: Second, regarding Forrest's question regarding distributing a stand-alone
: sceneraio... I will copy and paste a post I saved a while ago regarding
: this issue: BEGIN QUOTED MATERIAL
: Claude Errera (or as we call him here at the compound, Mr. Leader) sent us a
: very interesting e-mail which has also been posted to alt.games.marathon.
: This should please a lot of you scenario fellas.
: Good news for Marathon scenariomakers!
: There has been far too much "I think that might be illegal", or
: "That's definitely not gonna fly" with regard to upcoming
: Marathon scenarios that use older Marathon artwork in newer Marathon
: engines. (The M1 to Infinity project Raul Bonilla announced a few days ago
: is only the most publicized... there are others. :) ) I got tired of
: wondering who was right, so I went to the source (Bungie), and asked some
: very specific questions. (Mr. Bonilla's scenario was one of 3 specific
: examples I tried to clarify.) Matt Soell checked with Alex Seropian, and
: with Microsoft's legal department... and here's his answer: We're not
: worried (and neither is MS Legal; I checked) about copyright violation
: with this stuff since it's squarely targeted at people who are already
: fans of the game and probably bought their copies long ago.
: SO: As long as the two golden rules you mentioned (no money changes hands and
: all copyrighted Bungie content is explicitly denoted as such) are adhered
: to religiously, people who develop these types of projects (old Bungie
: game in a new Bungie skin) may distribute them with our approval. If they
: choose to distribute their revamped Bungie stuff with an Aleph One app,
: they must make clear that the GPL that covers the Aleph One app does NOT
: apply to the copyrighted Bungie content in the art/sound/map/etc. files.
: We're allowing people to use those copyrighted works because we're nice
: guys and so are they. The only way we'll get pissed and reverse ourselves
: on this would be if someone started selling something deriving from our
: copyrighted work, or claiming it as their own.
: This is very, very cool news. Again, for those who missed Matt's references,
: there are two requirements for using Bungie artwork in Marathon scenarios:
: - no money changes hands (this means no CD compilations, either)
: - Bungie is explicitly credited with copyrights in all documentation
: And don't forget that Aleph One warning, either. Documentation of copyright
: might seem trivial... but it's not. It only takes a sec to paste in the
: needed line in your readme (or to include the needed line all by itself if
: you're too lazy to write a readme)... do it. :)
: This should make life easier for anyone involved in making a Marathon
: scenario, as long as the above (very reasonable) rules are followed. Don't
: forget... Bungie now has the Microsoft legal team behemoth behind them...
: play nasty, and I bet they'll play nastier.
: END QUOTED MATERIAL
This addresses the use of Bungie ARTWORK. The old stipulation that used to be made way back when was, even if you changed the entire contents of the Shapes and Sounds files, those file formats are Bungie's property and thus they legally own them. The old rules of play said you HAD to use patchers even for a TC. I always thought that kind of stupid and un-Bungie-like but those were the rules we were told to play by back in the olden days. I certainly hope that has changed.
