[Freeciv-Dev] Re: the lack of respect for cloners

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> While they contain nothing that by itself is covered
> by copyright -
> since you cannot copyright common names and concepts - it may
> be argued
> that the sum of them fall under a compilation or database copyright.
>
> Compilation and database laws are still a young field in
> copyright law,
> with few established cases to go by. Such laws vary from country to
> country. Freeciv is in fact older than many of these laws. So
> whether we might infringe or not is not easy to say for certain,

That sounds like a plausible summary of your position.

> but I am fairly confident that we do not.

And that does not, because YANAL.

> However, since so much time has gone by since the owners of
> the relevant
> copyrights must have known about us, we are almost certainly
> immune to any claims of damages.

Again, YANAL, and you have no basis for assuming this.  Certainly you
would be *threatened* with such liability for damages in a Cease and
Desist letter... people don't just write those things to say, "Stop!
...or I'll say 'Stop!' again."  And whether Hasbro or Firaxis' lawyers
could pin you on it, depends on how good their lawyers are vs. yours,
and how much money you each spend at a trial.

> Not that anyone would ever sue us - we do not have the
> kind of money that would make that worthwhile ;)

They might still do it to punish you and make an example out of you.
The primary objective would be to halt the Civ cloning, with making your
lives miserable a secondary concern.

The reason you aren't currently a target is that to date, you haven't
produced anything commerically competitive.  For instance, your UI and
eye candy isn't good enough to stand up in the arena of commercial
competition.  But if your eye candy were to suddenly become as good as
Civ III's, due to the mobilization of volunteer artists and whatnot, and
you're still cloning rather than creating your own content, I bet that's
when the copyright holders would come knocking at your door.

Take the example of "Dogs of War," for instance.  A straight knockoff of
Axis & Allies that even used a digital image of the A&A boardgame
artwork.  DoW was left alone for years... until Hasbro finally decided
to make an A&A computer game.  Once commercial competition was at stake,
DoW was shut down quickly.

Another variable to consider is how thoroughly you'd be required to shut
down to avoid going to trial.  DoW is no more, after all.  The copyright
holders might make demands of you that aren't legal, but that you have
precious little power to do anything about because you can't field the
lawyers.  Such as shutting down www.freeciv.org, and removing all
Freeciv distros from everywhere.

Of course your *code* would live on, but you'd have to change your
infrastructure and faceplates.  Could be a bit disruptive for you.

The amusing thing is, it would take only a few major rule changes to
make you completely immune to this.  Look at how close CTP2 is to Civ
II, after all.  Yet you've never made such changes.  On that basis, the
copyright holder's case looks pretty good.  Years and years of
transgression, no interest whatsoever in producing an original game
design.


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.