Are private servers illegal?

Started by Kolby, Jun 04, 2013, 07:46 AM

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Veruno

Well, the companies that own the games think private servers are illegal. Here is an actual lawsuit filed against a WoW private server by Blizzard: http://www.scribd.com/doc/149378603/Blizzard-v-Allison-Reeves

Lucky for us, Gravity has never cared much about Ragnarok private servers.

Woon

Blizzard and gravity are worlds apart.
Quote from: Thoth on Jun 08, 2013, 02:14 AM
I recall some europe official RO server trying to close someone down. however, the licenses they had from gravity did not apply to the country the server was hosted in, and they had no choice but to back down.
its quite similiar to the subtitling and distribution of anime outside of japan- its legal to do it (?not for profit?) in whatever country until someone buys the license for that country. if a company has the licenses only for canada and usa, but not mexico, they cannot take any legal action against anyone in mexico. it is illegal for them to try. quite often, these homegrown operations end up making a product popular enough to profit in whichever country it was previously unlicensed in.
Stupid French official server...

Thoth

we should totally create a ragnarok server licensing map. so people know where the "danger" zones are? someone might buy a license for a country if you make it too popular, but then you just move and host your server in a nearby country?

Boreas

Quote from: Thoth on Jun 25, 2013, 02:07 AM
we should totally create a ragnarok server licensing map. so people know where the "danger" zones are? someone might buy a license for a country if you make it too popular, but then you just move and host your server in a nearby country?

The "danger zones" are only those countries which have very strict copyright laws. Most servers are hosted in the US and you'd think that Gravity would do something over there, yet they don't.

hoykarin

I can't believe someone is still in between thoughts whether a pserver is legal or not. I mean, Ro was really made to be free-for-all in a sense everybody should take a sip at this games kool-aid. heuheu

Thoth

well, when you think about what it would take to finish up the open source version of the RO client and fix stuff, you figure you just might as well make your own game. I mean, who wants to deal with all the complications of fixing RO client for your own server when you could be sued by gravity whenever? instead of ripping off existing companies, one day there will be an open source MMO model for private servers and content...

yC

Thoth, aren't we more than half way there?  There's graphic available, working server side and usable client side.  Most people running an RO server today wouldn't be running one if not for all the convenience, they are not interested in fixing or creating anything new I assume.

Thoth

you may be right in a way, but gravity has claim to the main bulk of graphics files in RO, yes? what would you replace all of that with?  /wah

Jenova

Yes, 99.999% of pservers are illegal; They modify and redistribute Gravity's copyrighted files, including the client, music, sprites, etc. The server (eAthena/rAthena or whatever) are completely legal, however.

Playtester

And the remaining 0.001% is called The Mana World. =p

http://themanaworld.org/about.php

Based on eAthena, all graphics, maps and names are 100% self made.

Buuut... it's not really RO if you don't steal anything from it.

Meta

Quote from: Jenova on Jul 15, 2013, 10:29 PM
Yes, 99.999% of pservers are illegal; They modify and redistribute Gravity's copyrighted files, including the client, music, sprites, etc. The server (eAthena/rAthena or whatever) are completely legal, however.

Except for the NPCs.

Playtester

Only trademarked ones are actually protected. You can actually steal NPCs from other games totally legally, but it's gets harder when you steal something like Chocobo and Mog.

I think "Kafra" and "Poring" is trademarked.

Meta

Quote from: Playtester on Jul 17, 2013, 09:14 AM
Only trademarked ones are actually protected. You can actually steal NPCs from other games totally legally, but it's gets harder when you steal something like Chocobo and Mog.

I think "Kafra" and "Poring" is trademarked.

The NPC dialog text is automatically copyrighted (with less protection than a registered copyright in some countries) upon publication in most countries where RO is available. Gravity may have registered copyrights on the materials in the game in countries where that's not the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

Playtester

I'm not sure if you can count NPC dialogues as litarary or artistic work, though. I know books are protected through that, but dialogue in a game... I dunno.

Meta

It's similar to saving a streamed movie from Netflix and uploading it to YouTube. I think the MPAA would have a strong case there.