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Why isn't StepMania illegal?
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Desoulman
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20. PostPosted: Mon Oct 25, 2004 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Luigi30 wrote:
Once again.

If they sued the makers of StepMania for lost profits or whatever, they would also have to sue everyone who imports DDR machines, or they would be hypocrites. They wouldn't do that, since people playing DDR in America means that people will buy the crappy console mixes that they make.


If they were to start suing people, they would only go after people or companies that are worth it. I am pretty sure the person(s) who made stepmania probably don't have enough money to even cover court costs, so Konami would lose in the end, financially.
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Last edited by Desoulman on Sat Aug 13, 2011 11:10 pm, edited 1 time in total
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Luigi30
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21. PostPosted: Sun Oct 31, 2004 1:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Tell that to the RIAA.
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DJ_DraftHorse
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22. PostPosted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This particular subject was on our minds the entire time DWI has been developed. It's like the Sword Of Damocles hanging over your head. Yes it's possible that Konami would suddenly decide "we want to crush these people like a bug" if DWI or SM was cutting into their profits. It looks like that hasn't happened.

How many of you here on Ddrfreak have bought a domestic console version of DDR because you learned to play using DWI or SM first?

I've long believed that the reason we never heard from Konami was because we were improving the popularity of their game in the North American domestic market. If fans are making your product more marketable it's not something you want to shut down. We have also never profited from the sale of DWI because we don't sell it.. pretty simple.

We have also strived to not use any original graphics or sound from DDR in DWI. I'm a way cooler announcer than any of the original ones, anyway.
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[DMB]dman.exe
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23. PostPosted: Sat Nov 06, 2004 7:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, has SM or ITG applied for any patents?


Are they making any money off of it?



That's why it's not illegal.
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GeeForce
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24. PostPosted: Sun Nov 07, 2004 7:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, well I have a question. I don't even know if this has to do with Stepmania, but I have been wondering this, and it seems like the right place to post.

Say you download a song off of bemanistyle, say One Week by the barenaked ladies. Now, you play the Stepmania, it's fun, then a couple days later you are burning a CD to listen to. Is using the MP3 from One Week illegal? Did you just download an illegal MP3??? E19.gif
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Trylan (Another)
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25. PostPosted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Luigi30:


Funny, I could have sworn that the RIAA were just using lawsuits as pseudo scare tactics to dip into a completely untapped source of income (and create blame for their horrific sales).

rampage wrote:
They would have good grounds to sue importers, since 90% of the imported DDR machines contain bootleg software.


And the other 10% are using official kits that are illegally being used in the US (if you're wondering, it says right on the cabinet that the game is illegal for use / sale outside of japan.)

It's as it has already been said: Konami is enjoying the profits from the sale of console games that DDR arcade / stepmania / DWI have generated way too much to care about it. I sincerely doubt the ps2 DDR mixes and ultramix would have caught on very much if not for DDR arcade in the US. So yeah it's illegal, but Konami likely doesn't care.

I thought Roxor games was selling In The Groove though...?
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EmiOfBrie
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26. PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 1:04 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think Roxor *is* paying royalties to Konami, if I remember correctly.

ITG is basically Stepmania 3.5 with a custom metrics scheme, and I remember them saying something on their website about talking with KoA to discuss royalty payments before the game made its arcade debut.
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AK (Vanilla x Mint Mix)
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27. PostPosted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 10:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

heavyMAX2nut wrote:
Ok, well I have a question. I don't even know if this has to do with Stepmania, but I have been wondering this, and it seems like the right place to post.

Say you download a song off of bemanistyle, say One Week by the barenaked ladies. Now, you play the Stepmania, it's fun, then a couple days later you are burning a CD to listen to. Is using the MP3 from One Week illegal? Did you just download an illegal MP3??? E19.gif


That is a good question... I've never even thought of that. I guess it would count... maybe?
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icywindow
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28. PostPosted: Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

To heavyMAX2nut: If you were to play DWI, you'd see the banner when adding those songs that effectively says "If you don't have permission from the person or the cd that the song came off of, the music file is illegal." This is why a lot of people in the early days (makes me feel old) were only distributing the stepcharts/dwi files for konami songs, as those songs were licensed by konami.

Effectively, to "legally" use any of the music along with the dwi/sm files with which they are distributed, you have to own the cd, have permission from the author, et. al. This hasn't stopped people from downloading these tunes, but to anyone who cares, it's technically illegal. However, it's just like the mp3 argument, and I can say I wouldn't know about half the music I do were it not for sites like ddrei and bemanistyle.

As for the rest of this thread, there's not much more that can be said that hasn't already been said, so you won't get a rehash from me.

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29. PostPosted: Sun Nov 14, 2004 1:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Promit wrote:
Neither of these stopped Blizzard from shutting down both Freecraft

Freecraft never got shut down; it just changed names from "FREECRAFT" to "STRATAGUS". Whether Konami could successfully argue that the mark "STEPMANIA" is similar to Konami's registered marks "BEATMANIA", "DRUMMANIA", and "KEYBOARDMANIA" is up to the courts to decide.

Quote:
and Open BNet.

That was in one federal appeals circuit. To get a definitive answer, you need two or more circuits to agree, or you need two or more circuits to disagree and then the Supreme Court steps in.

Besides, the bnetd decision relates only to programs that decide to emulate a company's official servers given that the users are apparently under contract to use only the official servers.

Dancing Dan wrote:
If im not mistaken SM looked almost EXACTLY the same as DDR MAX.

And Debian won't include StepMania in its GNU/Linux distribution until somebody makes a new default theme that isn't designed to imitate 6th Mix as closely.

Quote:
As far as the copyright, technically the KOA arcade copyright died

Trademarks don't die. Copyrights used to die, but they don't anymore. Nowadays, only patents die, and they take 20 years.

icywindow wrote:
to "legally" use any of the music along with the dwi/sm files with which they are distributed, you have to own the cd, have permission from the author, et. al.

But can the author even give that permission? How can a person who writes a song know that he isn't [url=="http://slashdot.org/~yerricde/journal/36125]accidentally copying[/url] some other song written a decade ago?
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30. PostPosted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here is why STEPMANIA, DWI, FFR, and other simulators are not illegal

1. Simulators aren't making profits. This is a free game, so they are not stealing Konami's Profits

2. Really, isn't actually DANCING better? I mean, c'mon! Only 21 people in the whole world would like this better than the actual GAME of Dance Dance Revolution!
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31. PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a serious interest in the legal issues here, so I'd like to try to clear several issues up and ask for clarification on the rest. This is mainly just a summary of points covered already, sorry if I'm being boring...

- Being open-source, of course, does not make anything legal. It shouldn't make anything illegal, either, but cf. the Blizzard decision re "commercial" value and the DMCA. Apart from that tangent, however, I don't think Blizzard has much relevance here as that decision mainly turned on users' agreement to an EULA for a different peice of commercial software -- that's not happening here. In a similar vain, the fact that the Stepmania developers do not profit on Stepmania itself is irrelevant. I don't profit if I copy a major-label music CD for you, but it's still illegal.

- If Stepmania *is* illegal, there is no reason Konami can't do something about without also going after imports. They might then be "hypocrites", but that doesn't matter legally. Similarly, Konami could crack down on imports and continue to ignore Stepmania if they wished. This isn't a trademark issue where they *have* to defend their mark or lose it; copyright infringement is still copyright infringement no matter how lazy the holder of the rights is.

- Simfiles don't matter as far as the legality of Stepmania. It has a substantial non-infringing use, i.e., playing your own songs or songs that are freely licensed. However, to clear up another query... cutting a copyrighted song down to ~100s and sticking it in a simfile does not change the legality of distributing it at all. If the song is copyrighted and you can't distribute it, a simfile is a derivative work and you can't distribute that either.

- There's no trademark violation going on (any references to "Dance Dance Revolution" are to Konami's game, and should be kosher).

- There is a possible patent violation -- references to several patents were posted covering any kind of DDR-like gameplay. I am unsure as to the validity and enforceability of these patents. I've emailed legal at Roxor to try and determined what they "worked out" before going ahead with ITG.

- There is a probable copyright violation, I think, with the official themes that ape DDRMAX's, DDRMAX2's and DDR Extreme's graphics. Even if they were created in a "clean room" without ripping actual Konami graphics, they are substantially similar and probably infringing.

OK. So. I think that covers everything... now, here's my interest. I want to start moving on getting Stepmania into Debian, a free GNU/Linux based operating system. We in Debian are pretty strict about what is free and what is not. Stepmania is GPLed, so that part's ok, but there are obviously more issues. To make this work, I think I would need to take care of 3 things:

1. Create a new theme which has no chance of being considered derivative of Konami's official artwork and sounds. A lot of work, but nothing more than that.

2. Make sure the patent issues are OK. We cannot distribute Stepmania at all if licensing fees must be paid. Pydance is already in Debian, so there should be some discussion on this already to guide me.

3. Round up some simfiles of which the authors hold the copyright to the music, and don't mind licensing them under the GPL. Pydance has a couple, so this should be easy.

So, if anyone has some insight on the patent stuff, or knows of an existing effort to create a new, "pure" Stepmania theme, please reply. I'll follow up with whatever I get from Roxor. Thanks.
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32. PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:42 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Read this, follow the link on the first post, and consider the onsuing discussion pertaining to the link.

http://shadow-corp.com/index.php?showtopic=2432&st=225

Even if people are able to create something that looks even the least bit similar to intellectual property of a company, it is at the discretion of the company to lay down a legal smack down, if they choose to. Apparently Konami hasn't chosen to do anything.
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33. PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Heh...

http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20041112
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34. PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

tepples wrote:
Copyrights used to die, but they don't anymore.


Yeah, they still do, but they raised the term from 17 to 90 years, and even under the old limit, a copyright can be renewed for a new term when the current one expires.
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35. PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 4:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

*snip*

Pumpy

DDRy

Both were released in 1998, but the convention Konami got mad about was in 1999... Did PIU rip off DDR?
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36. PostPosted: Sun Nov 28, 2004 4:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Has anyone ever noticed that the machine says " Illegal to use outside of japan UNLESS AUTHORIZED BY KONAMI and the konami they're talking about is probably Konami of Japan!
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37. PostPosted: Sat Dec 04, 2004 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Note that serious inquiries about StepMania should go to the StepMania development list, stepmania-devs@lists.sourceforge.net. A few comments:

Debian has a general policy of ignoring patents unless they're being actively enforced. This is a practical matter: for any piece of software, you can find patents that apply to it, but most are unenforced; and unless one actually goes to court, it's probably impossible to find out if any given patent is enforcable. Nobody has ever made a patent infringement claim against StepMania. (Tip: don't go delving into patents trying to see if they apply to a given piece of software; it'll do you no good, and it'll only increase your liability, due to "willful infringement" (see article). In other words, please refrain from sending me or posting details about patents; I won't read it.)

I don't know if the default theme is infringing or not, but we're planning on replacing it, anyway. This may not happen quickly, though, since it's hard to find people motivated enough to make a complete themes to the level of polish of the current theme.

Note that StepMania is under the X11 license, not the GPL.

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38. PostPosted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

EmiOfBrie wrote:
tepples wrote:
Copyrights used to die, but they don't anymore.
Yeah, they still do, but they raised the term from 17 to 90 years, and even under the old limit, a copyright can be renewed for a new term when the current one expires.
I think he was being more cynical than anything. Copyright is being repeatedly extended whenever the end of that time limit draws near. Copyrights don't die anymore, because when Mickey gets close to 90 years old, Congress will no doubt pass the Bono Act (U2 instead of Sonny Bono) which extends copyright another X years. Lather, rinse, repeat.
dj striker (イエス・キリスト) wrote:
Well, has SM or ITG applied for any patents?

Are they making any money off of it?

That's why it's not illegal.
This is so wrong that it's comically funny.

Having just dealt with it in another thread, I'll point out that StepmaniaX has more of a legal anchor around its neck than Stepmania, since not only is it in Stepmania's legal murky waters, but it's also commonly distributed in binary form, which *is* illegal since it's built using copyrighted Microsoft binaries. ERGO: StepmaniaX is illegal (when not in source form).

And yes, ZOOT is right. Don't even bother trying to address this with them - they don't *want* to know if it's illegal or not. It's better for them legally to assume that it is.
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39. PostPosted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 4:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cutriss wrote:
And yes, ZOOT is right. Don't even bother trying to address this with them - they don't *want* to know if it's illegal or not. It's better for them legally to assume that it is.

I didn't say that. I've spent a great deal of time addressing legal issues in StepMania. (For example, the initial impetus for the rewritten sound system in StepMania 3.0 was because Bass is GPL-incompatible.)

I do spend most of my effort on the code, not the theme, simply because the code is most important to me; I want to ensure that it's clearly licensed and safely reusable, and I have my hands full with that. In any event, I'd like StepMania to get its own look; I think the community can do better than just mimicing DDR.

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