BtS 3.13 - how to get around it and launch GOTM

[LowtherCastle]

"undue prejudice"? What in the world?

1. What is a lache?
2. How can an infringer "suffer undue prejudice" if he uses something that is not his? I don't get that at all.

 

[DaviddesJ]

1. What is a lache?

Laches is a legal term, it is a defense in law based on the idea that you wouldn't have done what you did if the opposing party had asserted its rights earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)

But this is not the same as "losing the copyright", at all.

 

[culdeus]

Has anyone adequately explained how this is a copyright infringement? What's the difference between this and the "unnoffical" mod?

Seems like another example of hyper stringent moderation by the staff here.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Laches is a legal term, it is a defense in law based on the idea that you wouldn't have done what you did if the opposing party had asserted its rights earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)

But this is not the same as "losing the copyright", at all.

Thanks. So it seems to me that this is saying that yeah, you own the copyright, but I don't owe you 1 million buicks for copyright infringement, because you should have made your claim a long time ago, right after I infringed your copyright and 1) now I don't have the money anymore or 2) it would have only been 1000 bucks, or something like that.

Doesn't seem like it speaks to the issue of whose copyright it should be henceforth.

 

[wwassme]

2. How can an infringer "suffer undue prejudice" if he uses something that is not his? I don't get that at all.

In most cases, an infringer doesn't suffer "undue" prejudice. For example, if I copy your book and pass it off as my own work and you wait close to three years to sue me, I'm not sufficiently prejudiced to argue that you've lost your rights to enforce your copyright.

An example of "undue" prejudice is the Chico case I mentioned. In that case a real estate developer sued another developer alleging that his architectural design for 12-unit condominimums had been copied. The copyright holder knew of the plans to build the buildings before they were built, but took no action to notify the second developer of his belief that the buildings would be infringing. By the time the copyright holder filed suit 18 months after construction started, "168 of the planned 252 units had been constructed, 141 of them sold, and 109 already occupied by the buyers." The Court found it unfair to enforce the copyright, including the request for destruction of the infringing buildings. The "undue" prejudice was the large amount of money spent by the infringing developer to build the condos and, perhaps more importantly, the prejudice to the 141 innocent people who had bought the condos. All that would have been prevented if the copyright holder had notified the infringer of his claim at the beginning.

 

[wwassme]

Has anyone adequately explained how this is a copyright infringement? What's the difference between this and the "unnoffical" mod?

Seems like another example of hyper stringent moderation by the staff here.

Whether or not it would be infringement is a complicated question that would require several hours of research to even attempt to answer. There probably isn't a clear answer anyway. Moddable games are fairly new and I doubt there is much, if any, caselaw on where the "license to mod" and to distribute those mods starts and ends. There is probably also an issue about whether swapping .dll files (modded or original) falls within the "fair use" doctrine. I also don't know enough about programming/modding to even evaluate what the different solutions mean.

CFC's policy banning anything that looks like potential copyright infringement and enforcement of that policy by the moderators is a wise one. There are currently lawsuits against YouTube and similar sites by copyright holders alleging that YouTube, etc., contribute to copyright infringement by allowing the posting of copyrighted material and not being aggressive enough in removing it. While CFC's policy and its enforcement is not a perfect defense to contributory copyright infringement, it goes a long way to both preventing any infringement from occurring and defending against any claim of infringement. Even if the particular matter at issue is not infringement, Ainwood's prior post about maintaining good relations with Firaxis still applies as well.

It is better to be cautious and to check with Firaxis regarding their position as Ainwood's prior post says he is doing. If Firaxis gives its approval, then there is no issue.

Hopefully, Firaxis will come up with a solution to make everything compatible so that we can all play GOTMs without dual installs or swapping .dll files or other work arounds and BOTMs can be started.

 

[GoodGame]

**tapping foot**

Please make it front page news when we can play GOTM with BTS 3.13.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Well, it seems with WOTM15, BtS 3.13 altered warlords and vanilla DLLs are required (instead the old ones), which is huge plus, I say.

And they can be downloaded from CivFanatics, if having no BtS.

I guess contacting Firaxis did the trick.

 

[AlanH]

**tapping foot**

Please make it front page news when we can play GOTM with BTS 3.13.

Every new game gets to the front page ... of the GOTM site. Most also reach the CFC front page.

Of course we shall publicise the first BtS game!

The more observant of you might note that the Civ4 GOTM Submission page now makes mention of uploading xxx.CivBeyondSwordSave files as a "near future" option.