getting FMV-s on wz 2100 ressurection project

[GiGaBaNE]

just out of morbid curiosity..would the patent office be able to help? or at least put us in touch with the patent owner (of the whole game). im sure its gotta be logged somewhere. im not savvy with foreign corperate law, but in england, unless a company is sole trader (most private and risky form of business) then the names of everyone thats important in a company is a matter of public record.

was pumpkin american?
in england i would start at companies house.

[Chojun]

Pumpkin Studios is/was located in England, although I can't remember where.

The Pumpkin team made it pretty clear that they will not ever support the source code or the game, ever again.  The only one who had contact with anyone at Pumpkin was Rman Jack, and he said that the Pumpkin Folks did not wish for their contact info to be released (which is understandable.  Rman Jack's acquaintance with Pumpkin Studios was years and years in the making).  So pursuing the Pumpkin route is pretty much dead and will not accomplish anything.

If anyone here is REALLY ambitious, then they can try to get an email out to Alex McLean at Pivotal Games.  It might take a lot of effort and a carefully thought out, SHORT (one paragraph) email asking for written permission to distribute the Warzone2100 FMVs with the source code.  An email probably won't make it very far, though, so a phone call would probably be best.  The only thing I'm not sure of, though, is where Pivotal Games' office is.  It may be in England but it could also be in New York.

E3 (I think) is coming up soon and it may also be helpful to see if Pivotal Plans on being there.  That would be a really good way to get some deep contact information.

Anyway, I'm mulling the idea of seeding the FMVs on BitTorrent.  I have a fast connection but I chew up quite a bit of bandwidth every month so I would prefer to have a number of different people with dedicated connections seed the files with me.  Kamaze, would you allow a .torrent file to be hosted on this site?  Or a link posted to one?  Or a link posted to a site that has a .torrent file?

Kamaze, I understand why you are careful about what goes on around here, but I think you lack a general understanding that lawsuits and non-criminal legal issues are driven almost entirely by market forces (and if not, then by vendetta).  Warzone2100 has absolutely NO market potential.  It is quite well understood that even if something significant comes of the resurrection project, it will even then not have any market potential at all.  No-one at the project will ever receive even so much as a penny for what we do here.  So a company is not even going to think about spending the $100 to have a lawyer contact you to take down the FMVs.  And as far as a lawsuit, they'd have a damn hard time proving damages when the game hasn't made a penny for the company since late 2000.

[J.Vaughan]

I don't understand, what happens to the copyright?

[Serman]

Chojun has a point.

Copyright Infrigement would only be possible if the offender PROFITS in any way from the FMV distribution.

Unlike Music, where the Artist is paid through CD Sales, Warzone 2100 itself is open-source. If the FMV's still aren't, why not? There's no way anyone could profit from the FMV's alone.

And, to J.Vaughan, I don't think copyrights expire until many years. Many copyrights from the 90's and 80's still exist without renewal.

[J.Vaughan]

Thats fine, and I had referenced the same thing earlier about the music industry. But we are forgetting pretty much one thing. We are allowed to distribute the FMV's if we get permission from the author or copyright holder regardless of the copyright... Am I correct?

And Chojun, I don't think Kamaze would go for it unless we had a legitimate document saying that no harm could come to him/her by doing so [Distributing FMVs.] But I'll let him answer for himself, It will be interesting to see what he thinks.

In a way, all it would take is a simple letter of permission, we're not asking them to sign over the copyright. Giving permission isn't the hard part. Getting in contact with the head developer or one of in this case is the hard part.

An e-mail surely won't be sufficient, Is there anyway we could write a short formal [actual parchment] letter to the company the head developer currently works at with a forward to him addressed on it? Calling his office and trying to find a slot in time where he is able to make the arrangements for the permission might suffice but we wont have anything concrete to prove that we are able to distribute the FMVs. Like I said, we can manage getting them. Plenty of people still have them, at least at the current time but further on down the road I'm not to sure. What we just need is the permission.

P.S. The dev was kind enough to give us his time for the source, I don't want to take up any more and I believe the shorter and more to the point we are, the more chance we have at getting through.

[GiGaBaNE]

two points:

first; i bet the developers of warzone are bound to get nostalgia..it wouldnt suprise me if they end up looking into this site at some point..

second; ok i understand that you dont wanna link fmvs on this site. but what about a link to a web site that mirrors the warzone open source download...its not this forums fault if that site (under construction, lol) also happens to host all the files from the retail cds...

[J.Vaughan]

Yeah but as of right now just copying and pasting won't get the videos to work with the source. As stated many times in the forum people always ask if they have the original warzone can they use FMVs with source, the answer is no because the source didn't come with code. Which just reminded me of another problem. Just permission might not be enough, the open source wasn't released with the RPL code to allow the FMVs to be played. I don't know if some of the Re-Dev's here would be able to do some of their handywork to either convert the RPL's to a format they know how to work with or integrate them with the source as they are. We just might need one more thing from the original dev's.

[DevUrandom]

Copyright Infrigement would only be possible if the offender PROFITS in any way from the FMV distribution.

This depends on the law of the country you live in. Eg. in Sweden this is the case and the only reason why TPB still exists. In other countries it works differently.

As for the permission thing:
1. Common knowledge says that if someone (as in random) or several people at once try to contact them it will fail per se.
It would need a special, patient, dedicated and not-too-enthusiastic person for this job, knowing what this project wants and needs. (Older than 14 and speaking their language...)
2. Emails were already tried in masses. IMO the only thing that could work is a very friendly phone call or better a face to face talk.
3. Common knowledge again: The address of Pivotal Games can easily be found on the internet or in the register of companies.
But if I ever find out that someone other than the person mentioned in (1) did (2), I'll gonna hate me for telling you.

Summed up: I don't think this will work anymore.

About that patent stuff:
Afaik something like a whole game cannot be patented. You could patent the codec you use to play the videos, for example.
The appropriate place to find the owners of Warzone would be the trademark register.

[Kamaze]

Sorry but i wont host a .torrent file neither a link to a tracker. I explained why and the link to a tracker can't be made, because I'm obligated to remove links to illegal sites/content at the time i spot them or someone spots me to them. And a torrent to distributed FMVs, without a permission, violates against the copyright. In before: I won't "overlook" them.

And again, it's not that i don't want. I just can't.