Hi Dark, True enough. However, it is still none-the-less a personal risk. Weather anything comes of it or not is anyone's guess.
That said, there is still quite a bit of wiggle room when it comes to copyrights. There are some gray areas such as fan fiction that is seriously challenging the big money hungry companies when it comes to absolute control over copyrights and trademarks, and it is to this niche we as audio game developers can attempt to squeeze into. What it comes down to is the intention of the laws, and how they have slowly changed over the years. When the U.S. Copyright Act was originally written the basic intention was to keep someone from profiting from a work or idea created by someone else. If I wrote a book, for example, you couldn't just copy it word for word and sell it to another party because it was copyrighted. Then, that basic idea was extended to include specific things in the book such as people, places, and things that were unique to that book. However, these days it seems the companies are pushing the boundaries of those laws, and insisting on things that were never intended by the original copyright laws and is largely unenforceable. For example, if you download an audio book from Audible you'll probably get some standard warning to the effect not to transmit this audio book via email, Internet download, not to stream the recording, or play this recording in front of a live audience. Its to this latter point that I find a bit disturbing. As I don't see anything wrong with buying an audio book and playing it with a bunch of friends or in front of a class of students. Yet, according to the copyright notice that sort of public use is impermissible, and I think could be challenged if push came to shove. When I was a student in grade school our V.I. teacher use to get audio books from the National Library Service and play a chapter or so every day after lunch. All the kids would gather around and listen to the book, and then answer questions about it the teacher asked. I think this is a pretty fair use of the audio book, and even if it were obtained from Audible instead of NLS I think they shouldn't have the right to restrict someone like a school teacher from playing an audio book in front of her class. That seems to me to be a perfectly fair use of that audio recording. However, it sounds like the companies that produce books on tape, CD, and for digital download have other ideas of what is and is not fair use of that recording. The reason I am saying all of this is to point out that over the years the intended use of the copyright laws have changed, and corporations with lots of money invested in their products have used copyright laws to beat people over the head and beat them into submission. In some cases what the corporations demand isn't even entitled to them under the current copyright laws, and since most people don't know their rights they often get run over by the greedy companies who want to control everything, and squeeze every dime they can out of their customers one way or another. Now, though, thanks to the rise of the Internet companies are having problems holding onto their copyrights and many people, common people, are willing to test the boundaries of copyright law. Fan fiction is one area where we see this happening. There are a number of fan fiction sites where people can submit stories on Star Wars, Harry Potter, Batman, or whatever and have it read by the rest of the world. Some publishers have taken the fan fiction sites to court only to get their butts royally kicked for their efforts. So thanks to the efforts of fan fiction people are beginning to take back their rights, and telling Warner Brothers and other companies like them we are not going to give them absolute control over this content. That the community has some rights under the fair use clause of the U.S. Copyright Act and we will darn well use them. Basically, I think if a developer, such as myself, decides to create a LOTR game as long as it was free, I wasn't making a profit off of it, I could probably claim it is a type of fan fiction. As such I could use the same fair use clause they use to legally keep running fan fiction sites even though it makes the copyright holders madder than a crazy rat with his tail on fire. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
