Re: Highly legalistic question about pbem games

From: gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 19:39:56 +0000

In article <3jo8eq$o1i@ixnews1.ix.netcom.com>,
Geoffrey Sears <trendy@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

>I am designing a play-by-email campaign to be set out there for anyone
>who wishes to sign up. There is just one catch, it uses a commercially
>published system. If this game is non-commercial, as in I'm not asking
>for any payment for people's participation, is there any infringement
>involved?

That's a tricky question. Other folks who have done this, namely the
Diplomacy community, got permission from the game publisher, Avalon
Hill, who is very cooperative. At the least you have to be 100% sure
that you aren't distributing anything copyrighted without permission.
In the Diplomacy case, that includes the rules (which you must buy on
paper), and the map, for which they got permission to distribute a
postscript version.

If the company is hostile to the idea, like TSR is in the case of
playing aids, it could be very difficult. Even if you avoid
distributing the rules, they could argue that your program that
moderates the game or your turn results contained copyrighted info. I
don't know if such a claim would stand up in court, but it's best to
avoid such situations if you can.

References

Re: PBM conference in Birmingham (N. Palmer
phy6drhj@ast.leeds.ac.uk (Dean Johnson)
Wed, 08 Mar 1995 13:22:49 +0000
Re: PBM conference in Birmingham (N. Palmer
pmf@astro.cf.ac.uk (Phillip Fayers)
Thu, 09 Mar 1995 13:37:23 +0000
Re: PBM conference in Birmingham (N. Palmer
phil@phildee.win-uk.net (P.Shulkind)
Thu, 09 Mar 1995 21:21:24 +0000
Highly legalistic question about pbem games
trendy@ix.netcom.com (Geoffrey Sears)
Fri, 10 Mar 1995 01:02:18 +0000