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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Vampire

OK folks, let me put a little Canuck legal spin on this topic (keep in mind this is the opinion of a practicing Lawyer in Canada so it may or may not be the same elseware).

My wife works for a law firm and I posed this situation to the Senior Partner who is a Commercial Law specialist.

There is no specific case law that fits this precicely, however there is long standing case law on modifying physical devices and equipment. Basically when any person buys a product and takes possession they own that "Unit" of the product, they do NOT own the design or any specific rights to modify the design. It is accepted that any person is free to make any modifications they wish to their own property and the indivdual is fully responsible for the result, however modifying a product completely voids any original stated performance specifications, warranty, and absolves the original manufacturer of all responisbility to the user. In terms of distribution of material and instructions to modify a commercial "Trade Marked or Copyrighted" product it is NOT permitted to publically promote or commercially distribute material and or instructions to materially change any product protected by Copyright without licence or expressed permission of the copyright holder.

So bottom line my legal beagle tells me a members only forum, is not legally considered "Public", however if people can read the instructions with out joining the "distribution" would be considered PUBLIC, therefore although it is a minor point posting such instructions here would violate Canadian Copyright law, passing those same instructions via a personal eMail (or even PM) would not be a violation.
 
Rich said:
Piracy in reverse ? adding a freeware VC
Click to expand...

So by your logic using gauges, panels or sounds from another aircraft is piracy too?

I have bought the Captain Sim 727-100/200 but not the freighters, so if I download the freeware 727F from Thomas Ruth but decide to add the Captain Sim VC instead of the one that Thomas did simply because I like it better, I'm a pirate?

Unless someone decides to merge two packages and uploads the entire aircraft, it's not piracy in my book! If it's solely for private use I really don't see the problem.
 
Ferry_vO said:
So by your logic using gauges, panels or sounds from another aircraft is piracy too?

I have bought the Captain Sim 727-100/200 but not the freighters, so if I download the freeware 727F from Thomas Ruth but decide to add the Captain Sim VC instead of the one that Thomas did simply because I like it better, I'm a pirate?

Unless someone decides to merge two packages and uploads the entire aircraft, it's not piracy in my book! If it's solely for private use I really don't see the problem.
Click to expand...

That´s exactly my point!!!! You have both aircrafts, you bought them!! What the problem in merge them? And what´s the problem in saying what to do to merge them to other person that has this arcrafts too in a proper way? You cant post files from the aircrafts, of course, but the method used to merge them???? What´s the problem?
 
SADT said:
Wombat, just asking, if I were to give the A2A Spitfire a tailhook, to that one could land on a period carrier, would I be allowed to share my tailhook settings with other on this forum? :salute:
Click to expand...

This goes off topic but yes you could no you could not. Its necessary to understand there are two tail hooks. One is functional and only resides in the aircraft.cfg file and the other is visual and resides in the mdl file.

The functional tail hook can not be copyrighted as it is copy written by MS and freely the rights are given to us to modify.

[Tailhook] //MS section tag that no one can claim ownership of

tailhook_length = 4.5000 // Property defining [Tailhook] section. The length is data and can be changed at will. While someone might think they can copyright the length it would be very hard to prove that the length used is did not come from parallel development.

tailhook_position = -4.00, 0.00, -1.00 //Property defining [Tailhook] section. The position is data and follows the same rules above.

That is the tail hook section from an aircraft.cfg file. This you could share as no one can copyright it. You probably do not want to use this one as I arbitrarily assigned the data and it may or may not work on a carrier.

The visual tail hook is another matter. In order to add one to the A2A Spitfire you would have to reverse engineer the mdl into source material and then insert a tail hook and recompile.

That would be against your EULA with A2A. You could not share that work here with out getting banned as you would distributing Pirated software.

Which brings us to this other matter.

Software Piracy = Obtaining digital content by stealing it from the owners of the software. By the nature of things this would be content that you do not already have.

Piracy in reverse = Would that not be Giving digital content that you own to others? Which I don't think can even be a crime if it is something they want.

So far the MS Flight Simulator has been an Open Architecture Game specifically so that users may modify its contents for their own use at will.

That is all Pete has done and Rich you are way off base.

You can have your opinion but if you stand by that one you better have never modified one file in your installation of FS.
 
flaviossa said:
That´s exactly my point!!!! You have both aircrafts, you bought them!! What the problem in merge them? And what´s the problem in saying what to do to merge them to other person that has this arcrafts too in a proper way? You cant post files from the aircrafts, of course, but the method used to merge them???? What´s the problem?
Click to expand...

Personally depending on content I don't see a reason why one could not create a "How to" for the subject. There might be a problem if the "How to" contains instructions on how to reverse engineer something that is copy written. That should be fairly obviously wrong and Pete would know that or he would not suggest creating the "How to"

So I say post away the details.

Really I don't know why some people don't write up these "how to" documents and publish them in PDF format and upload them to the library. Complete with detailed screen shots of course.
 
Ferry_vO said:
So by your logic using gauges, panels or sounds from another aircraft is piracy too?

I have bought the Captain Sim 727-100/200 but not the freighters, so if I download the freeware 727F from Thomas Ruth but decide to add the Captain Sim VC instead of the one that Thomas did simply because I like it better, I'm a pirate?

Unless someone decides to merge two packages and uploads the entire aircraft, it's not piracy in my book! If it's solely for private use I really don't see the problem.
Click to expand...

SPOT ON, I probably did not do a great job translating the legal mumbo jumbo (does anyone except Lawyers understand that anyway) the bottom line is making modifications to anything you own, is legal, taking parts and or pieces from one product and using them on another is perfectly legal providing you own both - and when you download a freeware model you own the "unit" that is stored on your computer but not the design or work of the author. The only issue would be in public distribution of the resulting modified "unit" or the material and instructions. So as long as someone does not take a VC as a part and distribute it along with the instructions on how to install it in other models and do that publically No Issue.
 
Providing instructions for this Vampire exterior/interior merge is no different than posting instructions on how to change the afterburner effect on the Alphasim Phantoms using effects from other payware releases or some freeware release as was done years ago in their forum. Or how to add in Eric Marciano's radar screen to the Alphasim Lightnings years ago in this very forum. As was stated above it is this open architecture that has made FS the long lasting franchise that it is/was. Just my opinion but nothing like the availability of an SDK by the manufacturer (and used by all follow-on developers) says "yes, we encourage experimentation and sharing of information".
:ernae:
 
Bottomline. If you're going publish a mod to someone else's work, payware or freeware, get their permission before publishing. I've published mods to both free and payware, but always with permission of the original author. Just ask. The worst that can happen is that they say no.
 
Blimey! :icon_eek:

I started reading this thread and it suddenly went 'all legal'!

Good grief, there are lots of pirates out there - getting away with real piracy - and no-one seems to be able to stop them. Far too often when I want to see a review on an aircraft that I want to buy, I have to bypass zillions of 'torrent' sites offering a commercial product for free. Thank goodness I dont even understand what 'torrent' means!

Peter simply seemed to be offering to show how he had linked a freeware vc to a payware aircraft mdl. Not a big deal IMHO and certainly not piracy. Piracy would involve the distribution of something. Having said that, I agree 100% with Willy that it is 'good form' and simply polite to ask the developer first.
 
Well exactly mate! How do you think I felt Paul lol! I'm a member of the SD design Forum but have not been able to assertain an answer from ROB but to be honest there both excellent models and a VC is on the way for the SD Vampire as is one for the future MS Flight if Igor can accertain enough info from microsoft that is!!! So this is definately just an interim modification and I'm sorry if I've upset anyone, but quite clearly there is alot of interest in this Mod, and I will PM instructions to those who want to know how to do it, so I don't upset anyone by posting it! (And as Said it's at your own risk to your own property!)
 
1st i would like to say i´ve never, ever before heard about this product, it looks awesome..does it fires the ordnance? there is a video doing so, so i would like some light from one of the owners.
2nd, no VC? what a shame on what looks like the ultimate rendition of this aircraft
and 3rd, i´m a payware developer, my take on piracy is, as long as it does not includes core data (mdl´s .air) it´s a customer enhancement, and in this particular case, if there is no vc, it deserves a VC.
Best regards
Prowler
 
Well Prowler I'm sorry I cannot think of your name but I know you from the Mirage 2000-5 days that you views are 100% correct thanks for bothering to look in on this very old thread! I can say yes the ordinance is droppable but not like yours or the new captainsim packs, though no doubt somone can make that work, bombs will fall from the wings and rockets and thats about it, there are no after effects and to be honest Igor was one of the first to do this kind of addition, he is a real A320 and several other jets pilot and does this for his love of classic aircraft as we all do, I cannot reccoment this aircraft enought he has said for over a year that the VC will be released and while he has not released a VC he keeps releasing more and more vampire models I mean his first pack was the FB9 and now were up to the very earliest versions and all free updates, he regularly posts on his formum and the VC is coming along nicely by all acounts so if you have not bought this model then please do, Rob's is great and I love it as is Alphasims/Virtiavia's but this is the Vampire to have if you love this classic Jet!
 
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