ok. thats enough of lies. /// new units and faction

[masaber2]

i asked fire embelm faction or era, and manager said copyrights..

in vampire faction, sword master is copyed as sword master in FE.

dark elves were copyed by HOMM5.

(lizard riders. why not zebra? why lizaRD? they copied it.)

like blood witch from acient era

and furys are like ones from Silvan faction from HOMM5

i know this game copied LoTR but why not FE or others? we dont sell it. copyrights rule said you can copy but can't sell it. maybe CCL thing is on (able to copy and sell but original name or author has to be somewere)

[masaber2]

i asked fire embelm faction or era, and manager said copyrights..

in vampire faction, sword master is copyed as sword master in FE.

dark elves were copyed by HOMM5.

(lizard riders. why not zebra? why lizaRD? they copied it.)

like blood witch from acient era

and furys are like ones from Silvan faction from HOMM5

i know this game copied LoTR but why not FE or others? we dont sell it. copyrights rule said you can copy but can't sell it. maybe CCL thing is on (able to copy and sell but original name or author has to be somewere)

found proofs



http://units.wesnoth.org/trunk/C/era_of_magic.html look at bottem warroks
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/he ... ures.shtml and there 3D version.


cool heh? (couldnt find sword master one.. but i am tellin you!!!)

[TL]

If you're going to start an argument about copyrights and their place in Wesnoth, you should probably familiarize yourself with what the concept of copyrights is actually about first. Try here, it's probably a good start.

First: Copyrights protect specific works, they generally do not protect concepts. You can make something that is similar to a copyrighted work without infringing, even to the point of being a fairly obvious clone--but you can't call it the same thing, even if it's different. You have every right to create Fire Emblem-esque units and graphics. You don't have the right to distribute something under the name Fire Emblem or to use resources taken directly from Fire Emblem games.

Second: Copyrights only protect original works. All the ideas on that HOMM page you linked was very closely inspired by/copied from something else, mostly other fantasy media. If anyone has a claim to the copyright on "dark elves" it's probably Wizards of the Coast as they own D&D, which is the granddaddy of most fantasy conventions that weren't cribbed from Tolkein or taken from mythological sources in the public domain (such as the minotaurs and hydras on that page--note that even dark elves have mythological backing, though, even if this particular interpretation pretty much began with D&D). But even Wizards' claim would be shaky and most likely unenforceable, since they've allowed it (consciously) to become a generic fixture of fantasy worlds.

Third: Copyright laws most certainly do not say "you can copy but can't sell it." If you attempt to distribute material that infringes on copyrighted sources, the holder of that copyright has every right to, at a minimum, seek an injunction from the courts to prevent you from distributing copies. If they want, they can sue for monetary damages as well, although there's a limit to how much they could reasonably seek against a distributor of a free work. A copyright holder may very well decide to choose not to bother pursuing legal action against minor violators--virtually all fan fiction infringes on copyright, for example, but authors generally rarely if ever bother taking action against people for writing or distributing fanfic unless it's somehow damaging to their intellectual property.

It is funny that you point to the Era of Magic as an example of copyright infringement. When the Era of Magic was first uploaded, it was full of graphics taken directly from copyrighted material (mostly other games). The mods rejected it from the addon server almost immediately, so the era's creator replaced the copyrighted graphics with graphics derived from GPL-licensed material from Wesnoth-based sources. While the Era of Magic contains some fairly derivative material, none of it infringes on anyone's copyrights anymore.

[irrevenant]

There's a couple of issues here:

(1) Creatures like hydras come from ancient myth and can be used by anyone.

(2) It's okay to be inspired by preexisting works, but not to copy them outright. This is sometimes a hard line to draw and it's better to err on the side of caution. In the cases you cited the art looks stylistically similar but not directly copied.

(3) If it turns out that some of the existing art has been directly cribbed from copyrighted sources that doesn't mean that you were lied to - it just means that they haven't been caught out yet. They're not legally allowed to either.

[Aethaeryn]

I did a forum search and it looks like this is the thread you're talking about. There's more than just copyrights to argue, you basically wrote a one-liner requesting someone else to do all the work for you. That isn't going to happen. That's probably why it was locked so soon and with little explanation: you put little work into your post, the mod locking it put little work into their post.

[krotop]

A Laguz faction is being resurrected 3 steps from here.

[Thrawn]

masaber: there is adifference between directly copying a game (fire emblem), and basing something off of existing fantasy norms, such as variety of elves, generic names (swordmaster), furies (or harpies), etc.

I believe that in any case this is a meta-thread. Your question has been answered, whether you choose to accept the answer or not.

Locked