Will SFI get sued to death over the Imagemod?

Ed Kolis · #1 June 16th, 2005, 09:45 PM

I'm just a bit worried here - see, when SE4 Gold came out, there was no Imagemod... but now that it's in wide use, and it contains a lot of copyrighted material, even if it's not included on the SE4 Deluxe CD, many of the mods included will refer to it, and in effect will not work without the Imagemod. So couldn't it easily be argued by lawyers from Paramount/Lucasfilm/Atari/etc. that SFI is playing a cheap trick and in essence is encouraging IP piracy by selling games which instruct the player to download copyrighted material in order to make the game complete???

Atrocities · #2 June 16th, 2005, 09:55 PM

No, the content is freely available on line and they have taken no legal action to date. They would have a hard case to prove. SF is not promoting the images in the image mod as being their's nor are they profitting in any way. They do not have control over the content of the mod, nor were they responsible in any way for its creation.

Captain Kwok · #3 June 16th, 2005, 10:05 PM

In no way what-so-ever. Have you ever seen the makers of games like Homeworld sued for various Star Trek incarnations of the game???

Now if they included the ImageMod with the game for sale that would be a different story.

Ed Kolis · #4 June 16th, 2005, 10:12 PM

Really? So theoretically I could make a game with no music and just tell people in the instructino manual to "get it off Kazaa" or something?

Captain Kwok · #5 June 16th, 2005, 10:18 PM

Quote:

Ed Kolis said:
Really? So theoretically I could make a game with no music and just tell people in the instructino manual to "get it off Kazaa" or something?

Where did you get that from my post? I'm just saying that they cannot control how people mod the game and so they can't be held responsible for copyright violations.

Ed Kolis · #6 June 16th, 2005, 10:39 PM

I got it more from Atrocities, actually...

Quote:

SF is not promoting the images in the image mod as being their's nor are they profitting in any way. They do not have control over the content of the mod, nor were they responsible in any way for its creation.

Thermodyne · #7 June 17th, 2005, 07:53 PM

Expand on that. Will the new publisher allow the same access to SE material as has been in the past? Or will they try to give their own web sites a monopoly?

Ed Kolis · #8 June 17th, 2005, 10:04 PM

Eh, what do you mean? You mean like prevent other sites from hosting mods and such?

Thermodyne · #9 June 17th, 2005, 10:54 PM

Quote:

Ed Kolis said:
Eh, what do you mean? You mean like prevent other sites from hosting mods and such?

Yes, as in using any of the code. This I doubt. Using the name or any artwork from the game. This could be. These guys have a history of porting games to the net for profit.

DeadZone · #10 June 19th, 2005, 09:49 AM

Ok, just so you know
Neither SFI or Malfador would be held responsible

BUT, the actual modders themselves can be (its happened 100s of times over the past few years in more well-known games)

Even if the images used are supposedly freely availiable over the internet, companies are still able to sue you for copyright breaches

The process is, you receieve a letter telling you to stop, if you dont you get sued
Ive not known it to ever get beyond the letter