Exult Forum

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... eName=WDVW

a set of 4 Ultima VII collector pins on ebay =) I thought if anyone would appriciate these, it would be you guys. haha, enjoy!

pictures!

are those "authentic"?

I know quite a few ppl with button-making tools. Combined with a color printer it doesn't seem all that hard to reproduce what I see in the screen shot. and I don't see any tradmark stuff in the pictures.

That got pointed out on the Lazarus board, and for some strange reason the auction got cancelled...

MARVELLOUS !!!
The one with the Guardian is my favourite!

Was it that he had the pins listed as collector pins or was it the copyrighted artwork that was on the pins? Without any real evidence that the pins were original material from Origin or whatnot, I think it would be safe to say that most informed buyers would assume that the person made the pins. Wouldn't something like this be covered under fair use as the product is onyl merely representing small portions of the copyrighted work?

No, fair use is limited to:

"for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research"

And there are some other resultant tests as well. The federal code for fair use can be found at:

http://straylight.law.cornell.edu/uscod ... -000-.html

Selling reproduced images of copyrighted material (i.e. putting U7 images on buttons) violates the copyright.

Well, I certainly stand corrected. Standford has a really great site that shows what is and is not fair use by giving good examples in various forms of media.

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/

Needless to say, I've learned a whole lot in the last 10 minutes.

To recap:

So, screenshots....covered under fair use because it is news reporting.

Screenshots at a fan site: maybe not.

Screenshots on something that is marketable (a pin): certainly not.

Walls made out of pixelated Mario images: Sure why not? It is art afterall isn't it?

I think that fan art, while perhaps very grey, if not altogether black in terms of legality, will likely continue to persist and be popular for a long time to come. I guess the lawyers tend to get more involved when there is actually money being made.

For what it is worth, a bunch of Ford fansites have been taken down over time for copyright infringement, so it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility for a certain evil games company to start doing the same. (EA comes to mind)

zosX

EA has shut down remake sites already. I put those and fansites in the same category.

What remake sites have they shut down? As far as I know, there are still projects out there like the Privateer remake that are indeed using copyrighted art in the actual package versus using the original art from the original data files, like Exult and Nuvie.

OK I don't know about closing sites, but this says they forced a SystemShock2 remake to disassociate with that game, which is forcing a project and its site to change. (and honestly I'd only "heard" about this, and Googled it now)
http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004A ... 026349.htm

the generations mod for quake2 got shot down too... namely because that mod was essentially using the layouts for the original maps/textures of various ID games verbatim.

My guess its the basically the same for the system shock 2 one for Doom3 the wording of the site suggests a verbatim copy rather than something thematically inspired.

this whole remake thing is a very unique field of law and is pretty much "undiscovered country" as far as legal decisions go. Most fansites are just going to call it quits when threatened with a big company lawsuit, rather than try and fight it.

I don't know enough about the state of software laws to be able to say for sure what the law actually is or how a court would rule, but I think that sites like Exult (and maybe the Privateer remake) would be legal, because they are substantively adding/changing the software itself.

I might make this my summer project now, I'm intrigued.

Isn't there an Ultima1 3D remake that changed goals after getting a letter from EA?

Ethan: I think Exult is kind of safe because we are "only" building atop the original files and also don't distribute them.

SB-X: you mean Peroxide's Ultima 1 Project at http://www.peroxide.dk/projects_old.shtml. But it wasn't shut down by EA. The Peroxide team decided to abandon the Ultima 1 theme when they thought that their project might become a commercial one after all. And then it would be too big of a risk of being shut down or sued by EA. (AFAIR, of course)

As long as you are copying level design or artwork verbatim you are asking for legal issues as far as I am concerned. That said, Exult would likely always be safe. What you are doing amounts to free speech as you are distributing nothing that is not entirely the exult team's creation.

zosX: In terms of copyright I would agree Exult is safe.

However it's borderline reverse-engineering though, isn't it? Decoding the original datafiles to find out what they were meant to do and such...

I also think Exult will be safe, but more because it's not commercial, and Origin isn't going to bother much with the iffy borderline reverse-engineering issue when copyright is obviously not violated, AND it kind of harbors interest for what's left of Ultima Online, kind of.

I'm interested in knowing why using screenshots on a fansite is not covered under fair use, which I'm understanding as being illegal.