On 5/16/05, Michael K. Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Note that there is no question (IANAL, TINLA) that openttd infringes > the copyright on Transport Tycoon in any jurisdiction that recognizes > the doctrine of "mise en scene", i. e., pretty much any jurisdiction > that has a copyright law. See Micro Star v. FormGen.
There are always questions, of course. And, I do think you have a pretty strong point here, in the sense that this can be a very real issue. But, the scenes are not a part of openttd. They are the non-free component which forces openttd into contrib. > In general, Debian should not be distributing game clones, in main, in > contrib, or anywhere else. The fact that copyright holders rarely > bother to pursue legal action against half-assed clones of obsolete > games does not mean that they are legitimate in the eyes of the law. I agree with your second sentence. I'm just not sure that your general statement from your first sentence applies here. The question is: does openttd contain copyrighted material from Transport Tycoon? I don't have the answer to that question, and it sounds like the copyright holders are not currently interested in stating their opinion. That leaves us with "due diligence" -- whatever that means in this context. I don't think a blanket prohibition on clone software (or even game clone software) will serve us very well. Sometimes it's going to be a problem, sometimes it's not. The times it's going to be a problem is when the clone software copies a tangible expression of creative content from the original work. We have not yet identified any such elements which are relevant to openttd. -- Raul
