Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #20 on: January 14, 2012, 12:26:09 PM » |
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Everytime I hear someone repeat the "infringement's OK as long as it's free (see also;moddb.com)" fallacy I am saddened and ashamed for the human race that logic and reason never made as great an impact as I feel they should have. It's a good thing nobody said that in this thread, then...
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mikejkelley
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« Reply #21 on: January 14, 2012, 09:21:03 PM » |
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When I said "repeat the "infringement's OK as long as it' free..." fallacy," I didn't mean verbatim. Gimmy Tilbert asked It's free or commercial? implying that whether or not the game was free would be the deciding factor as to whether or not Zack Bell should be "Worried about copyright."
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #22 on: January 15, 2012, 03:51:55 AM » |
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I think he asked that because a commercial game would be at a higher risk of attracting legal problems, like bluescrn said.
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mikejkelley
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« Reply #24 on: January 15, 2012, 11:47:06 AM » |
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@ Christian Knudsen, which is why I went on to point out that all else being equal, a free game will cannibalize the IP's market share more so than a commercial game and consequently be more deserving of legal action.
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #25 on: January 15, 2012, 02:15:46 PM » |
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But the OP makes it pretty clear that he's not going to clone a game, steal an IP or otherwise infringe on copyrighted material. He's making a game with some Metroid inspired gameplay. Sure, you could argue that such a game could potentially cannibalize the market share of actual Metroid games, but you're not arguing that nobody should be allowed to use those types of game mechanics, are you?
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Zack Bell
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« Reply #26 on: January 15, 2012, 05:07:18 PM » |
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Apparently this thread still hasn't died, so I thought that I'd leave another copyright-related question here:
Who holds the copyright to Alice in Wonderland? Or does one still exist? There have been several Alice games, books, tv series, and movies all made by different people and I'm assuming that they all didn't pay Disney (also assuming that Carroll's copyright no long exists).
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #27 on: January 16, 2012, 03:12:56 AM » |
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First Google hit on "Alice in Wonderland copyright": http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice11.htmlQ: Are the books and the pictures still copyright protected?
A: No. When the Alice books were published, they were copyright protected until 42 years after the first publication or 7 years after the author's death, whichever was the longer. Later, the 1911 Act replaced the 1842 Copyright Act which extended the period to 50 years after the author's death.
This means that the copyright on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" subsisted until 1907 and that of "Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there" until 1948. As Tenniel died in 1914, his illustrations came out of copyright in 1964.
Disney's cartoon movie still remains in copyright. If you wish to use movie stills, video, audio, or anything else from the movie, you'll need to ask permission from Disney Consumer Products (500 S. Buena Vista, Burbank, CA 91521-6781).
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Zack Bell
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« Reply #28 on: January 16, 2012, 10:20:18 AM » |
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First Google hit on "Alice in Wonderland copyright": http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice11.htmlQ: Are the books and the pictures still copyright protected?
A: No. When the Alice books were published, they were copyright protected until 42 years after the first publication or 7 years after the author's death, whichever was the longer. Later, the 1911 Act replaced the 1842 Copyright Act which extended the period to 50 years after the author's death.
This means that the copyright on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" subsisted until 1907 and that of "Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there" until 1948. As Tenniel died in 1914, his illustrations came out of copyright in 1964.
Disney's cartoon movie still remains in copyright. If you wish to use movie stills, video, audio, or anything else from the movie, you'll need to ask permission from Disney Consumer Products (500 S. Buena Vista, Burbank, CA 91521-6781). Haha, yeah. I read that one. It just seemed somewhat vague to me. I guess if someone were to stay away from Disney-inspired works, they would be fine.
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Christian Knudsen
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« Reply #29 on: January 16, 2012, 11:50:41 AM » |
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I don't think it's vague at all. The book and illustrations are no longer copyrighted. But works based on them are of course still copyrighted, like the Disney stuff and any game you yourself might make based on the original book. Same deal with the recent Dante's Inferno game. Dante's Divine Comedy isn't copyrighted, so you can make your own game based on that, but you can't use assets from EA's game.
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Zack Bell
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« Reply #30 on: January 16, 2012, 11:58:26 AM » |
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Ok, thank you! That was a good example.
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