Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!isis!bscott From: bscott@isis.cs.du.edu (Ben Scott) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.games Subject: Re: M.U.L.E. -- How to get it for the Amiga. Summary: I think I've done this already Message-ID: <1990Oct10.221327.2462@isis.cs.du.edu> Date: 10 Oct 90 22:13:27 GMT References: <20875@well.sf.ca.us> Reply-To: bscott@isis.UUCP (Ben Scott) Followup-To: alt.MULE Organization: The Raster Image Lines: 141 In article lord_zar@ucrmath.ucr.edu (wayne wallace) writes: >Yah, in a few years, if I ever get time off from school programming. >Maybe once my C knowledge is good, and I study my Amy a bit more.... And there are lots of other people who have things to do besides write a MULE game. Me for one. >Do you all agree Monopoly is copyrighted ? Not the way you mean. The name is copyrighted and the game pieces and board are patented. Patents don't last forever (17 years I think?). Or something like that. >Why does Portal (cup.portal.com) carry a Monopoly clone NAMED MONOPOLY >for the Amiga under their Amiga PD & Shareware game area ? >Surely that is a copyright infringement! So what do they care if it is? (which I doubt) Who's going to check, or report them? >Portal also carries Tetris(tm) clones!!! And they KNOW what happened >to Fred Fish! We Portalites get full USENET news & email, ya know. Exactly. They don't particularly have to worry about it, and Spectrum Holobyte's case is vague in places. >Portal has lots (well, enough to survive a lawsuit w/ Spectrum Holobyte if they >refuse to remove Tetris(tm) clones) of $$, and Fred Fish, as ONE private Well... you're slightly missing the point. What Mr. Fish did and what Portal is doing are two somewhat different cases. >MONEY MAKES RIGHT. At least, until we reach the Supreme Court on this. > >Actually, we can't. Computer GAMES are entertainment, not email or novels >written with computers instead of pencil and pen. The laws are just as binding. Computer games are creations, products, they are written, and creations of a definable person or set of people. >Someone please tell Dan Bunten to lease M.U.L.E. programming rights >for the Amiga else someone does it before him, and makes it PD too. >Although since EA produced the game, methinks it would lie with >them. Remember the Interplay/EA thingie ? Oh, just "tell" him? What kind of gun will you use for encouragement? Besides, the rights may or may not lie with him - it depends on the contract and what he and they did with it once he left the company. >and since, as someone emailed me, M.U.L.E. was written is ASSEMBLY on the >C-64 & Atari 400/800/whatever, a C version for the AMIGA does not and can >not duplicate any of the original programming. Look how many Flight It can duplicate the same algorithms, constants, graphic appearance, game play, the old "look and feel" that Apple made so popular... >Simulators and other simulations exist! >Is each Flight Simulator infringing on a copyright because you're flying >a plane in each game ? NO! Nope - because no flight simulator was written by anyone who created the cocept of heavier-than-air flight. And the concept of heavier-than-air flight was not patented or otherwise restricted to one person. >So a game of a futuristic mining town is totally legal. So long as it didn't resemble anything you don't have the rights to, sure. A futuristic mining town by itself is not a copyrighted concept. >FACTS: >1. No programmer out there is stupid enough to write in assembly on the >Amiga when C is available or "Benchmark Modula-2" (used in Jimbo Barber's Unfortunately, you're wrong here too. But in any case Amiga assembler is much different from 6502 assem. >2. Generalized ideas can't be copyrighted, else only one style of car, >home, computer, TV, etc would be allowed. Oh, yes they can if the person wants. But you would find it difficult to patent or copyright a basic concept unless you created it in the first place. Also, things like TVs, cars, etc. are patented, and you can only patent specific implementations of a design. Well, pretty much. "Implementation" can, in many cases, amount to the whole of the idea. >3. Dan Bunten is entirely out of the Commercial Entertainment Programming >field (referring to things on store shelves as opposed to writing a specific >game for a specific company). He owns only original C-64 & Atari 400/800 >ASSEMBLY code. He has NO license on C code for same unless he secretly Perhaps, but he also may own the rights to the MULE concept. Either he or EA or SOMEBODY does. >4. E.A. owns the word "M.U.L.E.". NOTHING ELSE (except for packaging, >the instruction manual, etc.). We've been over this before. They may or may not own it, and/or more. Try asking them. >5. Calling it a "M.U.L.E." clone and telling people to buy M.U.L.E. might >help stave off copyright suits. That is what the author of Zerg 1.0 Well, it might since EA is not Apple or Microsoft, but it may not. >Take apart this post LINE BY LINE!!! I did this in Email (to you? To someone who sent me a real similar message at any rate) once already. >I dare all of you to come up with EXACT quotes from U.S. copyright law >that would contradict ANY of the above facts. The burden of proof is on you. I admit I don't know the laws backward and forward but I'm fairly certain on the areas I've posted above - I do have some (long) past experience in these matters. Anyway, I'm not the one trying to make a point, you are. You prove it to me. >Just IMHO, Gee, I'd hate to see something you were SURE about... >Oh yeah, is it Alludium or Illudium ? >Someone in a previous post claimed the "I", but where was there ever >a word balloon in the original Bugs Bunny (tm) cartoon ? Sounded like Illudium to me. >and last I knew (no periodic table here at the computer lab), there wasn't >an element called *lludium either. Suprise, suprise... the Encyclopedia doesn't even have a reference to any type of modulator, explosive space- or otherwise, which can vaporize the Earth. Perhaps it never existed? . <<<>>> -- |Ben Scott, professional goof-off and consultant at The Raster Image, Denver| |FIDO point address 1:104/421.2, bscott@nyx.cs.du.edu, or BBS (303)424-9831 | |"Quantum Mechanics: The dreams that || The Raster Image IS responsible for| | stuff is made of..." - Michael Sinz || everything I say! ** Amiga Power**|