Re: On Hold
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">INAL, but I would recommend against doing that. You can be held legally responsible, and you might, at least in theory, receive a harsher reaction than an e-mail telling you to take it down. Potentially you might even implicate Illwinter and Shrapnel since, because of this thread, it can be argued that they were likely to know about the violation.

What you should do is to take the map down for now, and send a polite request to the company who own the copyright to be allowed to use the modified map. I doubt you will receive anything but a polite but firm no, but that's still my advice.

Re: On Hold
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It was taken down a half-hour ago, and Zen has already sent another email.

Re: On Hold
 

Don't think Illwinter could be held responsible for a third party's actions. If they could, it would be too easy to sabotage / short sell / extort a company. Illwinter should not advertise, host, or promote any questionable files.

Aikamun

[ March 01, 2004, 11:47: Message edited by: Aikamun ]

Re: On Hold
 

I'm not that afraid of any issues, frankly claiming rights to a map of Europe would be pure BS http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
In addition the map WAS changed, so to me Zen is the map's rightholder, and if he's OK I'll host it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif . Those interested can PM or mail me.

Re: On Hold
 

Zen is not okay with the idea, and it was he who specifically asked me to break the link on my site. I abide by the wishes of the author.

Re: On Hold
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ok, case closed. How could I know, Zen erased his Posts ?
I find all of this very stupid, everyone is scared to death as soon as the word "copyright" is pronounced. Another lame US trend http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: On Hold
 

Lame but true; and I believe similar laws are being considered for the EU. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: On Hold
 

Hey, it's not my fault that the US has more lawyers per capita than any other country. I happen to agree with Shakespeare with regard to lawyers ...

Re: On Hold
 

I had a similar conundrum when looking for unit graphics. Since there are a fair amount of fansites dedicated to "abandoned" games, meaning they are so old that they no longer present on the shelves in the shops, I thought I could copy some of their graphics to use in this game.

But I got cold feet after a few units. I got sort of burned in the small artists against Baldurs Gate portraits flamewar and I have no wish to get those kind of e-mail any time soon.

Perhaps Illwinter could add one or two guidelines up that we could follow?

Re: On Hold
 

As far as who does or does not care about copyright laws I think you will find that a publisher of games (you know, the ones that own this discussion forum) might have their own stand on it so I wouldnt advise a discussion on whether or not copyrights in general should be followed. The rest of us can probably afford to be alittle careful when it comes to other peoples possible liabilites.
Oh yeah, and its not law that is to be feared here. Its lawsuits. And lawsuits tend to include distributers.

As to the map, I havent seen it. However, copyright tends to apply to claiming ownership of a complete work. If you use pieces, or give proper credit (at least dont take credit), then you are usually safe enough unless notified otherwise. I suspect that using a map image in another game would not constitute a real copyright problem if you leave any signatures in place on the image but again I dont know the particulars on this one.

However, I am still very interested in any other game where the map icons (trees, mountains, rivers) are about the right size for us. And especially if that game has a map generator software.

[ March 01, 2004, 13:40: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]