Go you and your ideas! You have my whole-hearted backing on this thing! -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 30 November 2010 23:03 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Mainstream Access was Bavisoft
Hi Bryan, That's always possible, but I can think of cases were big name companies and publishers have went to court and lost. For example, one of the websites that hosts fan fiction stories was sued over it, and the publisher that filed the suit lost. The reason had to do with the fair use claus in the copyright law that says you can use a copyright or trademark for education, if it is free, or advertises a certain product or service, etc. A good lawyer, that represented the fan fiction website, managed to convince the judge that fan fiction represented a clear case of ffreedom of speech and that it was all according to the fair use claus in the copyright law. Which goes to show just because someone is a copyright holder of a certain product, service, or trademark doesn't mean they are all powerful. Another case in point is Civilization. Now, I think we all remember that game was massively huge in the mid 1990's. Not suprisingly someone came out with Freeciv, an open source clone, and the author has never legally been attacked over it. Big reason is the author released it as as educational, released it as free, and made it totally open source. Activision, who currently holds the copyrights for Civilization, don't legally have grounds to sue because Freeciv is protected by the fair use copyright laws. My point being if a person such as myself created a Star Wars game, released it as fan fiction, made it open source, etc it really weakens their case because I don't stand to proffit from my work. More over I could legally say I created this project as an educational example of how Lucas Arts could make one of their own games accessible etc. They could trty and swing the judge their way, but the onis is on them to prove how my freeware, open source, game has hurt the company. That certainly can't say they lost millions of sales tdo to it because sighted players wouldn't be interested in an audio only game, and they themselves haven't attempted to target the VI market so who are they kidding? On 11/30/10, Bryan Peterson <[email protected]> wrote: > You could theoretically but suing someone is expensive. It's often not > worthwhile since even if you did get some financial award on your > counterclaim it might be less than the court costs. It would probably be > financial suicide to try to sue or countersue a big name company like > Nintendo or Sony, even if you had legal grounds to do so. They probably have > hundreds of top notch lawyers who would beat the bushes to make sure the > judge and jury saw their side and only their side of the argument. > We are the Knights who saaaaay...Ni! --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected]. --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
