only problem comes when you start distributing it (sharing with others).

In general though if you are not actually selling your modification you would just receive a "cease and desist" letter from the wronged company asking you to stop.

Companies will support communities such as this as long as it generates additional interest in their products. However when you take "intellectual property" from one game and apply it to another then you are crossing the line and you may find that you receive a cease and desist letter.

Let us hope most companies are reasonably intelligent and see the modders efforts as generating extra business, but I've known some that firmly had their heads stuck in the sand and would sue over the slightest issue.

- Mithel

[ICantSpellDawg]

oh my god, i hate copyright laws. while anything from this game is permissable and encouraged by the game company to modify and distribute without recieving pay; from other games, if someone wanted to be an ####### (which people tend to want to be), they might make a stink about you using their stuff, EVEN if you give them credit and are doing it without making any money. this is age of empires competition for one. i wouldnt care if i made something and someone used it, but if the person using it was making another competitive game more popular, then i might make a stink as the competition would then in the future be cutting into my profits. this is where copy right law gets to be a pain in the ass. the only way to be sure is to get their consent. if they (the company do not give it to you, then just dont put your name on it when you make it....

i hope this made a bit of sense and that someone else didnt write this before me - CUZ then il get SUED