Re: quake2 and german youth protection law
* Michael Below ::
> Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com> writes:
>
> > In my opinion, the game engine by itself can't be classified in
> > those terms. It contains no inherent depiction of violence,
> > glorification of war, or whatever else is on that list. I am
> > fairly certain that the quake2 engine could be used to create a
> > totally non-violent game.
>
> Sounds reasonable to me. But I'm afraid that you could as well
> stick to the letter of the law and say it's essentially identical
> to content of media that has been found to be youth-endangering.
This would be factually false. Nothing in quake2*.deb is identical
to something that is in the id's Quake2 cds. The media itself is not
in quake2*.deb, but in www.idsoftware.com ... the program is a
different program.
>
> Also, there is the problem that you may not advertise for Quake
> II. And the package description could be seen as advertisement.
Nope. Adverstisement is a well-defined term, and I can only suppose
that the German law is well-behaved in relation to this. And no,
package description is only description, not advertisement.
>
> Finally, there is a package quake2-data that provides an installer
> for the Quake 2 shareware game data. And that data is definitely
> problematic.
I don't know if German law has the aberration that USofA law calls
"contributory infrigement" (which only applies to copyright IIRC
anyway). The "installer" quake2-data is better describer as a
"downloader". If it infringes German law, so does Mozilla.
>
> When I'm at the university library next time I will look for some
> more information on this issue.
Please, do that.
--
HTH,
Massa
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