Ravenloft: Prisoners of the Mist
Public (OOC) => Tech discussion => Topic started by: Montreux on May 11, 2010, 05:55:29 PM
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The use of the copyright music may be covered uner "Fair Use" since we are not doing it for profit and this is a "Creative endeavor", so I would look into "Fair Use" laws and see if it falls into that category.
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The use of the copyright music may be covered uner "Fair Use" since we are not doing it for profit and this is a "Creative endeavor", so I would look into "Fair Use" laws and see if it falls into that category.
Heh. As a professional journalist I had to study media law and ethics in college and what you describe would not exactly be "fair use" in itself. If push came to shove, the copyright holders could definitely go after the server of PotM.
Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.
It does help that the use is not commercial (one of for factors looked at), but that in itself is not enough. Hence the owner of the Sierra games copyrights had no problem shutting down an almost finished 3-D sequel to the Kings Quest series that was purely a not-for-profit fan game written with the original game creators' help (who did not own the intellectual property they created for Sierra).
Your protection in this case is more so that since you are not for profit you have no money to go after and so it doesn't make much sense to sue you. But if Howard Shore or any other producers of the soundtrack music did decide to do so they would have a legal justification to do so. Its just not likely.
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I am no lawyer, but I am fairly well-versed in legalese, and a musician to boot. hugolino is spot on in this case. Technically the use of the copywritten music on the server is sketchy at best, but since there's no money coming in that the owners of the copywrite would likely be interested in, it's safe to assume that a lawsuit is highly unlikely.
I would suggest that any person(s) currently running or looking to run a NWN PW look for either open-source audio that fits the mood of the server, or better (if possible and/or feasible) have original music written specifically for the server. This can be troublesome, though. I am currently in college for video game design with a focus on music composition/audio design, and I know that paying a professional/semi-professional composer can get pricey rather quickly.
I would be more than happy to offer my services to the server in the way of composing background music, and for free, but with the caveat that I am in school full-time and working full-time as well, so I would not be capable of meeting super strenuous deadlines.