CrimsonStrife

Then let them shoot it down. Let them make that movie, until Disney steps in.

And they won't.

Sure, they can do what they want...none of us can physically stop them anyway...but that doesn't change facts:

Regardless of that it is being used for, the content is being ported, which is a violation of the EULAs on both the LA/Raven/Disney side, and the Epic Games side.

 

So I am to understand if you take these sounds, and make a windows sound scheme, and upload it for free downloads, you are potentially getting in trouble?

 

What about things like this?

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/102868/star-wars-the-old-republic-theme-for-windows-7/

Bring the excitement of the battle between the Galactic Republic and the Sith Empire to your desktop with the ‘Star Wars – The Old Republic’ Theme for Windows 7. The theme comes with 38 Hi-Res wallpapers, custom Star Wars icons, and sound clips for your system

Technically? Well, the wallpapers obviously would have been distributed for anyone to use on their systems by the respective companies, as you can get those same ones off the SWTOR site.  But I know that the sounds didn't come from there, so they were either pulled from the game or another one and redistributed (which I'm sure breaks it's EULA, as it usually will), or they are movie sounds and the like, or from that sound board, which are covered by copyrights, but in the case of that sound board there isn't anything saying what you can do with it (but I also notice a distinct lack of a "download" feature, which has me inclined to think you aren't supposed to do that).  Some would say that since they don't appear to say you CAN'T, then that means you CAN, but that's kinda the same as claiming that shoplifting is only illegal if you're caught.

The fact of the matter is, anytime you use and distribute someone else's copyrighted IP, even under completely hand made stuff (I.E. a wallpaper YOU made from a drawing YOU made, but it is of say, Boba Fett), you are still using a copyrighted IP. Which means, you could be sued, though that likely wouldn't be the first step taken anyway, it would probably be a cease and desist order.  Because Boba Fett would be the IP used, and just the "intellectual" form of Boba Fett is owned by Disney or whomever.

Now, how likely is someone to pursue that? Well in the case of a big corporate entity, not likely so long as you are not either profiting or competing with something THEY are trying to release.  But they own the IP, so they have the legal right to do that.

Copyrights are a heartless bitch, because when it comes down to something big, and multimedia, like Star Wars. Everything is going to be copyrighted, but it isn't just going to be copyrighted under a blanket set of rules.  Character names can be copyrighted one way, while the character designs can be another, and even phrases, terms and dialog can have certain rules.  Then the branding as a whole is copyrighted a certain way. So everything has limits to where and how it can be used, and they won't all be the same.

So essentially, anytime you're making anything Star Wars (even an original character or storyline), and you use the Star Wars branding, then you are putting yourself at a risk.

Now somethings fall under fair-use, but these are often super-vaguely defined, and even straying slightly from what they say is fair-use can land you in a stink.

Now, how hard would they pursue any of that? Well again, it would really come down to money and how it affects them.

So, would you get in trouble? Very doubtful.  But can you? Yes, probably.

So why do they put star wars soundboards on starwars.com if you can get in trouble for using them for your free projects?

Thing is, I see no where on the site that is says you can use them for that.

Relevant: http://jkhub.org/topic/3239-porting-discussion/?p=44029

Regardless of that it is being used for, the content is being ported, which is a violation of the EULAs on both the LA/Raven/Disney side, and the Epic Games side.

Also, while technically under "artistic license" and "fair-use", Machinima still uses the Star Wars IP, and branding, so you could be shut down entirely on that basis alone. Especially considering Disney has the new Star Wars film in the works and actually canceled the 3D theatre releases of the remaining films in preparation.  See Also: that linked thread, I point out that Disney has a history of being very tight-fisted with their IP, so if word got out on this, yes it would probably see a C&D order.

Which is still wrong. You aren't allowed to port all of the assets from JK2 and make it work in JKA, for instance. No company in their right mind would permit for that.

There also may have been a mistranslation from the steam chat to the shortened "points".

CrimsonStrife: but porting is kind of the same issue, you would have to check every title's EULA, but I am pretty sure moving content from one game to another would count as a redistribution of assets outside of general user use, and therefore while not "illegal" per se, WOULD be a violation of the EULA, which you are agreeing to simply by owning and playing said games

@@CrimsonStrife: your point #2 is wrong. Just because a game is "approved for modding" doesn't make it okay to distribute the game assets elsewhere/port them. See: the JK2/A EULAs, which still prohibit this but make a special case for making mods. Which is now actually invalid due to the source code being released.

I only referred specifically to the action of porting between JK2 and JKA, and that there "shouldn't" be an issue, and logically there wouldn't be as it all belongs to the same people.  But this only supports the point to read the EULA to anything you're planning to port to or from.

I was entirely planning to sit by and watch how this plays out, as I am retired and don't rightly give a rat's ass what the policies do.  But @@Circa dragged me into this.

its not illegal, its not againsty the law, its just that the corporate empire doesnt want anything to be moddable, mot

As much as I hate to say it, Ory is kind of correct here.

Here is more or less what I told Circa:

 

Circa: Have you read the porting discussion yet?

CrimsonStrife: oh yes

CrimsonStrife: tis madness

CrimsonStrife: but I've been lurking

Circa: Yeah. It's a mess.

CrimsonStrife: they've got the legality angle wrong though.  LA (when it existed) would have licensed out the Star Wars IP to these various developers to produce a game. Specifically prior to LA really being a studio in and of it's self (I think unofficially LA still exists as does LF, and ILM but they've simply been absorbed into the Disney studio blob).  What this means is, while companies like Raven would have had the rights to their own code and assets, the overall rights went to LA.  Just as the StarWars IP was owned by Lucas.  Now, Disney owns all of that, and while I would have to dig to find specific references, Disney tends to be very tight-fisted with their IP, even to a point of pulling a large selection of their holiday films and shows from Amazon and other streaming networks to try and drive viewers to their TV Networks.  What this means is, that really, untill Disney takes a stance, modding of the Star Wars games in general, is kind of a gray area.

Circa: Yeah. That's kinda why this is such a mess. I hate grey areas.

CrimsonStrife: but porting is kind of the same issue, you would have to check every title's EULA, but I am pretty sure moving content from one game to another would count as a redistribution of assets outside of general user use, and therefore while not "illegal" per se, WOULD be a violation of the EULA, which you are agreeing to simply by owning and playing said games

CrimsonStrife: I.E. You could be sued into oblivion by any license holder for any IP.  And the other big catch to that, is that it isn't up to the actual developers to say what is and isn't OK.

CrimsonStrife: that decision is made by each company or IP holders legal department or representatives, which may have little to no understanding about modding.

CrimsonStrife: so lawyers will jump all over that shit

CrimsonStrife: Raven approved of user content, so they provided the tools to do so, and they would have had approval from LA. BUT when content come from any other company, and is being put into a Raven made game, then would require approval from the studio behind that one.

CrimsonStrife: it is one thing to move between JKA and JK2, as both are owned and licensed between LA and Raven, and both are approved for modding. So the only legal gap there, is if Disney, who now own the rights, disapproved it.

CrimsonStrife: Which is entirely within their legal right to do so.

Circa: Yeah. You should copy and paste all that into the thread. 

CrimsonStrife: I don't plan to get directly involved with this nut house, I'm retired <.<

CrimsonStrife: you want to share that, by all means.

Circa: You're still part of the community though! Lurkers count as part of the community. lol

CrimsonStrife: Well, the only other thing to add to that, is that; one could argue that if you re-create, say a character, from another IP...like, Halo for instance, that as long as you were not actually moving any content from the Halo games into another game, and you created it all yourself then it COULD be covered under an artistic fair-use license provided it was not sold for profit.

CrimsonStrife: what this means is, that ALL assets, are covered under a blanket clause

CrimsonStrife: it ALL belongs to the IP holder, so if you ARE choosing a stance, it would need to be an ALL or NOTHING stance.  The first wouldn't be "illegal" per se, but would be at risk of violating EULAs and ToSs but it would be fair, while the latter would be really limiting on mods, but also fair.

CrimsonStrife: I got this...

Circa: DO IT

 

TL:DR

1. Now that Disney owns all of the Star Wars IP, and they have a history of being tight-fisted with their IPs, we can actually assume that all modding is officially a gray area until they take a stance, because it would be entirely within their legal right to change it.
2. Porting between JKA and JK2: perfectly fine, both are owned and licensed by the same groups and approved for modding,so there should be no conflicts.
3. It is important to define the "legality" here, officially, none of this is "illegal", you won't have cops banging down your door or hauling you off to jail, as this would not be a criminal case, but a civil or even corporate one.  I.E. porting to or from anything other than JKA and JK2 would likely be a violation of both the Raven and LA EULA and ToS, and would almost be guaranteed as a violation of the other groups EULA and ToS.  As such, you could be sued into oblivion.  I wouldn't be worried about LA, but rather whomever owns the IP to what you're porting.
4. ALL assets, are covered under a blanket clause,  it ALL belongs to the IP holder, so if you ARE choosing a stance, it would need to be an ALL or NOTHING stance.  The first wouldn't be "illegal" per se, but would be at risk of violating EULAs and ToSs but it would be fair, while the latter would be really limiting on mods, but also fair.
    
    

TL:DR (again): This whole thing is ridiculous.

it is true then we can go backout of jkhub

True, and I doubt the staff is going to bend over backwards to appease people who take that ultimatum.

http://crimsonstrife.deviantart.com/

Circa is a false idol. Burn at the stake for impersonating a god. Such heresy is intolerable.

True story...

http://jkhub.org/anisedreligion/

There are certain existing English speaking members who shall remain nameless *Ory'Hara* that are nigh on impossible to understand anyway...so we should have no problems understanding you.

Caelum I gotta say, loved that CloudFlare always online. Never seen that before and it really works great.

CloudFlare is indeed fantastic, we started using it over at Helical too after we saw a number of our sister groups sites get Ddos'd.

The paid plans are pretty affordable too.

The change in animation style is interesting, considering the way I hear it, they kept most of (if not the entire) team from Star Wars: The Clone Wars for this.

Haha!

 

That's great. I figured you would. If you hadn't at least thought about it, I would be extremely surprised. This is some quality work and you'd be a fool not to take the opportunity to at least ask. And you are no fool.

If I keep this up, we are going to end up with one of those "hide yo kids" memes about me <.<

*@@CrimsonStrife goes on to recruit @@AshuraDX to Helical*

 

What. the. actual. fuck.

The thought to message him about it, was in fact just crossing my mind. SCARY.

But we could use a modeler devoted to aliens and creatures....O.o

Like I've said before, I'm predictable.

Hell I've already abducted @@therfiles

@@AshuraDX I love it...

CAN"T BE UNSEEN!
 

 
 

 
Also,

They've been planning to make a push to get into our living rooms for sometime now.
 
Big Picture mode was the start, and the increases in controler support.
They've just announced an OS, and they've been teasing a "console" of sorts for a while, mostly likely just a standardized media PC that will come with their OS installed.  Gabe Newell has actually mentioned the "SteamBox" in a number of interviews I think.
So I would imagine that at least ONE of the remaining announcements is this "console"...this would explain the consist references to streaming content, as it may be a lower power device that can stream the games from your gaming PC to your TV.
 
http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/
 
This basically shuts-down the overall likely-hood of any of these being game announcements.
 
BUT then again, they have said it is open for hard-ware manufacturers...so would they really attempt to market their own device too?

I assume you are referring to my statement that neither of the two remaining announcements are games.
 
Well namely the fact that on that page I linked, each of those "dots" is representing an announcement , with the first one being the SteamOS.  The paragraph below says that this is part of their effort to bring Steam as a platform, to the living room.
I tried to nose around in the page's code...not that I expected Valve to have just left names for things, but that maybe they'd left little teases...no such luck.  But practically everything in the code is marked "livingroom" I.E. that is most likely what this is all about.
 
With SteamOS being the first announcement...the logical step is to next announce some sort of hardware or peripheral, not designed to be the sole device running it (which as we've all pointed out, its open to everyone), but perhaps engineered to make the most of it for your money.
Now this does leave a curious opening with the third announcement, but if everything else is devoted to bringing Steam to the livingroom, then it seems highly unlikely that they will be including any sort of game announcement with these.  And the fact that it says they are "connecting the dots" also points towards it being some sort of tie-in, feature to Steam, hardware, etc.
 
Now that isn't to say that once these announcements have been made, that we won't see some new game(s) announced in the following weeks or months.

Holy crap it's like I called it  :blink:Or, y'know, it could be the fact I have connections throughout the games industry....just saying

You can just do

 

 

.post_wrap .post_body .post
{
    font-family: <font>;
}

 

at the end of the CSS file and it'll make sure that the specified .post is inside .post_body which is inside .post_wrap. It would be ridiculous to think it could be used anywhere else.

Not all that ridiculous, considering the entire theme was custom built, and given that he had to fake a blog without actually buying IP.Blog, I wouldn't consider it strange if some of the code has been re-used in other areas.  And yes, there is that, along with a number of options, I never said non of them know how, but again:

Again, I never said this would be a difficult change, but one of the staff would need to decide to let it take priority over things such as some of the recent updates and security.

Any one of them could do it, but it still has to be replicated on all the versions, and prior to doing so, even though it is a minor change, policy would require we back it up.  Hell, despite being retired I still have admin powers and could do it, but aside from this first complaint, we have never heard anything before to my recollection, so there is no reason to make this a priority.

Don't wanna sound rude or anything, but I'm not convinced.

 

Firebug (a Firefox extension) says Georgia font setting comes exactly from the CSS file I pointed out before: prettify.css. I can't imagine any scenario where altering Georgia to, say, Verdana would do anything bad.

That's true for the forums posts, but that will also affect anything else using the .post CSS.  In some cases where this same CSS is being used elsewhere on the site, it could affect heights of certain forms or what not (most likely to be an issue in something like the fixed-width theme, where everything is scaled to fit a certain size), unless you were certain to pick identically scaled fonts.  These are minor issues, but when it comes to managing a fairly large, world-wide community, you don't want hiccups to go unnoticed.  Since Caelum has left the community and he was the one who created the themes, the active staff would need to check and see where throughout the entire site, that .post CSS is being called.

And it still holds true that the changes have to be duplicated across all of the themes.

Again, I never said this would be a difficult change, but one of the staff would need to decide to let it take priority over things such as some of the recent updates and security.

I think you're making it sound like it's way more difficult than it actually is. The post content is wrapped in the CSS class post, which holds the font information. Here's the CSS file that defines the style of this very page. We find .post:

 

.post
{
    font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;
    font-size:13px;
    line-height:1.6
}

 

All it takes is to change the Georgia part to some other font name.

I'm actually not trying to make it sound difficult at all. It simply has the potential to be time consuming.  See this site uses IP.Content to create custom pages and blocks, because of that we cannot simply predict (because @@Caelum designed them) which ones are utilizing the .post CSS and where.  We would have to check all of them so we could be sure nothing weird happens.  We also have multiple themes, and each has it's own CSS, so we would have to change all of them.

The fact is, it is a very menial task, that just has the potential to be tedious if the .post is in fact being used in other apps.  Because anytime we make a change, we have to QC it, and then make sure to duplicate it across all the themes, which are not identical even if they appear to be (Fixed-Width for instance).  There are plenty of other things for the active staff to do on a regular basis, that this isn't likely to be at the top of their list.

Isn't that as easy as opening the style's CSS file, finding

 

 

.post
{
    font-family: <font>;
}

 

And just changing it?

It would depend on how @@Caelum designed this theme I suppose. The other problem is depending on how many plugins are installed, and how many have their own CSS styles, you could be doing a run-about to get them all.

Odds are this is something that wouldn't take long to fix, but as to if the staff want to disregard their other duties to handle it, up to them.

Where else besides post content is this font used? There seems to be a different font (a "good" one) about everywhere else on the site.

I probably should have phrased that differently.  There is no direct setting (that I am aware of) for changing the default post font in IP.Board.  However I run an instance of it over on my company's site, and we have unified the fonts, but we did so in the actual page code by making everything display in one font, which also required some design changes and tweaks in order to make everything look right, considering some fonts are bigger than others.

This isn't something beyond the current staff's abilities, but there are a number of other issues which take precedence.

You can always change your own font when you post.

Thing is, in order to keep a consistent feel, we would have to change the font everywhere.  But it would be up to the active staff to decide on if it is really worth it.

Filefront in general is growing more and more unreliable these days.

This seems to imply it was in fact reliable at one point.  Which we all know was never really the case.

Part 2 is hardware http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

This part:

 

Am I going to be using a mouse and a keyboard in the living-room?

If you want. But Steam and SteamOS work well with gamepads, too. Stay tuned, though - we have some more to say very soon on the topic of input.

in the Q&A, is leading me to think that the last announcement is some sort of peripheral.

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