Copyright Issues??

[niveus73]

Okay, as I start on my first game, I had a question on copyright issues.  I've seen some remakes of other games so I'm assuming (and we all know where that can get me)  that it is okay to use characters and such from a TV show as long as my game would be freeware and never would be used for commercial gain.  I didn't want to ask in the game announcement forum because I'm still writing the script and before I got too far along, needed to know if using TV show characters was allowed.  Thanks for any responses.

Steve

[TwinMoon]

This has been covered more than once before, I think this is the gist of it:
It's illegal to use copyrighted content, but if you don't make any money from it they basically don't care. The worst that can happen is that they ask you to remove it from your website.
AND don't ask their permission, cause they'll say no.

[niveus73]

Thanks for the response.  I tried to put the phrase in the knowledge base, but I kept getting a "file not found" webpage when I hit submit.  Thanks again.

[TwinMoon]

Just do a search on the forum itself. Search for 'copyright'.
There's people with a lot more knowledge of international law than I have.

[TerranRich]

Copyright issue is getting tougher thanks to the (temporary?) shut-down of the SQ7 remake project. If you use copyrighted names, you can still get into trouble. Projects like the King's Quest I-III remakes got by because they flew under the radar and avoided getting TOO huge and attracting unwanted attention. SQ7 and The Silver Lining (formerly KQ9 - see?) got too big; Vivendi wanted SQ7 shut down, and were apparently OK with the KQ9 creators changing the name and removing most copyrighted references.

[Radiant]

Copyright issue is getting tougher thanks to the (temporary?) shut-down of the SQ7 remake project.

Wait, what happened here? sq7.org appears to still be in the air...

[Pumaman]

As I understand it, Vivendi's fan-game deal is that they will consider approving a fan game for release if the ownership of all the material in the game is transferred to them, since they own the copyright to the series.

The SQ7 team weren't prepared to lose their copyrights to Vivendi, therefore they've had to halt the project. On the other hand, if I remember correctly the KQ1 and KQ2 team did accept these terms, which is why those games got released.

The SQ7 website hasn't been updated with the current status but you can see the announcement here:
http://sq7.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php062