So we have a lot of laws here, not only limited to but also Russian Federation, Germany, Ukraine... Quite a lot, taking into account Devs are from multiple nations. Hey, it gets even funnier.
I do believe, since Discovery doesn't get money for the usage of mod (donations do not count in here), the whole mod falls under Creative Commons. The actual copyright infridgement would take place only, if mod creators were getting money for that, since (law-wise) situation if pretty the same as in case of fan fiction.
But then again, in certain countries fan fiction is considered illegal...
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Freelancer is abandonware - Microsoft doesn't care. The only law that would be enforced here is being blacklisted (banned) from the various Freelancer communities for plagiarism. Discussing actual legal recourse is utterly pointless in this context.
(12-12-2015, 02:54 PM)jammi Wrote: Freelancer is abandonware (...)
Law-wise, such a term is not recognized by copyright laws, of what I've been pretty surprised during my law college studies. Even if game was abandoned, it is still IP of the company or mother company. This is way, all the abandonware (or old-old-gen ROM) sites are actually a tricky gray area - because it's up to owner to put banhammer on it.
As far as I remember, the term "orphan work(s)" is more recognized (within the United States at least), but bound with certain limitations.
(12-11-2015, 09:14 PM)FluffReborn Wrote: The problem is, server is in France, so it falls under French law right now.
DiscoveryGC is US based, as in we are registered in the US. Everything on the server is of legal nature anyways, so there's no reason to bring up the server's location. Now it the server was hosting a P2P torrenting network, that would be different. But as it stands, all that matters is US copyright laws.
I don't care about actual ownership and copyright laws. What I care about is the creators, since I don't want them to think that I've stolen their content and posted as my own.
So no need to go into country copyright laws and freelancer/microsoft status.
If I'm going to post my collection here, I will contact the owners. Or at least give full credit if they don't respond.
The problem is that I have some files I have no idea where they are from. And a bunch of others which are from Crossfire. And I've already spoken with the Crossfire devs and they said "No.", understandably.
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(12-12-2015, 03:11 PM)FluffReborn Wrote:
(12-12-2015, 02:54 PM)jammi Wrote: Freelancer is abandonware (...)
Law-wise, such a term is not recognized by copyright laws, of what I've been pretty surprised during my law college studies. Even if game was abandoned, it is still IP of the company or mother company. This is way, all the abandonware (or old-old-gen ROM) sites are actually a tricky gray area - because it's up to owner to put banhammer on it.
As far as I remember, the term "orphan work(s)" is more recognized (within the United States at least), but bound with certain limitations.
Well, you don't say. Of course abandonware isn't legally recognised. It's an informal term for when a company cares so little for a product it doesn't even bother to issue a notice of discontinuation.
There's also little to no chance of Freelancer making it on to Gog for that same reason. Microsoft isn't interested in the IP and persistent rumour says they've lost the source files that would enable them to formally distribute rights to third parties anyway.
