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Old 07-27-05, 02:43 AM   #4
Elder-Pirate
Ace of the Deep
 
Join Date: Jul 2003
Location: Morris, Illinois USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Beery

The problem as I see it is that if X1 gets these stolen mods published in a commercial form, and if they make money from them, they may automatically have a strong de facto ownership claim since they have a financial stake on these mods - which means that if the original authors of these mods try to release those mods (which are their own work) for free, X1 could even take them to court and have their own case in terms of loss of revenue, etc. The courts very likely regard copyright as only meaningful when loss of revenue is at issue. In such a case, the courts could be persuaded to disallow testimony regarding the original authorship, since the original authors ascribed no monetary value to the mod. That means that anything in the Seewolfe mod could be deemed illegal for any of us to use in free mods, even if one of us was the original author of that part of the mod. If Seewolfe is released in commercial form, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will have a copyright attached to it. If X1 are unprincipled enough to steal other peoples' work, do you really think they would balk at using a lawsuit to take some modmakers to the cleaners financially?

Good grief Beery thats scarery. I sure hope it dosn't come to that.
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