[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by Will:
Jack, you're misunderstanding. If someone only modified SEIV by changing a menu color and distributing the work as their own, that does violate copyright. This doesn't mean changing parts of SEIV like this cannot be done; in fact, Aaron has made it quite easy to make these modifications, and the mods can be distributed independantly of the game. To distribute anything else as your own essentially is plagerism.

No, I'm not confused; If you'll notice, I said "Simply saying no direct copies is insufficient; for example" (emphasis added). Another way of saying that would be to say that I found the definition you posted to be lacking. Further, I later said "[...] and that which you would not [like to be acceptable] (changing a menu color)?" - which also implies that I know it isn't what you are actually after. That was just an example to demonstrate a problem with things as you had worded them; you now appear to be saying that you didn't mean things exactly as they were posted, so that's fine.

Originally posted by Will:

Using SEIV as an example, what I'm talking about would be someone writing a game similar to SEIV on their own. A programmer could mimic, reverse-engineer, the exact setup of SEIV (systems connected by warps and containing planets, ships to colonize, attack, etc, resources generated from colonies, research, intelligence, diplomacy), and as long as the programmer does not copy any of the individual parts of the game (this includes the copyrighted images, sounds, etc. in SEIV, those would have to be reproduced independantly), it is fine. Of course, in the process of creating the "clone", it will inevitably become a different thing from the original, as the clone author imparts its own personal style and biases to the clone.

You're trying to visualize a line where copyright ceases to cover a work, and are using examples to draw that line within distinct components of a work. If you must imagine a line, however, it should be seperating the work itself and its components, and the ideas behind them.

They won't be inevitably measureably different (there are people who are that thourough and can suppress their own preferences). A copy made to be extremely similar for the user made in the fasion you describe and distributed freely by a malicious institution wanting to bring Aaron down would have a similar effect to just changing a menu color (especially if they took more time with the graphics, fixed the bugs people complain about on the forums, can accept the same data file format, and used it as an advertising gimmick to get people to come to their website (where they actually sell something else)). That would be a great tool for big corporations which wanted to drive little companies out of business.