RE: [hlcoders] what a bloody n00b

[Ken Birdwell]

Okay, just to be really clear, it's a COPYright, not a SELLright.  The control is at the COPYING stage of the process, not why you're doing it or what you're doing with it.  A COPYRIGHT actually does refer "the right to copy".  It doesn't mater if you're giving it away, bundling it, selling it, whatever, it's illegal to COPY any material where you don't own the copyright, unless you have explicit permission to copy that material. Your half-life EULA and SDK EULA grants you certain rights that let you make certain types of copies (such as are needed to run the software on a single computer) but nothing past that (read your EULA, it goes into more detail).   As to Tom's questions, yes, it IS illegal for folks to "sell stuff on cd such as game demos and patches" regardless of their motives unless they've received permission from the copyright holders.  It doesn't mater what sort of tricky convoluted rationalization they use, they've made a copy of something they do not have permission to copy.  This is the whole point of a copyright: controlling who is allowed to copy your material.   That said, it's usually pretty easy to get permission for stuff like the SDK, patches, etc., just send email to Scott Lynch at Valve and ask.  Demos are a little harder since they're often part of other deals (magazine covers, new hardware, etc.) but if you have something interesting you're trying to do with it then you'll probably get permission, though you still have to ask.   And yes, we have actually have agreements with the fileservers we know about to allow them to redistribute our material.    -----Original Message----- From: Tom [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 10:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [hlcoders] what a bloody n00b its not illegal to sell stuff on cd such as game demos and patches is it? They are paying for your time to get hold of the demo/patch and then put it on cd, not the actual demo/patch.