View Full Version : How will they deal with copywrite issues?


Abaddon
Sep 01, 2008, 05:07 AM
An by this, I mean people creating and then the distribution of creatures created to look like copywrited things.

Pokemon, Cartoons, etc, etc.. how is this game going to avoid lawsuits?

salty mud
Sep 01, 2008, 08:24 AM
The people make them, so the people will get sued, if action is taken. That's the way I see it.

Bigfoot3814
Sep 01, 2008, 08:30 AM
Are the individuals who use Spore to make pokemon making any money off of them? If not, then it shouldn't matter. You can't sue every kid who says OMG I MUST MAEK POKEMANS! It's like suing for copyright infringement when some little boy draws a picture and puts it up on his refrigerator. Except now that refrigerator is the entire world.

Chieftess
Sep 01, 2008, 08:38 AM
The people make them, so the people will get sued, if action is taken. That's the way I see it.

I think it might be a bit harder to determine if it's intentional infringement. What if a kid tries to create a yellow ostrich, only to have it looking like a chocobo? What if another kid were to take a copyrighted creature, not knowing it's copyrighted, and reuploads it with a minor change?

JtheJackal
Sep 01, 2008, 09:06 AM
The worse that will happen is that they will be removed from the Spore website, that's it.

leonel
Sep 01, 2008, 12:25 PM
I doubt anything serious will happen. As JtheJackal said, the worst that'll happen is that they'll be taken down by EA.

GoodGame
Sep 01, 2008, 01:39 PM
I agree with leonel. If you recall the SporeCC EULA, it strictly states anything you make with it is property of Maxis/EA. So it's too easy for EA to delete anything from the public Sporepedia, upon the request of the copyright holder. It's debatable but most stuff created is actually limited to the pieces of the of the creator program, and used in the context of Spore, so most resemblances are just that.

QwertyKey
Sep 01, 2008, 01:50 PM
The only one who would get sued would be EA, at which point they'd take down whatever it was, and that'd be it. Something like that would be more along the lines of the legality of a BitTorrent tracker.

Lord_Iggy
Sep 01, 2008, 03:13 PM
Yep, that's the upside of them legally owning the creatures we make- we cannot be held legally responsible.

Abaddon
Sep 01, 2008, 04:14 PM
Thats what i meant.. are they going to employ an army of people to search through all new entries? Theres zillions!

Bigfoot3814
Sep 01, 2008, 04:23 PM
Maybe just no one will care.

salty mud
Sep 01, 2008, 04:25 PM
Maybe just no one will care.

That would be what you would expect. But in today's money grabbing society, if someone can thieve a bit of money of someone, they will do it unfortunately.

Bigfoot3814
Sep 01, 2008, 04:27 PM
I'm sure Maxis or whoever has some sort of plan or procedure in place. It can't be that Abaddon is the only person to ever think of this possibilty.

Abaddon
Sep 02, 2008, 08:42 AM
Oh I am sure.. I am just curious how they are going about it (along with removing all the penis monsters)