We're all going to be RICH

As you use your Doom mapping in a different perspective?

I wish I had an up-to-date licence document to see whether this is actually legal.

Heh.. that screenshot is from map24 of Doom2.

printz said:

I wish I had an up-to-date licence document to see whether this is actually legal.

I'm quite confident that selling your own Doom levels is legal. Case in point: id encountered such a situation with the original D!Zone, which is still floating around to this day.

However the seller mentions "new sounds" which are more than likely to be drawn from copyrighted sources.

Any /newstuff review on "Lethal"?

I can't wait to start "kicking some tail".

This is ridiculous. These maps better be the greatest of all time. Four freaking dollars?!?!

Heh, I'd laugh so hard if they were all SLIGE maps.

The blurb is too noisy and the picture not from that work.

printz said:
I wish I had an up-to-date licence document to see whether this is actually legal.

You mean this?

It's definitely illegal if it can be shown that the levels are derivative in one way or another of id's. As I see it, to not be so they should have their own resources (even just referencing the ones by id internally is potentially a problem). Like Vile pointed out, the screen shot isn't helping give this impression in the least.

Regardless, just noting to eBay that the game's EULA declares addons can only be offered free of charge will likely impel them to take the offer down.

Trilinear:
Case in point: id encountered such a situation with the original D!Zone, which is still floating around to this day.

That just means they never took it seriously to court. Lots of quite possibly illegal things are floating around.

D!Zone was made by a company named WizardWorks.
Here is some information about a case id software tried to make against an uk company. The article also mentions previous "cases"

"In the United States, id has received assurances of compliance (and in some instances substantial monetary compensation) from notable game and book publishers, such as SAMS Publishing, Wizardworks, Softkey International and Waite Group for infringing conduct. id has also made demand upon a German company to cease distribution of an infringing product and has received compliance. id will continue to aggressively fight companies that are infringing upon its rights."

It appears I was wrong about them "not taking it seriously to court", then, except where they may have dealt directly with some of the companies, instead of suing them. Though the persistence of some copies of wad compilations and such is generally due to people reselling existing ones (old copies people bought before their commercial distribution was stopped), and not continued releases.

If you have an ebay account it's really easy to complain.
Go to report this item, below on the page
Then follow the 3 steps
I choose Counterfeits and copyright violations, then Other potential infringement and then Offering to electronically send or receive copyrighted material
You can only list the article so you can't say why.
So if you're offended by this, just complain like me.
The more they receive the more likely it is ebay takes action, I believe.

Yeah, I did that, though they use a simple method where they merely take the ID of the item, and nothing more (probably to handle it themselves and avoid confusion by written reports from users).

I'm not worried whether it's LEGAL to sell wads because they're P-wads and all that (which is some kind of business complication).

I'm worried whether the material is real. Like whether the wads supposedly sold are indeed made by the seller, not some hoax. Also if they're done well.

I'd be sad if the attempt were bashed mercilessly but I'd be damn happy if the product would be deemed free though this action :-D

printz said:
(which is some kind of business complication)

It's not just a "business complication". That it would be illegal to sell them specifically would be business related, but the cause would be copyright infringement which can't be reduced merely to business practices or issues*, but depends instead on the fact that only the author or owner is allowed to do certain things with the work (such as selling it). The problem is that if it's derivative, the author has no such rights unless these are assigned by the owners of the original work (in this case DOOM II). The last place where we should reduce copyrights to a business matter should be our community, where we don't really do business, but do create and share things.

As for being worth getting a hand on as far as quality is concerned, the screen shot is already quite a sign that this cannot be anything special.

* As Hollenshed replied to Ralphis, "classic" DOOM titles, as well as Hexen and Heretic, are still sold commercially today on the id Software website, as well as other places. However, "commercial viability" is not a prerequisite for copyright infringement.

Hmm, this seems to happen now and again, I remember some idiot a while ago packaging together illegal Iwads, Jdoom and the hi-res texture and model packs, claiming to be selling "Enhanced DOOM - Liek U've Nev4r C'n it BEFOWAR", or something

Hold on a second...am I to believe that ALL of WizardWorks' Doom stuff (D!Zone, D!Match, Perdition's Gate, Hell 2 Pay, etc.), were all unlicensed despite the quality of some of said mods?

Eesh...I guess I've contributed to the black market by buying a used copy of Perdition's Gate long ago, heh.

Hell2Pay and Perdition's Gate were by Wraith Corporation (not Wizardworks), and I recall people saying that there was definitely an official deal between them and id legitimizing the sale of these wads.

I was under the impression that you could sell Doom stuff since the exe is under the gpl now. So long as all material in the wad was your own material, there was no legal reason to stop you from selling your work. You could, essentially, sell Freedom once all copyrighted material was removed from the wad file.

If that's true, why couldn't you sell a cd of your wads, so long as there was no id material on the disc or in the wad?

@Scuba
We can try to interpret but as long as we don't know of a similar case that has been brought to court, I prefer to discuss the sex of angels.
My girlfriend thinks they are males, I think they are asexual.
As long as you don't make serious money out of it, I doubt Id will react. So yeah I think you could do that because id won't complain.

Scuba Steve said:
I was under the impression that you could sell Doom stuff since the exe is under the gpl now.

You can sell programs based on the source, or using code from it, but DOOM addon wads are a result of reverse engineering id's internal wads (still proprietary), and reference them, so I wouldn't be so sure even levels with new resources or no resources might not be considered derivative. The EULAs have always claimed that they are; the older ones particularly specifying you could make and distribute derivative levels (not talking directly about any graphic or sound assets) aimed at other end users, but only at no charge.

"I give you best price: $34.50"

..so is anybody bidding on this? One of you has to be curious enough to do it :(

The "grey area" is because the Doom EULA says that you aren't allowed to sell WAD files. However, frankly I think this is unenforceable, and the fact that they never stopped D!Zone from selling pretty much demonstrates it.

Take the case of a Doom WAD that is a single, completely original level. This is something that a person has made, just like a book, or a song. The copyright is yours, because you are the author of that level. Unless your WAD contains modified Doom material, like modified graphics or sounds, they don't really have a leg to stand on. The Doom license agreement covers the copyright on Doom itself. The idea that Id somehow own the copyright on any level you ever make is frankly, ridiculous. There is no basis for it in copyright law.

You can make the argument that the EULA is a shrinkwrap license agreement, and that every time you install Doom, you automatically give up the right to make Doom WADs, but shrink wrap license agreements are legally ambiguous anyway, and I doubt that the Doom WAD clause would actually stand up to scrutiny.

As an interesting thought experiment: imagine if you installed a piece of software and found that the EULA said "by installing this software, you agree to never write a book about the software". Do you think that this is a restriction that a random license attached to a piece of software can actually make? (in fact, there are already EULAs that "prohibit" you releasing from benchmarks of the software).

The most relevant analogy to book publishing would be if someone were to release a book as an "update" to someone else's existing work. That is, a work that does not contain any content from the original work, but that can only be used in conjunction with it, and can only be expected to sell at all as a result of the success of the original work. That is definitely dodgy ground. There could be a strong case made for this being "passing off", and possibly copyright infringment too, depending on how much intellectual property there is contained in the structure and organization - things that the "update" would obviously be having to adopt in order to function.

*IIRC*, the GPL license has the effect (amongst many other things) of granting the right to release standalone material together with a source-based modification of the engine. Thus you could modify the engine and release a data file to go with it, and if the data file in no way required the original game or in any way followed its structure, you would be completely in the clear, and free to sell it for profit, if you so wished.

There's worse...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200177281459

Heh, I think I've reported this guy to ebay over 10 times, and he just keeps on relisting.

Out of curiosity, what was that. It's already gone.

Doom, Doom II, Final Doom, Goldeneye Doom, Simspons Doom etc, etc + Dreamcast port burned onto a CD (for the Dreamcast, obviously).

And to top it all off, his description is full of multicolored text at various sizes.

fraggle said:
However, frankly I think this is unenforceable, and the fact that they never stopped D!Zone from selling pretty much demonstrates it. [Citation needed]

The article Coldfusio linked seems to contradict what you are saying, but if you want to look at it that way, copyright itself is unenforceable, and the fact that there are illegal copies of works pretty much demonstrates it.

every time you install Doom, you automatically give up the right to make Doom WADs, but shrink wrap license agreements are legally ambiguous anyway, and I doubt that the Doom WAD clause would actually stand up to scrutiny.

With less scaremongering and more observation you'll see that with the license id waives accusing you (a legit end user) of copyright infringement for any derivative work, if you make and distribute it under the stated conditions. If you aren't such a user (or you are, but don't otherwise comply with the license conditions), and make any work that can be considered derivative, you are infringing copyrights. If the law decides that what you did is not derivative, there can be no copyright issues, regardless of whether you are licensed to use the copyrighted work in such a way or not. By the wording id is assuming and declaring that any patch wad will be derivative, but naturally they don't decide that in a legal case.

Grazza said:
The most relevant analogy to book publishing would be if someone were to release a book as an "update" to someone else's existing work. That is, a work that does not contain any content from the original work, but that can only be used in conjunction with it, and can only be expected to sell at all as a result of the success of the original work. That is definitely dodgy ground.

I agree that wads that contain nothing but new levels, original design lumps, or other new resources might not be derivative.

Perhaps in courts that have stronger laws against reverse engineering the license may have additional weight extending to any work based on stuff that stemmed from the practice (as wad editing did).

myk said:

The article Coldfusio linked seems to contradict what you are saying, but if you want to look at it that way, copyright itself is unenforceable, and the fact that there are illegal copies of works pretty much demonstrates it.

With less scaremongering and more observation you'll see that with the license id waives accusing you (a legit end user) of copyright infringement for any derivative work, if you make and distribute it under the stated conditions. If you aren't such a user (or you are, but don't otherwise comply with the license conditions), and make any work that can be considered derivative, you are infringing copyrights. If the law decides that what you did is not derivative, there can be no copyright issues, regardless of whether you are licensed to use the copyrighted work in such a way or not. By the wording id is assuming and declaring that any patch wad will be derivative, but naturally they don't decide that in a legal case.

I agree that wads that contain nothing but new levels, original design lumps, or other new resources might not be derivative.

Perhaps in courts that have stronger laws against reverse engineering the license may have additional weight extending to any work based on stuff that stemmed from the practice (as wad editing did).

Yeah, that's why I specifically used the example of "a completely original" level. However, when Id brought out Doom they made some rather bold claims about what they could control; it's not just WADs. They were originally trying to get anyone making tools for editing Doom to sign special licenses, for example.

I agree that actual modified levels (or WADs containing modified graphics, etc) are clear-cut copyright infringement.