On Thursday 04 January 2007 10:24, MJ Ray wrote: > Sorry about the conditionals. I don't know Nintendo's work well > enough to have a strong opinion whether or not smc's graphics infringe > Nintendo's copyright. The images are certainly imitating Nintendo's Mario games, but according to the web site, all the artwork was drawn from scratch by the upstream in the Mario style and no images were copied from the Mario games themselves. I'll leave it up to other folks with more time on their hands to argue whether imitative-but-independently-created-artwork is problematic here or not. There are actually *many* conditionals, for instance: if the game was intended to be a parody, it would be almost unconditionally protected from any copyright infringement claim. (This is just an example--the game is obviously not a parody.) My opinion is that it would be a good idea to replace the artwork anyway (ideally, but not necessarily upstream), otherwise regardless of legality and how good the game is, it screams "I am a cheap ripoff." =) -- Wesley J. Landaker <wjl@icecavern.net> <xmpp:wjl@icecavern.net> OpenPGP FP: 4135 2A3B 4726 ACC5 9094 0097 F0A9 8A4C 4CD6 E3D2
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