The only reason Vryce is "safe" is because the victim(s) in question will not (for whatever reason) prosecute. Maybe it is because the rewards are tiny compared to the cost. I'm not sure what point that proves, though, other than that the Diku team doesn't want to prosecute. It doesn't make the situation tolerable or acceptable. You speak as if it's ok for individuals to "personally decide what constitutes right and wrong" when there is (for once!!) a rather clear body of law on the issue. There's a big difference between the infringement itself being questionable, and whether or not it will be brought to court. The latter being false doesn't make the infringement go away, although you might claim that that point is academic if people may infringe with impunity. (It still doesn't make it legal to have done so.)

On that note, I would like to make a motion to start a 10-page thread debating Darwin's choice of A-1 sauce. Personally, I would be in favor of Teriyaki instead.

I've been quite clear that the only thing I advocate is the creation of a original, unique, legal work. How a given person arrives at that point is quite irrelevant, as only the end product is abstractable, filterable, and comparable (as KaVir would put it), not the method used to arrive at it. I personally believe it's possible to arrive at this point starting from another work. Obviously you disagree. The fact is that this can't be proven one way or the other, as each case would have to be compared, and there's infinitely many possible works that you can come up with.



Actually those victims want to prosecute (there are logs of interviews/discussions with them about the topic if you're interested), but haven't had the means to build a case or pay for one, and they realize that Vryce is not a multi-million dollar corporation. He's one man who they wouldn't get enough out of to cover legal costs.

Also, I'm assuming intent not to infringe on people's parts. What I'm referring to when I say they need to personally decide what constitutes right or wrong is not whether or not to infringe - that's a given no-no - but rather what constitutes infringement. You claim that it's clear, but it's not. Even in the cited examples on this thread, the cases were tried multiple times with different outcomes; how does that equate to clear? To me, that's a prime indicator of interpretation.

I believe that's what I said, no? :smile:


I have no idea what you're trying to say. Intent doesn't really matter for determining whether or not somebody infringed upon somebody else's work. If I rewrite a book sentence by sentence but that's all I do, it doesn't matter if I had no intent of infringing – I infringed… If I write a song and sample somebody else's song to a too great degree, it doesn't matter if I was meaning to pay homage, I'm still infringing… Showing good intent might make courts more lenient with the penalty – maybe, I don't know to be honest – but it doesn't change the fact that you infringed.

Imagine the ensuing disaster if all it took to absolve yourself was to play the "oh, I didn't mean to infringe" game.

Obviously the law is interpreted, that is the nature of all law, but nonetheless in this case is seems that the common interpretation is not the one you have. But to be honest, I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make anymore. Just now you say that all you meant to show is that you can call a work your own even if it started as somebody else's. But that really isn't what you've been saying; you've been saying much more than that, for instance that rewriting a book sentence by sentence would be enough to no longer be a derived work. You also attacked the very notion of 'derived work' along the way, bringing in confusing and irrelevant details about what is and is not to be considered derived. Really, I think the main reason this discussion has been so frustrating is that it really is unclear what is being argued in the first place.

I think I should take my own advice and just leave this thread alone for now, unless we finally turn it around into something interesting…

I didn't say you had infringed copyrighted works, I said (and I quote) "If you want to infringe copyrighted works". I'm not sure why you're getting so jumpy and defensive about it, because if (as you claim) your mud is really written from scratch then you've nothing to worry about. But the important point I was making within the context of this thread still stands - that you're giving bad advice which could get people into real trouble if they follow it.



And now you're doing the same thing again. We know for fact that the Diku team threatened Verant with legal action over EverQuest (although it was settled before going to court), so clearly the Diku team can and will take action in certain circumstances.

"don't make excuses to try and justify your actions (because we already know it's illegal, and we're not going to tell you that it's okay)"

Justify my actions? Sounds quite clear to me that you're accusing me of actually doing it.

Also, as I claimed in my previous posts, writing a MUD from scratch does not give one "nothing to worry about". It's quite easy to infringe, even without modifying. The example I gave earlier was how I could probably write large chunks of ROM word for word just based on memory and experience. It's the end product that you need to worry about, not your method of arriving at that point.



Yes and Verant is a corporation; Vryce is a person. I already explained this in the last post. Obviously if you're working for some corporation and creating a product for them, you're much more at risk for legal action than some kid meddling with a codebase in his mom's living room.

I said people must personally decide for themselves what constitutes infringement or not. There's no website you can go to that says "Yes, copying the player file saving algorithm from ROM is going to be infringement". You're going to have to use your own judgment and a little common sense.



I said it could be enough to no longer be a derived work, depending on your final product. It's not a guaranteed thing. I don't see why it's confusing for you to understand that only the end product matters - not the method at which was used to get there. Just because it may be more likely that you'll end up infringing if you start with someone else's work, doesn't mean you're guaranteed to. If you're careful, it's quite feasible to create your own original work beginning from someone else's without infringing.

I think it says a lot that I agree with what I believe your point is here and yet I have disagreed with the majority of what you've said in the thread so far… If you recall, I also said that you can mix in your own modules etc. to create an end result that is your own. But I certainly didn't say things like it would be fine to rewrite the code 'one sentence at a time'.

Nice misquote - obviously chopping the "If you want to infringe copyrighted works" part off the front makes it sound like an accusation. How about I do the same to you? Here's a quote of yours "If that structure is copyrightable, I guess we ought to purge the world of the vast majority of fantasy, sci-fi, and other miscellaneous fictional works."



Sounds quite clear to me that you support book burning, something which is emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime; "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings". Still enjoying misquoting me, or are you ready to grow up and stop being…how did you put it…"extremely petty and frankly, quite pathetic"?



Medievia.com, Inc was registered as a corporation on 19th January 2000.



Nice backpeddling, but what you actually said was "anything you learn/gain by writing a game from scratch also applies to modifying an existing one to the point that all of the code is your own. The end product is likely to be extremely similar, if not identical, and the same sense of accomplishment, ownership, and familiarity is achieved" and that as long as "100% of the code is genuinely your own, then you're OK".

If what you're now saying is "You might get away with it if you change enough", then sure - I've been saying that since the start.

Well, whether you arrive at an original work via "one sentence at a time" or "one module at a time" is again, irrelevant. I'll give you that replacing entire sections of code is going to be less likely to infringe, but it's possible either way, if you're careful.

Argh! No! No, no, and no!

In "CS 101" here (it's actually numbered CS 106, but whatever), we have these programs to figure out if people cheated. The idea is to do structural analysis on a program. It is not therefore sufficient to rename variables and shuffle around function order, which is basically what you get if you simple rewrite the "sentences" and not the whole program structure. This is, in this case, used to detect cheating, but if two programs are deemed to be "similar enough" by this program, then you have a very strong case for copyright infringement.

The take-home message is:
THERE IS MORE TO A PROGRAM THAN THE INDIVIDUAL LINES OF CODE.

You can't only rewrite the individual lines without changing the structure and arrive at something that isn't a derived work, even if every single individual line is composed of characters typed in by yourself.

When you write an essay, somebody can't come along and paraphrase each sentence – that's plagiarism.

Signing off of this thread here and now and forevermore.

That's still an accusatory assumption. Go up to Barry Bonds and say "if you want to use steroids, don't try and make excuses to justify your actions" and see what kind of response you get.



That doesn't change the fact that he's just one person and that skeleton corporation is nothing like a Verant. You can't get blood from a stone.



I said "100%" for a reason. I think that qualifies as "changing enough to get away with it". Don't nitpick simply because I said code and not code, algorithms, and any non-literal elements not filtered out through KaVir's test. I clarified myself many times after that, just for your sake.

Bottom line drrck, stop dispensing bad legal advice. If anyone goes by what you said and gets into legal trouble some day, you can bet I'll help them nail you to the cross for steering them wrong by referring them here and pointing out how you tried to convince everyone that plagiarizing a program is perfectly fine as long as you get away with it.

int add ( int a, int b )
{
    return a + b;
}

std::string Employee::getName ()
{
    return a + b;
}

std::string Employee::getName ()
{
  return this->name;
}

This is a drastic, dumbed-down, over-simplified example of how you can replace original code, line by line, and not infringe. Actual scenarios are going to be much more complex than this, and more likely to infringe without careful consideration, but I'm not going into that, as it would be a hell of a lot of work just to prove a point.

I've advised nothing except the creation of original work. Good luck nailing me for that.

The fact that I pointed out that you're unlikely to be prosecuted even if you do blatantly infringe (see: Medievia), doesn't mean I condone infringement, and it's rather absurd of you to suggest so.

I think it's more absurd the way you keep bouncing back and forth between giving advice on how to get away with it to claiming you don't condone it. Sometimes in the same breath. Even going so far as to post trivially stupid examples to back up your already weak point. Either way it's pretty clear this thread has long since exceeded its usefulness.

For anyone happening across this thread in the future: The advice and excuses presented by drrck would be considered terrible legal advice and should not be followed.

Stop burning books.



They are both corporations. Your earlier suggestion that Medievia Inc and those like it are somehow "safe" because they are small is simply not true. In some cases the "little guy" is even a preferred target, because it makes it easier to set a legal precedent.



It might - or might not. As I said originally it depends on the specific case. The more you change, the greater your chance of getting away with it, but there is no clear boundry.

To reiterate Samson's point: For anyone reading this thread in the future, I strongly suggest not following drrck's advice, as his views are directly opposed by court cases.

I think samson that at times we tend to jump to way to many conclusions and move towards accusing others rather than debate for debates sake.

A perfect case example of this is that some think i'm some great code thief and license violator based on things you have said and because i have said that from legal opinion i sort that its legally OK to run a commercial entity based on Diku.

It does not matter that my code DOES NOT infringe on anything or that i think its ETHICLY wrong to use Diku code to run a commercial game and that my game will never accept donations at all, all they care about is labeling someone as evil because i disagree at times with the general community consensus.

While drrck has some pretty insane views on copyright that are not the held consensus view, i highly doubt that he is really advocating copytheft and i certainly think its unfair to infer that he is some sort of violator.


Really, if anyone is stupid enough to follow advice on how to plagiarize a work, then they get what they deserve when they have their day in court, or get kicked out of uni or flamed down by the codebase police on some internet forum.

The fact remains that it is all to easy to do what medieva has done, anyone can grab a codebase that the copyright holders don't care about, rip out the credits, call it monkey turds and make it closed source and there is nothing, you , i or anyone else can do about it. The good thing is tho, that 99.9% of people are good and honest, tho may make a mistake from time to time and the other .01% will do whatever they want, regardless of what anyone thinks.

Oh and i agree that this thread has gone way beyond usefulness, and the only sound advice in this thread is to GIVE CREDIT to anyone whose work you use, even if they DON'T ask for it.

I've never given "advice on how to get away with it". Infringement is illegal. I don't do it, nor do I condone it. End of story.

Anything else that's been discussed on this thread is hypothetical, opinion, and open to interpretation, and should be treated as such.

In a situation where the prosecutor is not also a "little guy", I'd be inclined to agree (see: RIAA). The Diku team doesn't qualify as a "big guy", though.



Changing 100% is no longer "getting away with it". If the material is 100% original, then you've moved past the boundary into complete legality. Anything below 100% is infringing, even if you can "get away with it".

No thats totally incorrect, even if you modify/re-write 100% of what someone else has written, then all you have is a 100% original derived work.

Example: If i started with diku code, and re-write every single line of code, so that functionally it no longer looks like diku code, plays like diku code or acts like diku code and is written in Persian and not C , i would still have to credit them as i started with diku code as a base and ANYTHING and i will say it again ANYTHING i create is still a derived work.

The fact that it may now be 100% original code does not mean that ethically or legally you can call it anything but a derived work, in fact it is NOT 100% original at all, it is still a derived work as you have used the framework, ideas and design and algorithms that are contained within the starting codebase which are the non code elements Kavir keeps alluding too.

There is only ONE way to create 100% original code and that is to start with an empty text file and start to create your code form there, modifying or re-writting someone elses code does not make it original. The fact that you can "Get Away With It" or make it look like its an Original work does not make it legally so.

Lastly there is no boundary on when a derivitive becomes an original work, the law is very clear on this. If you start with someone else's work, all you can ever have is a derivitive, period, irrespective of how much of it is original.