Copywrite laws are they to vague?

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by DavidG:
Jack are you telling me that if Marvel comics is aware of a site like that one and does nothing about it they lose their copyright??

In such a case, Marvel effectively loses its right to a claim in later cases involving the originally breached copyrighted material where a lawyer can make a sufficiently solid case that the incidents are sufficiently similar; yes, the copyright doesn't go away in its entirety, but essentially that's the case.

Also, Marvel would have to be officially (proveably) aware of the breach for it to count.

Many companies contract out enforcement to other companies. In this way, they can claim in court that they were making an effort to enforce their rights, and any apparent inaction was really the result of the contracted company not fullfilling its obligations - it's a form of insurance.

However, in many cases you can get license to do non-commercial stuff with the simple expediant of writing a letter to the right person. This covers everyone's rear ends: you are licensed, so you aren't in violation of anything; you are licensed at the will of the company, so the company doesn't have legal issues with you doing stuff; you are producing the stuff, so people can't convincingly say that the company is choking creativity. They will likely toss several stipulations into the license (such as not putting the characters in positions that the company wouldn't put them in, and not selling the stuff, and that the company can terminate the license at any moment, on their whim) but they are unlikely to be too terribly restrictive in practice. Further, it doesn't need to be too terribly formal - if Atrocities recieved the word from Paramount in letter form saying that Paramount isn't concerned and wishing him luck on his web site, he could drop that off in a safe deposit box somewhere and merrily make Star-Trek ships to his heart's content.

Mind you, I am not a lawyer, and could be off on many of the details.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

most game licenses have a 'failure to enforce any clause is not a waiver' part.

yes, i read game licenses.
marvel was a aggresive in there letter, but within there right's.

[ June 19, 2003, 06:30: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
most game licenses have a 'failure to enforce any clause is not a waiver' part.

yes, i read game licenses.

Yes, but that is precisely becuase under normal circumstances failure to enforce copyright when a violation is known is a waiver; otherwise that phrase would be leagally implicit, and not need mentioning.

[Atrocities]

Any one here know what the S.B.A. is? If you don't and you have pirated software, you should consider finding out. They "do" inforce copyright laws especially for MS.

[Rojero]

What is SBA?

[PvK]

Originally posted by Pax:
...
That is not a matter of a power grab (the letter from Marvel, below) ... it's a matter of law: if marvel DOESN'T actively and aggressively protect it's trademarks and associated intellectual property, they lose them. Marvel exists to profit form selling stories and other products based on that intellectual property.

Take the recent X-Men films; if copies and derivations (etc) could be made and distributed for free and without penalty by persons OTHER than those who made the films and/or own rights to the intellectual properties with which the films were told, then, the films would never have been made.

MOST films owuldn't get made, nor would most books be published. It's a business, and it's about profit. Just like the inventor of a new machine should profit from his or her creation, the creator of a new piece of intellectual property should be able to do likewise.

Put it in perspective WRT SE4: if anyone were allowed to hand out copies of SE4, without Aaron seeing a penny, and with him unable to seek any sort of legal intervention ...

... then SE would probably never have happened, let alone be onthe FOURTH Version. The man has to put food on his table, after all.

No, I was talking about fan art, not piracy. Do you think fan art (i.e. mods and shipsets) are hurting SE4?

Even amateur movies modelled after existing commercial films mainly tend to promote and prolong interest in the commercial product - they don't reduce the sales of the product or its sequels.

PvK

[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by PvK:
No, I was talking about fan art, not piracy. Do you think fan art (i.e. mods and shipsets) are hurting SE4?

SE4 was designed with mods and new shipsets in mind - it's part of the attraction, and probably part of the license, so no - besides, Mods + shipsets don't really qualify as fan art. Sure, it's art; sure, it's by fans; but making a shipset doesn't usually mean taking the stock ships and altering their pictures slightly, or redrawing the stock ships from different angles; it means making new ones, pretty much from scratch, or making significant alterations to the stock ships.