Holy cow: was anyone aware of Square's iron policy on copyright?

Seraph: Cool to see another Aussie here

What's this Performing Rights Association you speak of?



Cellius: As a business law student, I'm a little well-versed in copyright and IP laws. because no such precedent case exists, I don't actually think it's proven that a game company can sue you for taking an original piece of game music and tweaking it. The Australian laws use phrase such as 'substantially similar' when talking about whether a work infringes or not, whcih leads me to hope the idiocy of laws like Australia's Copyright Act or even worse, the USA's DMCA, can be overcome by some common sense.

I've never understood the notion of being sued for enhancing/working with game music and not profiting off of it, or even stopping the company itself profit off it by releasing it as free. It's absolute madness, and shows how out of touch lawmakers are in our society.


Which brings me to the more obvious points- no matter how 'legally right' or even legally hopeful you or I might be, we don't have the resources a company like SquareEnix does.

And to be honest, under the relevant US laws (the DMCA) I think it's in all likelihood, copyright infringement. <shrugs> But I haven't lost sleep over that yet


As for your teacher, are they likely to contact SquareEnix and ask if you got permission? Sounds to me more like an 'honour system' where they simply put the onus on you, but never actually follow it up. Kind of like University/college assignment plagiarism checks.


At any rate, it's no 'iron policy'. It's actually a default policy of most organisations. You'd be horrified at some of the more stupid examples (I have a couple for you), SquareEnix looks tame in comparison with the email they sent you.

Regards,
- Spike

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, also they can't prove it, since it's not like VGM sharing or anything where he's reproducing the work in any tangible form. So, that's not the issue here. But I can understand the problem with the teacher. But as I said, sounds unlikely that they'd check up either.

- Spike

How ya doing, buddy?

I think the thing is, we're arguing about legal and moral rights. SquareEnix simply couldn't give a fuck about that stuff. It's much easier under US copyright law to threaten and ignore legitimate fair use users because not only do they not make you any money, they may even 'shock! horror!' use your property to do something useful.

Think Blizzard v bnet for an example of US copyright law (good old EFF: http://www.eff.org/IP/Emulation/Blizzard_v_bnetd/ ) .

Not quite the same thing, but as I said, very few cases about this sort of thing.

Quote:

I'd be interested in seeing some of these examples if you have them on hand.

Well, you know of Apogee (now 3DRealms), right? They made classic platformers like Duke Nukem back in the early-mid 90's (1991-1995), before 3D Realms bought them and crappified them. But anyway.

The tunes weren't even in MIDI format, but in a proprietary Adlib format called 'IMF'. More or less a kind of Adlib MIDI file.

3DRealms says anyone who reproduces the content is not only breaching the law with respect to their company, but the original composer (ex-lawyer, Robert Prince, most famous for composing Doom) also has some ridiculous draconian stance.
This isn't exactly the point I want to convey, but check this out:
http://www.bpmusic.com/m/midi.html

That's the page where he's converted old IMF files to 'General MIDI' MIDI files.

He's also done things like remove his files from VGMusic.com and even his own website, now.

He also doesn't allow anyone (say, me ) to reproduce his MIDI files as digital, i.e. make a gamerip or enhanced gamerip.

Not that that would stop me, I'm just saying. It sucks having to do things illegally.

Apogee's a bunch of bastards though, still charging for 'legally burnt' copies of their games that are almost as old as I am.



Anyway. Also, Vivendi Universal who now owns Sierra. The well-known site "Quest Studios" was threatened with shutdown for the usual, breaching intellectual property. QS had come into existence in the mid 90's because Sierra employees requested the at the time mini site to do it 'unofficially officially'. Kind of ironic.
QS has to sign a 'contract' that amounted to a "we won't sue you if you forfeit all your rights to us" waiver. They technically own his original compositions on his site. It's insane.

If my site ever gets big enough, I'm sure I'll get one too. not sure what to do about that.

Quote:

And yes, I have some problem understanding double standards in Japan and the rest of the world with respects to VGM fan arrangements for profit or otherwise.

The law's different. Maybe Japan isn't a signatory to the Berne convention, 1886: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_C...Artistic_Works

But it sounds that more likely, these companies are Japanese and since most doujin game music is Japanese game music, it's probably a moot point.

Can't believe the email you got, Cellius. Rude pricks.

- Spike

Most amazing jew boots

It's understandable in one sense, the "insanely not practical to answer a hundred fair use request a day" sense.

But they should change the company policy to define what they allow very simply (maybe have a default email reply that links people to the information). That'd be better than "you can't use our stuff" which isn't legally or morally defensible.

I find it very hard what the problem would be in someone like Cellius performing a once-off in a classroom. It certainly gives legitimacy to piraters like us at GFF, in my opinion.
Hell, I'd hate to see what they thought if he'd asked if he could upload a FF album or something!

As for Robert "Bobby" Prince, he strikes me as being an ex-lawyer who's very moralistic. On his website he mentions stuff like that you should "download legal MP3's". I think he links to some program to stop sharing.
Check this link to his site out for the exact wordage:
http://www.bpmusic.com/

It's a shame. Almost no Apogee soundtracks have gamerips, which is partly our fault for not doing it, but for those legal minded folks it's definitely Apogee's deterrents and thus their fault. I can't stand the fact that good quality fan created content is stopped being produced or released by greedy corporations.

Here's a killer for you- Mark Seibert, composer of a lot of Sierra games, wants to make new recordings of the old games' music. But he won't, or won't release them, because of Vivendi's policy of noone using their copyright. In his own words, "I don't want a lawsuit or any of that hassle, it's just not worth it.".

<sigh>

- Spike

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

It's the principle of the matter. And I think it opens up a lot of old wounds for people like Niki and myself who distribute VGM and create it sometimes, and for our hard unpaid work, we get potential lawsuits.

How I feel anyway.

- Spike

I was speaking idiomatically.

To be fair, I think a lot of the concepts you talk about, CC, have been raised by others in this thread.

- Spike

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

They may still be called Apogee Software, but they refer to themselves almost exclusively as 3DRealms.

Besides, I have another reason to explain Apogee like that- I consider the death of Apogee to be the beginning of 3DRealms, and vice versa. Liked almost every Apogee game, and hated almost every 3DRealms one.

- Spike

How ya doing, buddy?