CompuServe Thread

#Unlawful upload!!!!

7 messages in this thread
#6961From: Michael St. LaurentNov 29, 1988 5:17 PM
There is a file in the audio data DL that contains the digitized voices from the Who Framed Roger Rabbit game which my company produces. We consider this a violation of copyright and insist that they be removed immediately. I can't understand why you allowed them to be posted in the first place considering CIS's policies regarding copyright. Silent Software Inc.
#6968From: RON TROYNov 29, 1988 7:12 PM
I rather doubt that the sysops knew that the voices were copyrighted.
#6983From: Michael St. LaurentNov 29, 1988 10:11 PM
Yes, upon reflection I see that nowhere is it mentioned that the voices were from the Roger Rabbit _GAME_. Still, considering the recent release of the game it should be rather obvious. But you're probably correct.
#6990From: RON TROYNov 29, 1988 10:48 PM
You know, it occurs to me that someone must have gone to a lot of work to do this – if the sound wasn't in a separate iff file, they would have had to run the game, capturing the sound into a digitizer.
#7020From: Michael St. LaurentNov 30, 1988 12:04 PM
What's your point? ….. Either way it's still a no-no. But just to satisfy yourself and myself, I've compared these files to the ones on the roger rabbit game disks. After stripping out the iff header information from the uploaded files, they are IDENTICAL. I ran binary compares on them and they were exactly the same bit for bit.
#7021From: Michael St. LaurentNov 30, 1988 12:06 PM
In any case the files appear to have been removed so I consider the incident to be at a close. -msl-
#7059From: Richard Rae/SYSOPNov 30, 1988 9:38 PM
Michael, I was the sysop who merged the file in question. I should point out before going any farther that you didn't specify WHICH Roger Rabbit file you are referring to. There are at least two that I recall merging, and perhaps more. I assume you are speaking of the most recently uploaded version. It's interesting that you would assume WE would assume the samples were stolen from your game. Roger Rabbit samples have been showing up since the movie was released… as has been the case with most other popular movies (go count the number of movie clips in LIB 5 and you'll see what I mean.) I don't know about anyone else, but my approach has always been "innocent until proven guilty". Just for your information, the description on the most recent file is mine. The uploader's description identified the samples as coming off "a local board", stating that he/she was not into audio and did not have the facilities to check the files. I verified that they deARCed, checked them for functionality, and rewrote the description to be more… descriptive. Nowhere was it stated that these files were stolen from your game, and in fact the uploader may not have known this either. At any rate, if you will verify for me the name of the file, I will double-check to insure that the file has in fact been purged. I should point out, however, that we as sysops have no way of knowing if such a collection of files is copyrighted. If these are clips from the movie, they could have been recorded FROM the movie, rather than lifted from your disk. Your byte-for-byte compare pretty much confirms that they were stolen, but short of that there is no way to tell. Without owning the game, there isn't even any way for me to know that there ARE any digitized clips in it (unless you mention it in your advertising or it comes up in a review or the like). In short, we do the best that we can to keep the libraries above board and honest… but we can't guarantee 100% accuracy. There is absolutely, positively NO WAY we can catch all instances like this, and I trust you can see the difficulty. If you will bring cases like this to our attention we will endeavour to keep everything square. I'm curious, Michael. What sort of arrangement did you make with the producers of the movie to use digitized clips from their film in your game?