Topic: Lawyers and stuff...

[T' Kang]

This is an excerpt we received

"Major (Name Withheld)

... In response to your inquiry concerning the usage of materials found on the internet in a publicly available domain:

1) Our opinion (supported*) is that there would be extremely limited, or no liability potential on the usage or modification of any material obtained; with the exclusion of specific rights afforded a copyright for specific purpose usage outside the individual game-title environment.

2) This specific copyright would be identified by both the copyright and license information that was registered. Pseudo-names are not used in copyrights unless held under a business entity such as a corporation. Any specifics would be publicly available and have the mailing addresses included.

3) It is our consensus that any modified gaming materials would be the property of the licensed developer or licensed publisher (“contractor”) under FAR 52.227-19 or DFARS 252.227-7013. Any “new” gaming material would have to have rights specifically secured and licensed prior to distribution for commercial application.

3.1) New gaming material would be proprietary if you expanded your current license arrangements with Viacom, and secured contract arrangements with the developer and the publisher.

3.2) “Freeware” would be allowed as new game material under the EULA if properly identified, but the ownership of any material is no longer proprietary, and could be requested by the “contractor” to be removed from public access without fiscal recourse.

Please inform us on how you would like our firm to proceed..."

And who said lawyers are not fun... 

[Starforce2]

Huh?

[AncientAngel]

Might help if you would post the orginal E-mail that got the responce because right now I have no clue to what and why etc.. or the general point they are trying to make.

[T' Kang]

What this was was a reply to consolidate the copyright and licensing research completed to prior to securing copyrights for a MMOG system that could have been applied to SFC3. What it comes down to was if you post it you either have a license to distribute something or are working under another license.

If you work under the EULA it is theirs.

[KBF-Crim]

Correct...anything developed for use in a licensed game falls under the ownership of the orginal intellectual property owner and (or) the developer....

Models...mods...scripts...fan fiction...everything and anything that is created to exist in the Star Trek universe(for example)....

None of that stuff can be copy written because it is considered to be a derivative product, based upon the original intellectual property...

IE....If another trek game is licensed from paramount....anything made from or based upon..paramounts intellectual property could be included in the game...with no legal requirement to compensate the modeler, writer, scripter or artist...

So while Taldren in fact "owned" the SFC code (because they wrote it)...that code in fact included other intellectual property that needed a license to be used....both from steve Cole and from Paramount...

So without license...the code is basiclly useless...

Unless the original owner permits it to become "open scource"....then it falls into the public domain...

That being said....

Both Steve and Paramount are aware of fan produced items for use in SFC...such as ship models...and SFB material....

While they are under no requirement to permit such...they are gracious enough to do so...so long as several basic rules are followed...

Such items are freely available to anyone who so wishes...

Such items are for the exclusive use of people who allready have the game...and for use in the game...

No item generates revenue...

And no item disrespects the original intellectual property owner...

While Steve himself might not be in a position of leverage with an entire legal dept....such is NOT the case for Paramount...

And I know for a fact that another older trek game had an entire community shut down over a derivative product they were actually trying to market and copywrite...

Thus the reason that we here at DV.net are pretty strict about what gets posted and that no one tries to "sell" meshes, mods, or anything else on these forums...

We are still in Steve and Paramounts good graces....and we want to stay that way...

Who knows what the future may bring....if paramount ever decides to produce a fan developed title....we would be a prime canidate...we have modelers...scripters...programers...and writers...all right here...

And THAT would be cool as hell...

[Kana]

Well Steve C might have a legal ground to stand on...and he does have a 'non-time' specific license agreement with Paramount on TOS era stuff...but come on they only have like 6 employees...and the do all their own packaging, in their 'warehouse'...so I don't see much problem from them unless you really started trying to sell something...it's Paramount you would really have to watch out for...

Kana

[Starforce2]

Correct...anything developed for use in a licensed game falls under the ownership of the orginal intellectual property owner and (or) the developer....

Models...mods...scripts...fan fiction...everything and anything that is created to exist in the Star Trek universe(for example)....

None of that stuff can be copy written because it is considered to be a derivative product, based upon the original intellectual property...

IE....If another trek game is licensed from paramount....anything made from or based upon..paramounts intellectual property could be included in the game...with no legal requirement to compensate the modeler, writer, scripter or artist...

So while Taldren in fact "owned" the SFC code (because they wrote it)...that code in fact included other intellectual property that needed a license to be used....both from steve Cole and from Paramount...

So without license...the code is basiclly useless...

Unless the original owner permits it to become "open scource"....then it falls into the public domain...

That being said....

Both Steve and Paramount are aware of fan produced items for use in SFC...such as ship models...and SFB material....

While they are under no requirement to permit such...they are gracious enough to do so...so long as several basic rules are followed...

Such items are freely available to anyone who so wishes...

Such items are for the exclusive use of people who allready have the game...and for use in the game...

No item generates revenue...

And no item disrespects the original intellectual property owner...

While Steve himself might not be in a position of leverage with an entire legal dept....such is NOT the case for Paramount...

And I know for a fact that another older trek game had an entire community shut down over a derivative product they were actually trying to market and copywrite...

Thus the reason that we here at DV.net are pretty strict about what gets posted and that no one tries to "sell" meshes, mods, or anything else on these forums...

We are still in Steve and Paramounts good graces....and we want to stay that way...

Who knows what the future may bring....if paramount ever decides to produce a fan developed title....we would be a prime canidate...we have modelers...scripters...programers...and writers...all right here...

And THAT would be cool as hell...

What old community got shut down?

[KBF-Crim]

Well Steve C might have a legal ground to stand on...and he does have a 'non-time' specific license agreement with Paramount on TOS era stuff...but come on they only have like 6 employees...and the do all their own packaging, in their 'warehouse'...so I don't see much problem from them unless you really started trying to sell something...it's Paramount you would really have to watch out for...

Kana

Actually...we are Steve's first line of defense...

Fair use is fine...abuse is not...

[KBF-Crim]

Uh...damn star...you would ask...."Birth of the Federation" I think....

I can sniff around and find out, it came up is some of the...er....discussions..

[T' Kang]

Correct...anything developed for use in a licensed game falls under the ownership of the original intellectual property owner and (or) the developer....

Models...mods...scripts...fan fiction...everything and anything that is created to exist in the Star Trek universe(for example)....

None of that stuff can be copy written because it is considered to be a derivative product, based upon the original intellectual property...

IE....If another trek game is licensed from paramount....anything made from or based upon..paramounts intellectual property could be included in the game...with no legal requirement to compensate the modeler, writer, scripter or artist...

So while Taldren in fact "owned" the SFC code (because they wrote it)...that code in fact included other intellectual property that needed a license to be used....both from Steve Cole and from Paramount...

So without license...the code is basically useless...

Unless the original owner permits it to become "open source"....then it falls into the public domain...

That being said....

Both Steve and Paramount are aware of fan produced items for use in SFC...such as ship models...and SFB material....

While they are under no requirement to permit such...they are gracious enough to do so...so long as several basic rules are followed...

Such items are freely available to anyone who so wishes...

Such items are for the exclusive use of people who allready have the game...and for use in the game...

No item generates revenue...

And no item disrespects the original intellectual property owner...

While Steve himself might not be in a position of leverage with an entire legal dept....such is NOT the case for Paramount...

And I know for a fact that another older trek game had an entire community shut down over a derivative product they were actually trying to market and copywrite...

Thus the reason that we here at DV.net are pretty strict about what gets posted and that no one tries to "sell" meshes, mods, or anything else on these forums...

We are still in Steve and Paramounts good graces....and we want to stay that way...

Who knows what the future may bring....if paramount ever decides to produce a fan developed title....we would be a prime candidate...we have modelers...scripters...programmers...and writers...all right here...

And THAT would be cool as hell...

Crim you are "on the money." 

We knew there would be difficulties-impossibilities with a new ST game, so we went with the "Grandfathered license and reissue" concept. Therefore our project started as, "What would it take to reissue SFC3, and to make it a break-even proposition to the bean counters." The bottom line is a game will eventually die without money from somewhere. Humm Lucas Arts had over 20k subscription renewals last quarter. How much does Activision receive from their ST Titles?

We forked over the assignment (and a few significant checks) to a corporate legal firm, and they were off.

AncientAngel the sanitized (we have other NCA's involved) post is from the final cover letter received. Remember, that in the world all documents are Faxed with a hard-copy to follow. Faxes can be used as a temporary document under the mail fraud statutes.

So in summary what we were told by the attorneys, and you generally repeated above Crim is:

If you build a mesh, mod, script, etc. It is yours.

Once this is converted into a usable part of SFC it becomes the property of the legal contractor, or developer. (No longer yours)

For a model as example: My mesh is *.3ds until it becomes posted as a *.mod. From this point it is considered "Freeware" or the intellectual property of the developer-contractor.
If people understand these facts from the beginning, it may save a few of the flame wars I see posted around.

Time for me to get back to tilting at windmills... 

[T' Kang]

This is a summary from a local "free" newspaper this morning. I will see if I can locate a linkable article. This is Federal Dist Court in Orlando.

It appears that "new" Adobe-Macromedia registration located a 17yo kid using a "crack" to register a student copy of Discreet Max6 (now AutoDesk property). It appears that the kid is in detention with a $250k bail and the parents are being charged in connection to this for providing the computer and ISP.

[OlBuzzard]

I cant help but to wonder how much of that goes on.  It costs the industry millions annually.

[T' Kang]

I cant help but to wonder how much of that goes on.  It costs the industry millions annually.

How much of the "Hacker" stuff ripping people-business off (using cracks or re-loading demo-trial software)?
or; how easy it is becoming to track down these abuses?
or; how the parent's cannot post bond for the kid because their house is attached by civil suit?

I am a very small fish in a very big pond, what I get from some bigger fish is that the FedGov is now under pressure to "severly investigate and prosecute" such things. This is all that I have heard about locally. We are still playing hurricane recovery down here.

*Trivia: the average bondsman around here charges 10% of the amount as a service fee. It does not pencil out. Cost of Max6=$3k Cost of Bond=$25k Cost of Jail=Priceless...

**Add to the above was PhotoShop v7=$300

[Mr_Tricorder]

Actually, it look's like Discreet/Autodesk turns a blind eye to individual users pirating 3ds max.  I've seen how people do it, and it's incredibly easy to do.

It also seems like they would rather focus on companies and organizations to make sure they're "playing by the rules" as far as their software is concerned, and that the individual users who use their software illegally are likely to work for either a company that already uses their products or a company that doesn't yet and then encourage them to.  Either way it helps them out in the end.

Don't misunderstand me.  I understand and agree that software piracy is legally and morally wrong.  It just seems to me that the owners of 3ds max don't seem to be making much of an effort to prevent individuals from using it.

[OlBuzzard]

I cant help but to wonder how much of that goes on.  It costs the industry millions annually.

How much of the "Hacker" stuff ripping people-business off (using cracks or re-loading demo-trial software)?
or; how easy it is becoming to track down these abuses?
or; how the parent's cannot post bond for the kid because their house is attached by civil suit?

I am a very small fish in a very big pond, what I get from some bigger fish is that the FedGov is now under pressure to "severly investigate and prosecute" such things. This is all that I have heard about locally. We are still playing hurricane recovery down here.

*Trivia: the average bondsman around here charges 10% of the amount as a service fee. It does not pencil out. Cost of Max6=$3k Cost of Bond=$25k Cost of Jail=Priceless...

Actually ..  was refering to how much stuff is ripped off...  including pirated soft ware.

[Starforce2]

Actually, it look's like Discreet/Autodesk turns a blind eye to individual users pirating 3ds max.  I've seen how people do it, and it's incredibly easy to do.

It also seems like they would rather focus on companies and organizations to make sure they're "playing by the rules" as far as their software is concerned, and that the individual users who use their software illegally are likely to work for either a company that already uses their products or a company that doesn't yet and then encourage them to.  Either way it helps them out in the end.

Don't misunderstand me.  I understand and agree that software piracy is legally and morally wrong.  It just seems to me that the owners of 3ds max don't seem to be making much of an effort to prevent individuals from using it.

Perhaps  because use of their programs betters gamming communities and results in more games being sold,thus more made,  thus  more  companies buying their software...interesting food chain really.

[T' Kang]

Actually, it look's like Discreet/Autodesk turns a blind eye to individual users pirating 3ds max.  I've seen how people do it, and it's incredibly easy to do.

Now this is considered rumor... A little but of info seems to be dangerous and I do not know very much. I am far from a computer expert. Being a "customer" with AutoDesk and directly involved with the govt, and a couple companies using their products I called them casually. What they said is that there were various links to pirated software they have been tracking down for a while, ant the possibility of law enforcement "stings."

The registration links were through Macromedia which was picked up by Adobe. Currently, the same registration information being pulled for Photoshop, Acrobat, etc. is transmitted and received. Opens the program and lodges this "CD Key" in the program in a similar way to Digimark ID's. It is triggered when the program opens and with the help key. They also told me that repeat registration(s) on the same CD-Key triggers them to take action.

But... It is not my problem, my concern was the parent's liability and how a unsupervised teenager can wipe out your life because "they know eveything..."

[Starforce2]

r u saying that every time  the program  opens or is  installed  it transmits something over the net? You know the big brother poeple are  going to tkae issue to  any program  transmitting information unknown to the user (assuming that is what you meant) lol. This should be interesting.

[OlBuzzard]

Actually, it look's like Discreet/Autodesk turns a blind eye to individual users pirating 3ds max.  I've seen how people do it, and it's incredibly easy to do.

Now this is considered rumor... A little but of info seems to be dangerous and I do not know very much. I am far from a computer expert. Being a "customer" with AutoDesk and directly involved with the govt, and a couple companies using their products I called them casually. What they said is that there were various links to pirated software they have been tracking down for a while, ant the possibility of law enforcement "stings."

The registration links were through Macromedia which was picked up by Adobe. Currently, the same registration information being pulled for Photoshop, Acrobat, etc. is transmitted and received. Opens the program and lodges this "CD Key" in the program in a similar way to Digimark ID's. It is triggered when the program opens and with the help key. They also told me that repeat registration(s) on the same CD-Key triggers them to take action.

But... It is not my problem, my concern was the parent's liability and how a unsupervised teenager can wipe out your life because "they know eveything..."

point well taken bud !

[KBF-Crim]

It would seem prudent the keep that questionable install on a PC not connected to the net...if one where to do such a thing