Hi Aiden, Technically yes. Though read my article about copyright infringement in Audyssey Issue 53. I basically explain the copyright laws of the United States in down to earth language and explain copyrights in a little more depth. If you chose to write a Star Wars game, made it free, open source, you could protect your self from a law suit, but that won't stop a company from seaking an injunction against you or getting a motion for cease and desist. In either case once a court grants the injunction or cease and desist motion you have to comply with removing or destroying the offending material. So open sourcing the thing isn't full proof protection. It just means the company is less likely to come at you with both guns loaded, cocked, and ready to fire. If you have the money, the stamina, etc you could theoretically slug it out in court claiming fair use, but most of us don't have the kind of cash it requires to take on someone like George Lucas's lawyers in court. Finally, the open source license agreements aren't exactly full proof all over the world. For example, France does not recognise the General public License. Some things in it go against their copyright laws, and from what I have read France is extremely anal about copyrights. There are several other countries that don't recognise open source type licenses. So if you are planning to redistribute your software to a resident of such countries you could get into a meriod of conflicting copyright laws and entanglements which would in effect work against you instead of for you. Of course, i am just speaking from a strictly legal stand point here. There are all kinds of Star Wars web sites and stuff out there without Lucas Film's approval and Lucas hasn't cracked down on them. Chanses are they wouldn't even notice us. If they did then the above is what could happen if they chose to crack down on it.
aiden gardiner wrote: > Hi Thomas, > > Would an open source version of star wars be violating the copyrights as > well? > > Regards > > Aiden > --- 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]
