Why isn't StepMania illegal?

[Desoulman]

[Luigi30]

Tell that to the RIAA.

[DJ_DraftHorse]

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.


DJ Drafthorse

[[DMB]dman.exe]

Well, has SM or ITG applied for any patents?


Are they making any money off of it?



That's why it's not illegal.
_________________

hi

[GeeForce]

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???
_________________

Kiba's debate skills at their finest...

Tassadar wrote:

MinsiKid wrote: is just a good feeling. Have you considered heroin?

[Trylan (Another)]

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).

[EmiOfBrie]

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.
_________________

[AK (Vanilla x Mint Mix)]

[icywindow]

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.

~icywindow

[tepples]

[A2P]

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!
_________________

You know who's gay? Homosexuals.

[decklin]

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.

[xybur]

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.
_________________

Doctor Dolph's response to what IIDX is...
"the sh*t with the keys right"

[decklin]

Heh...

http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20041112

[EmiOfBrie]

[Verified]

*snip*

Pumpy

DDRy

Both were released in 1998, but the convention Konami got mad about was in 1999... Did PIU rip off DDR?
_________________

[Bigboy45678]

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!

[ZOOT]

Note that serious inquiries about StepMania should go to the StepMania development list, [email protected]. 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.

--
Glenn Maynard ([email protected])

[Cutriss]

[ZOOT]