rec.autos.simulators

What is really puzzling me though is the fact that there are hundreds of
track files for GP2 around the web but I havn't heard anyone complain about
this.  

It all seems a bit odd, is it just Sierra/Papyrus being petty while
Microprose are more leniant?

Chris

For GP2, the tracks are basically edited from the originals, but
thanksfully, Microprose never made a fuss about that. I don't know how much
has to be edited to be considered "new" as opposed to "edited".

It apparently has something to do with copyrights enforcement, if you
don't protect your copyrights to best of your abilities, you'll loose
the copyright or something, so by tracking down the pirate tracks using
Papy code, they are upholding their copyrights, so if this is correct,
Microprose may no longer have copyrights on that part of GP2...., that's
how I read it anyway

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

......it is NOT OK with the people that own Daytona btw, so you have to
walk a very fine line not to infringe on licensing and copy right
issues, and the Daytone people are doing for the same reason Papy are
doing it, to protect and uphold the copyrights....

Beers and cheers
(uncle) Goy

sshhhhh...... we've gotten away with it thi far, don't tell them now!

hehe, No Microprose seem ok about it but I have a feeling that they won't be
so understanding with GP3 since they will be releasing their own updates.

You know.. those tracks ARE illegal also.  It's just that nobody cares.
Sierra cares about Nascar Racing 3 so they cut all possible tracks except
theirs for online racing, but for GPL they don't care at all.

The creator of that track never had permission or a license by the track
owners (BH and the ORing) to use the name or likeness of that track.  But
you know... many things are illegal but yet accepted.

You've changed the car teams to Honda/Cooper? Illegal.
You have sponsors on your car without approval? Illegal
You downloaded things like Jackie Stewart as a driver? Illegal

But of course, they are morally accepted.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

That would explain it vaguely.

Microprose never had the willing (or simply power) to cut-down on illegal
track activity.  Nor did the track owners cares about having an illegal
version of their track for a game on the Internet.  They could of course
take everything down, but they have chosen to not to.  It's their
philosophy.

That's why you have not seen any problem with the GPL tracks of the ORing,
BH, That flat-reversed Red Rock and the converted tracks.  GPL is not a
cash-cow for Papyrus, so they don't care about additional tracks.  Nor of
course the tracks owners care, like for GP2.

But for NASCAR, it's different.  You see.. it's Sierra's cashcow.  Don't
touch at that, it's a sacrilege for them to take money out of their pockets.
Take N3 online.  They disabled any third-party tracks simply because of
legal reasons, which are bollocks.  If there was, they would had also took
GPL tracks off.  But that's another thing (Goes with the WON philosophy
also).  You see.. there is a Expansion pack for Nascar3 coming soon for N3.
A majority of tracks are already in Nascar Racing : 1999 Edition.  One of
the reason is that they do not want converted tracks raced by users, they
want them to buy the expansion pack.  Thus, they will eliminate them.  Of
course, there is always a way around problems ;-)

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

If you create such a thing, then you'll have the DIS owner chasing you
probably, and Sierra pushing you to stop the execution.  They do not want to
see problems with third-party tracks interfearing with any possible opening
in negociations for the track license.  Whatever it has original or not
Papyrus copyrighted files.

Track likeness is the problem here, and name if you don't want to rename
Daytona to Floriday Speedway.

Of course, it's something that you can legally push.  Daytona doesn't own
the likeness of a 2.5mile tri-oval.  It would need graphical and track
architecture similarity.  Track width, banking, corner radius and straight
lenghts.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

You say it yourself: Papy can do nothing about Noonan making the
Oesterreichring. Only the owners of the rights of this track can do that
(that is NOT Papyrus). And that's pretty unlikely, as the track no longer
exists (in it's current form), and they won't be able to trace Noonan
anyway (nor can anyone else....) so they can only stop sites publishing
these tracks. But they WOULD win in court.

But for the Nascar3-conversions, Papyrus DO own the copyrights of the
DAT-file that's being converted. So they DO have a say in this. As well as
Talladega ofcourse, because they sold their rights only tot Papyrus for N3,
not GPL.

Papyrus couldn't care less. But Honda or Stewart might....

That doesn't really matter when there are attorneys around....

This also scares me a little about GP3. It seems the fileformat won't
change much, so editing will be possible after some time. But if Microprose
or Hasbro are against this, it won't be easy.

BTW is N3 only playable through a Papy-controlled environment? I mean, with
VROC it was no problem at all to add tracks. I guess there should be a
wrokaround for N3 too here??

Yes that would be true.  But the thing is... if a track like Daytona would
be done that way, Sierra would clearly not accept it and push the creators
to not give it online.  Because it's their cashcow, and would not accept a
possible threat to some license for that track hehe.

Even if the track doesn't exist, it doesn't give you the right legally to
create one.  IIRC there is a law about a time period until you can use the
name/likeness.. quite like a company name.  You could easily retrace David
if you wanted, and yepo a win is easy in court.  Unless it's a Daytona "not
fully clone".  I have always said that you can push the limit of "likeness"
with a superspeedway because of the simplicity of the layout.  You could
challenge those lawyers with track width, corner radius, etc..  It could
work to have simply a 2.5 mile heavy banked track, with different specs but
still similar.  It's "how similar" that would be debatable.  Kinda hard for
a road course, as it's more distinctive with much more corners.

Exactly, but we are lucky to not have been caught by them yet.  Just look at
the thousands and thousands of cars for various racing games who have
illegal sponsors.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

AIUI, under English law it is permitted to modify a program in order
to improve its functionality. This is intended to allow people to
write bugfixes, but I imagine you *might*, if you were *very* lucky,
get away with this argument for adding tracks.

--
David.
"After all, a mere thousand yards - such a harmless little knoll, really."
(Raymond Mays on Shelsley Walsh)