Capcom sprites, legal or not ?

[SSJKarma]

hi, fanatics of capcom and marve|s...
i'm here today to tell you something i found by searching on the net.

if you are like me, you have wondered for years now why marve| did something to shut us down and not capcom. this question was sitting there without an answer for up to this day. and i'm sure most of you wants to know the reason why they didn't blame us for copyright like many other companies did !

i'm sorry i'll have to break a law we made just to explain this to you guys.
first of all the information comes form the world of mugen.
sometimes ago a few person have called the different companies to know if they could use sprites from games to make another game based off mugen. not many companies answered those guys... but one did, CAPCOM the answer they gave up to them was this one

"even thought you use our copyrights in your new games. since you don'tmake a profit nor sell them on our behalf. those games would be counted towards FANART and not copyright infrigements. thus it doesn't scare us at all."

that answer isn't real to any point i'm just giving away an answer in my own words. thing is... FANART isn't illegal nor is it illegal to make a game with a free engine based on anything you ever drawn. what does this means...

if an engine created by you with sprites you created is legal.
and if FANART is legal in itself. then the creation you made even if your sprites aren't yours is actually legal as long as you don'tmake money out of it and as long as you give credits where its due.

this is why capcom didn't bother talking to us nor to any other sites. because they can't shut us down for something that helps them be even more popular nor can they do something about anything related to any FAN ART we would do !

so this lead me to think marve| back then when sueing us was perhaps wrong in doing so and just over looked the fact that their actions might have been illegal themselves ! that is now the question.

after all, would marve| be in his right to sue you because you DRAWN WOLVERINE all by yourselves just because you like him ? after all this is FANART and FANART is pretty much legal to me !

so this is it guys/girls...
CAPCOM won't sue anybody for doing FANART because FANARTS are legal !
what about marve| you say...
in 2 or 3 years of action, i think they understand it pretty well and i'm sure they know were still doing it... if they didn't take anymore actions i doubt them to ever take anymore to shut us down. i think they got about the same poilcy as capcom about fanarts and i'm sure the why they ditched us was because the spiderman movie had spawned to much things and they had just enough of it and to stop it they had to take actions, rather drastic actions. after all... the 3 web sites who were shut down besides us... were active for like 3 years before they got shut off.

by now its clear that they k####ut didn't care so why the sudden sueing. now that was the question to ask back then.

hope this helps us understand more about it. and i hope we can enjoy a future game with lots of marve| and capcom chars !

what do you say ?


********EDIT******
here's a link to prove what i wrote...
http://www.capcom.com/support/
and here's the quote in that faq !
Quote[/b] ]
Q: Can I make a Capcom Fan site?
A: Capcom does not object to you creating a website which may contain reference to Capcom games or characters, with the understanding that this is done as a personal activity and that you do not intend to receive revenue by this use of our property. Also, we will not object to the website as long as it is not obscene, defamatory, libelous, offensive or slanderous towards Capcom, our products, or employees, or any third party; or violate any intellectual property right or a person's right of publicity or privacy. This policy is in no way meant to be interpreted as creating an agreement or grant of license from Capcom to you. So if you are a fan of Capcom games, and you have a website that you would like to create, Capcom will not object so long as you are working within the above stated criteria.


that sums it all i think !

[TrueSpawn]

ssj's topics are always full of knowledge..... I see the point he's trying to make but i guess i want to bring up something that still confuses me to this day...


SFO is free, that's not in dispute. However, the idea that vips can "donate" money means that the site in some way DOES create revenue. While you are not selling a product officially (even tho being vip does get you special stuff.....) your web site does create revenue via the donation thing.

Now, you could use the argument of "we use all the money to support the game" but if what your above post is saying is correct, you cant legally generate any kind of income without paying off some kind of licence fee.

Example: Say i want to cover somebody's tune. I can technically release that tune as a cover free of charge for either download or streaming audio play if it's free. But if i create a website that makes income based soley on the fact that people liked that tune and they donate me money to keep playing it or keeping it on the website, then i am generating income and violating copyright laws. Even if i say, "oh man but i just use the money to keep my website up and let ppl download it for free." it wont matter, because i technically still generated income using someone elses product.

Now, maybe capcom knows that they have been around and SF is so old that sites like this actually PROMOTE it's games, but marve| isn't up on the whole video game thing. They a comic book company, and at the time u were getting sued there was a surplus of marve| licences going around. Also, think about the fact that marve| ended they licence deal with capcom right around the time u were getting sued. I'm sure they just didnt want mvc being promoted like it was.

Now, the fact u guys didnt get shut down....i dunno what happend. Either marve| just said !!!! it, or tmyapp bought some kind of licence...we will probly never know. However, ssj is right, at the end of the day this falls more under a FAN ART thing, rather than a game created soley for revenue. I'm not a copywrite laywer or anything, but you guys DO violate copywrites if youdo it without permission of some kind...but honestly this game is to much good publicity for capcom AND marve| and ssj is right, it really is a fan type of thing.

So in conclusion, SFO violates copywrites on some levels, but the act isnt severe enough to really be considered a *true* violation. Feel free to keep this discussion alive this has the potential to be a very hot topic.

P.S. Did tmyapp really draw these characters and all they animations from scratch??? ...i dunno thats pretty ganster if he did. crap man for all we know he probly helped program the first xvsssf...or he's just one HELLA decicated fan, cause i dont konw ANYBODY that loves a game THAT much....

[SSJKarma]

actually not, the term donation allows us to get over that arguments if it comes around !
the fact is, everyone who donated money weren't forced to do so and even if they didn't donate they could play the game anyway thus donating isn't something they can argue with !
at most we'll be forced to stop the vip perks !

fact is this..
we do not force somone to pay for this game...
so basically this isn't a problem at all.
the problem we have is that people think they BOUGHT their perks, when its actually not TRUE !
tmyapp could make the donation system still be up. but not the vip system !
really you guys donate and think its a payment. but its not you donate, not pay for it.
so basically if tmyapp right now would get rid of vip, the donation system would still be there !
but people would think it has no purpose donating . those people i say, just do not know a single thing about games and are simply considered little kid who just are accustomed to the fact that things get in their mouth without them doing anything !

as simple as that !

*****EDIT****
nah he do not do them from scratch he takes them out of a game !
as for us being in copyright infrigements...
nah we aren't either...
and nah he didn't bought any licenses cause when he assked them they told him they didn't want to send him a license for it !

thing is, we're not in violation of anything !
DONATIONS are what i told above.
charcaters who we rip aren't illegal either, that would mean that you trying to draw wolverine because you like it would mean you be in copyright violation too. that would make any sens either. in order to be in a violation infrigement you need to make money out of things that are copyrighted. something we clearly do not do !

the only possible thing that could easily be debated upon and even then be as argued about would be the fact he RIPS sprites from the already made games !

that's about the only fact they can debate upon and that's what they did !
as for them stopping the thing, nah the agreement on marve| and capcom was gone way before sfo ever came live !
thing is... marve| had enough of doing the games, they just wanted to go with something else.
nah the thing is, marve| did this when spiderman came out in 2002. why because the movie made so much ripping, so much websites casting the movies, so much web sites throwing hiome made spiderman things and making money out of it. what hapenned is that they simply tryed to stop that and the internet was so populated that theior word had to pass thru and for that throwing out the biggest web sites was a necessary for them to be understood !

its nothing more then that !

[MEGA_DRACOS_XRL]

Great story, and thanks to Capcom. this game ios still breathing.

[alamgir]

I thought it would be something like that. Afterall TMyApp is certainly not making any profit from this game so this place is as good as fan art. Perhaps slightly more advanced than the usual image that comes up to mind when 'fan art' is mentioned, but fan art nonetheless.

As for the donations acquired from VIP membership. I don't believe that's covered in the rules of copyright infringement and such simply because you don't have to pay to play this game. I see it as a way of contributing to the funding of the site rather than making money using Capcom/marve|'s property.

[Ryusage]

it's sad tho, how people would want to make cash off other people's stuff... just cuz it's so easy and the internet is really too big to stamp out this illegal activity alltogether... so yeah they tried to stamp out the bigger sites but they'res just NO WAY to get rid of it all...

[EvilAkuma]

Nice info SSJ

[Vash]

Thats some good information. I never known that, thanx for clearing that up SSJ Karama because I also always wanted to know why and I finally found out. Oh one mroe thing, what law did he break that he was talking about?

[LegacyofKain]

I had always wondered why the site managed to restart,i remember at the time i played religiously to attain rank 1! then one day....gone.

I read the letter they'd sent stating the reasons why we'd got shut down but cudn't get over the reason i mean like you said it's just fan art and the donations he got came nowhere near to gaining profit from it.

In a way couldn't he counter sue them for false claims? the law system differs from your country to mine but as you stated the answer capcom gave should of also applied to marve|.

Although more than likly he wouldn't do it anyway just because it'd be somewhat of a waste of time.

Still thanx for the explaniation

[SBYRD5]

I'm surprised an interesting topic... http://bbs.projectx.cyberfuturism.com/non-cgi/emoticons/buttrock.gif

[Sakura3]

wow so informativie but still mestup
http://bbs.projectx.cyberfuturism.com/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

[Dark_Paladin_X]

wow. Another question that buged me answered.

God stuff SSJKarma. http://bbs.projectx.cyberfuturism.com/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin2.gif

[LegacyofKain]

actually i had thought true the game can be considered as fan art but what about the music?

it is copyrighted by capcom(most likly) and can it really be termed as "fan art"?

Like your example with someone drawing wolvi thats fan art and you could argue that the music was made to sound like the sound tracks from the game.

But the arguement could be made that the soundtrack was ripped from a previous game and put into this fanart,now what i wanna know is should it also be classed as fan art? i think it's tricky to try and group music into fan art.

But anyway i'd like to know what everyone else thinks,personally i think it could just about be called fan art but then again maybe not.

[SSJKarma]

if you're getting to music i could simply answer you by this...
if you think music is all copyrighted material then clearly quite a lot of musicians should be pursued for doing remake of old musics or by just playing old groups music in bars and making a living out of it ! so why not sue them for stealing and making money of it while we don't do money with it ? too many things could be taken as stealing copyrights while a copyright can easily be bypassed. think about it... here's an example of what i mean, and yeah my father really tryed that and had taken the info of it.

you do a car that works on water. you did the car you designated it and you copyrighted it. but someone else makes the very same car but with a different shape. what happens ? your copyright isn't broken ? why ? because the car is too different from your copyrighted material.

with that in mind, you start to yunderstand why so many companies makes money out of what others do without getting sued at all. example of MICROSOFT with their windows coming after MAC has did their MAC OS original version. same things hapenned when mac took in the first mouse and that microsoft after that added it for windows.

music wise its all about the same... didn't you ever listenned to music and then figured out that the intro or that the sound itself looked really like another music you had heard a while ago ? everything is the same in the world we are in innovation is something that makes itself rare. many copyrights are broken in order to be able to innovate with a new concept. the thing is, as long as the product is much deifferent from the original then the project itself will not be a copy. it will be a thing of his own.

but as mentionned, companies wants to protect their materials from stealing and have to sue others for using their things. and sinse a game is so complex it is easy to find something that is identical enough for you to sue the guy for copyrighted materials. that's what had hapenned, but capcom doesn't look at the simple thing of the product they look at th ewhole and the whole seems not to bother them at all thus we can only assumed that our games falls in fan-art terms for them, thus we are safe as long as we're not making money out of it !

its as simple as that !

[LegacyofKain]

yeh got some good points there....plus i always moan about these rap guys who take old songs and wreck them and make money off them... lol

[TMyApp]

SSJKarma: so you're saying i'm NOT going to jail after all ??

damn.... how the hell am i supposed to get free food now ?? http://bbs.projectx.cyberfuturism.com/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin2.gif

[Gambit2hot]

I could have told you that Capcom has a FAQs page which clearly states that "if you want to make a fan site, then you can as long as it is not derrogator, etc"

wtg SJJ =)

you did what I was too lazy to do ;p