---

We probably can get away with using new faction names and just not mentioning any history at all without blatant infringement of the copyright.

---

I dunno, If MS will sue over something like "MikeRoweSoft.com" they are probably likely to do so with that.

thew only way to be 100% in the clear would be to get the rights put in Public Domain, or in the hads of a group like TLR, But to even start on something like that you will have to get MS's Attention First!

& that will in no way be even remotely easy.....

Well thats the trick. How do we get their attention?

And the right kind of attention at that, violating their copyright just for the opportunity to start a dialog doesn't make sense. Trying to show MS we can build a great game isn't going to entice them to hand over the copyright. Being open source might even hurt our chances there. The TLR community is already supporting FL more than MS ever did and that hasn't made any difference for the petitions efforts. Talking to someone at MS or a former DA dev is really the only alternative.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

The easyest way I can think of to get thier attention would be to get to know a MS emploee & ask them if they can find out who is the person/department we need to get in contact with, and the best way to do so.

but doing that in itself wont be an easy task.

If you're really set on getting OpenLancer out there, you might want to consider taking a few tips from the STARSIEGE: 2845 Project, currently being developed by Clancore Design- a group of dedicated fans of Starsiege that banded together and decided to make a sequel. They made an offer to Vivendi Universal, the company that owns the rights to Starsiege, to the effect that the game would be developed free of charge and released to the community. Their current plan is to release Multiplayer for free, and allow VUG to charge for the Singleplayer component. That works out as 100% profit for VUG regardless of how successful or unsuccessful the game turns out to be.

Basically, if you really want this to happen, you want to make an offer that the rights holders just can't refuse. You probably won't be allowed to acquire the rights, but you might just be given the go-ahead to make the game.

Apologies for the boldface, but this is the only example I know of something like this working. GIve it a shot- hell, wave that example around at them just to show that there would, in fact, be popular support for a project like that.

Edited by - NukeIt on 6/6/2006 5:40:06 PM

Yeah, I've thought about doing that too. The problem is we don't have the skill to create everything from scratch. The only thing making this possible is the middleware. The licenses includes GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT, proprietary free for non-commercial use, and our license is a modified LGPL. If we had a small army of professional programmers working this project, then we might be able to replace all of the middleware with stuff made from scratch. If we had thousands dollars we could license some of this stuff or maybe MS could license it for a commercial release.

If MS gave us the source code to FL we could certainly update the engine, pack in a bunch of new content, and call that FL2 or an expansion pack. People have been talking about doing that since a year after FL was released, if not before.

Either way we need to talk to someone at MS but I don't know who. If need be I could just start emailing or even calling people at random, but I doubt that will help.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

Most Major corporations will at least look at work done for free- if it's presented to the right people, and it's made clear to them that this won't violate their corporate interests. I might recommend assembling a 'Demo' of the game,clear on all details, and then find the 'right people' to do the presentation to- and there are several excellent business search engines available to help with that if you know of someone with access to them who might be willing to give up a lunch (half) hour to the 'cause'.

And start with the obvious- . Show them a selection of the mods currently available- a 'Look what we've done already" approach. Then, pitch 'em on a VUG type deal- they get ALL rights to the SP game, etc, while the MP rights go to the TLR community as a whole.

and all they need do is release the source code...



Edited by - Fred the Dead on 6/7/2006 9:27:52 AM

I registered on IGDA, maybe we can get some professional input on this situation. Theres a lawyer who frequents the business and legal forum. I'll post a question about canon copyrights and fan fiction without mentioning MS or FL. I think we have a weak case for fair use of the canon as long as it doesn't make any money and isn't set in Sirius. I haven't seen any MS employees on there but that doesn't mean they're not around.

I also looked up the Freelancer copyright and didn't find anything. If it was registered its either under a different title or something. All I found for Digital Anvil was the Wing Commander movie script.

EDIT: Posted the following on IGDA:

---

Subject: Canon Copyright and Fair Use

I have a few questions dealing with game canon copyright and fair use.

I'm a member of a fan community for a certain game franchise. The original developer of this franchise was bought and later dissolved by another extremely large company who appears to have no interest in continuing the franchise. This company also has ignored all of our efforts to contact them, online petitions for them to develop a sequel, online petitions to release the source code, offers to develop a commercial sequel for them, and has not publicly mentioned the franchise since its acquisition of the original developer. The names of the publisher/current IP owner, the game's original developer, game franchise, and even the community are secondary to the point.

We have a rich game canon (lore) base that has essentially been abandoned. The IP owner is non responsive. The community is extremely active with hundreds of mods but ripe with EULA violations (EXE modding and reverse engineering), all of which appears to be completely ignored by the publisher/IP owner. We have run out of modding options with the game engine in the last title released so we started work on creating a new game with a new engine.

This new game is a general continuation of the canon and direct sequel to the second title. This game will not use assets from the first or second titles (no code, no game data, files, etc...). Just the canon itself. The canon includes the entire storyline, factions, characters, and a general likeness to the graphics assets used in the previous titles. The game does not recreate the campaign in the previous titles, it just continues the storyline like any standard sequel. This is a non-commercial, free for download, community developed open source game licensed under LGPL.

Questions:
-1- Given most of this is just ideas and none of the “material content” (game data/files) is being directly copied, is this even a copyright issue?

-2- If this is a copyright issue, do we have a case for fair use should the IP owner suddenly decide to rain on our parade with a lawsuit?

-3- If this is a copyright issue and if it is covered by fair use, should we prominently display the details of our fair use claim or just wait to see if the publisher/IP owner decides to take action? (assuming they even care)

-4- If this is a copyright issue and cannot be covered by fair use, is there anything the community should consider doing with the game design? Would changing the names of characters and factions make any difference? Would moving to a near by location not covered in the previous titles make any difference?


If it makes any difference, the publisher and current IP holder is Microsoft. The original developer is Digital Anvil. Its the Lancers Canon, created in Starlancer (2000) and Freelancer (2003). The fan community is The Lancers Reactor. The new game is called Openlancer, developed by the Openlancer Project. I'm the lead designer.

The project is moving along nicely, the design is almost done, we have a large collection of open source middleware ready to go, and soon after this copyright issue is resolved we're going to start on the first alpha build. We just want the opportunity to create our own game and to a lesser extent to show MS what few hundred bored geeks can do in their spare time with a canon MS thinks isn't even profitable.


Thank you for your time,
-Chris

---

Hopefully somone will reply with useful input.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

Edited by - megaburn on 6/7/2006 2:11:45 PM

Hopefully you will get some favorable responses.

UPDATE:
I got some feedback from the guys on IGDA and now I need input from the entire community. Right now I need to post our position on attempting to buy the license.

Buying a license involves making an offer to MS for several thousand dollars for the rights to develop a single non-commercial title under the Lancers Canon (not exclusive IP rights, just one title). This would require a serious fund raising effort. TLR would need to take control of both the cash and the license. With this we could probably perpetuate that single title forever, just continue releasing new engine versions to keep it current with the middleware. Our “modding platform” and interactive fiction style content system will allow for an endless volume of fan fiction. This is a viable option and should be seriously considered. Theres no guarantee MS will accept it. If they don't TLR can use the money for a new server and we can develop Openlancer anyway or create a new canon. If they do accept it then thats a win-win situation, we're free to use the canon and they get some money out of it.

This is only general interest in being willing to pay Microsoft for the IP license. This is not a commitment to actually doing this. There are no set dollar figures here. If we make an offer then it is our offer regardless of the dollar amount or terms of the agreement. MS can either accept it or reject it, either way we show intent of at least trying to “play by the rules”.

The validity of our fair use claim is still being discussed. Interestingly enough the attorney I was hoping would reply hasn't directly commented yet but did mention in another thread that things are not as “black and white” as they seem. I take that to mean we *might* actually have a serious fair use case.

After I get feedback on this and the fair use possibilities then that will about settle it. We will have to pick a course of action.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

Money wise at the moment i'm Broke as broke gets unfortunitly.
If i can find another job soon I might be able to swing anywhere between $10 & $100 depending on the job & wage...

Untill then I'm stuck in a Rut....

I'm about the same or soon will be. I have a few bucks in my paypal account I can chip in. Turning this into a major fund raising drive won't be easy. We would need pretty much everyone who signed that petition to put in at least a dollar. I know the rest of the OL development team could put in more money but I really hate to see the people doing the work also paying for it.

According to Amazon.com the list price is $19.99 but MS isn't selling it anymore. For arguments sake we can assume thats a good base value of the Lancers Canon royalties, to make the math easy just use $20. Normally royalties are anywhere from 1% to 10% of the retail price, but thats our decision to make since we're making the offer. That percentage is what ever we think the canon is worth. Our minimum/core market is the number of people who signed that petition, its a little over 8500. So 8500 * $20 = $170,000 for the minimum market value. If we offer 5% then we need to come up with $8,500 or about a dollar per “customer”. At 2% its $3,400 or $0.40 per person. I think either one would be a fair value for the canon. Obviously the less we offer the easier it will be to raise the money and the more likely it is that MS will reject the offer.

We can also assume the same rate applies to buying the full canon outright rather than licensing it. Then TLR would own it exclusively. The figures that would depend on the total sales for Freelancer and I have no idea what those numbers look like. Whatever the numbers are it's a lot more than we can collect with simple fund raising.

I'll tell the guys on IGDA there is some interest in doing this and ask what they think the odds of it being successful are.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

I'm done with my research. Basically Openlancer is covered under fair use. We are operating with the understanding that the canon is commercially dead or flat out abandoned by Microsoft. Our fair use case is strong enough that I seriously doubt Microsoft would risk taking it to court as it could impact case law. Its important to note that I have been unable to find a single case dealing with a fan fiction game thats also an “semi-sequel” to the original.

However, this is not without its limitations. Determining fair use is very tricky business. Openlancer needs to take several measures to ensure both compliance with fair use doctrine in case law, place limits on all potentially infringing content, add license restrictions to further reinforce our non-commercial status, and slap a disclaimer on everything to fully clarify our “non intent to infringe”.

In terms of canon use this means we need to maintain some tight restrictions on what can and cannot go into the “official” Openlancer release. We can reference the entire canon but characters, some factions, and possibly some locations present in Freelancer cannot be used directly. I doubt most of TLR knows exactly what we're doing but suffice it to say we don't need to change much to meet those content guidelines.


Fair Use Legal Check List
-1- The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes.
-2- The nature of the copyrighted work.
-3- The amount and substantially of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole.
-4- The effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Openlancer's Check List
-1- For private non-commercial use only as fan fiction that in no way contests Microsoft's copyright on Starlancer or Freelancer, but rather maintains ongoing interest in the canon.
-2- Commercial video game with an active community thats generally been ignored by the copyright owner, Freelancer will be discontinued in 2008.
-3- Minimal, contains a few minor factions, some general history, and other references to content or events that occurred in Starlancer and Freelancer. Openlancer major factions are derived from Freelancer major factions. This is done only to support the canon and is not intended to recreate Freelancer.
-4- None or net positive impact. By offering support for Freelancer game data we allow users with a legal licensed copy of Freelancer to make use of that data in Openlancer. It is our understanding that the canon has either been deemed to have insufficient commercial value to produce a commercial sequel of any kind or that it is being officially retired and/or abandoned. It is likely that Openlancer will help to maintain the existing core market base for future commercial titles set in the canon and possibly increase the market value by attracting general increased interest in the canon among potential customers. It is our hope that this results in the canon regaining commercial viability so that we may buy and continue to support Microsoft's products.

Note: This is by no means final. I've come to a general conclusion for the copyright issue but the wording of this stuff needs to be refined. This will not be published or maintained, just held in the event anyone gets a cease and desist from MS. Then they can review our fair use terms and take it from there.

Finally, I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm not a lawyer so this stuff may or may not be accurate. And Microsoft being one of the most aggressive companies on the planet is extremely unpredictable.


-Burn

"Only the dead have seen the end of war"-Plato

Edited by - MegaBurn on 6/12/2006 7:45:00 AM

Hello everyone,

So what's happening to this project anyway? Did you found a way to give it a go?



-Alex

NO YOU MUSTN'T READ FROM THE BOOK!!


Short answer, dead...

Edited by - Question Asker2044 on 9/10/2007 4:33:55 AM