http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

Fascinating.

very intressting

Eh?
I've only seen YouTubers invoke that to prevent being sued, usually by Fox News, when criticizing/commentating on the copyright holders video.

"...such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research."

So whats fair i wonder?

And non profit also.

Seems intresting yes.

What I found to be interesting is what actually determines "fair use" isn't even so much the law, but whatever the judge presiding over the case assumes to be fair use. This being the case a non profit organization as long as they aren't disclosing information over the basis of anything that could be considered confidential could be legally deemed as "fair use". This being the case if you think about the rights to an MMO, You buy the client and purchased the software. The EULA may state that you may no use private servers, but it could be deemed fair use as long as any confidential information that would be exploitative to the Originally MMO contained in the server code isn't released publicly could be deemed fair use.

Now if you think about this in the recent closure of the AC1 SVN that was shut down by turbine citing on the fact that they still have AC1 Running. at that point isn't isn't able to be clearly defined as fair use, because the company is still making money off of the product.

however, AC2, the Trademark which is an always arguable item and the server being shut down could be construed as long as it was cast into the correct light as "Fair use" but that determination has to be made by the judge presiding and by the laws in the district that the court hearing took place in.

In the case of anything on source forge, where it resides in a county in California where the court system there has highly defended the rights of reverse engineering, it would be Fascinating to see how a case like ours where AC2 is no long in service and Turbine is actually STILL losing money due to their reactions to the situation at time would turn out in that court system. if it could be arguable that it is fair use.

We have enough emulators running all over the net and I dont think every company is happy with it but there must be some ways to avoid conflicts... lets see how others made it possible.

We know off hand that ones that get shut down the most are the ones that still have Active MMO's However the ones that are made for WoW are unstable at best and seem to be largely ignored until the people hosting the server start making money.

Our C&D covered a lot of things but nothing so definitive.

After I read this article I started searching,

ran across this podcast about copyright, while it's not an exact thing that we'd need, it's full of fascinating information some of it could be used to counter a lot of lawsuits.

http://www.evilobi.net/Music/Podcasts/T ... ywrong.m4a

Any lawyers amongst our fan base out there?

running the emu on a domain/server that gives shit about U.S. laws is a good start... cuba, east europe or something like this...

Well we need a Country outside of the berene convention.


So this goes back to the base ideal that as long as we do not violate use of art.. at least at this point, Which from what the government copyright for fair use says

"...such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research."

we should be able to use it but it's something we need to investigate.

Snip from Wikipedia: "To justify the use as fair, one must demonstrate how it either advances knowledge or the progress of the arts through the addition of something new. A key consideration is the extent to which the use is interpreted as transformative, as opposed to merely derivative." (This why I'm confused by this thread, seems like an unorthodox use of Fair Use. The tech-related cases I see do sort of apply to the above...)

& http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#F ... _a_defense
& http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative ... work_cases

So basically: Turbine sues for infringement
A. Concede infringement by claiming Fair Use (taking on the burden of proof) and hope for a good Judge(s) (always the possibility of appeals) since this law seems pretty damn vague
-or-
B. Fight the infringement charges (how do they prove that when the server codes don't match??? anyone?... anyone?...)

The only clear-cut problem is the EULA breach which would open you up to a losing DMCA lawsuit (see Bnetd vs Blizzard)--but DMCA only applies if the lawsuit is in the USA.

Well seems worth investigate more.

Do i see some light again in this dark tunnel?

Well we need to take Turbines EULA into consideration.it says You can't do... and it lists of like 10 items. then ends with "Unless it's in use for educational purposes or Interoperability. It would be an arguable point that we are doing just that. Working interoperability with our server.

Mentat wrote:"Unless it's in use for educational purposes."

educating new and future gamers on the history of the old world.

i.e. "emulating" what AC2 was.