Legality of games and apps that look like Doom

[Fonze]

So what exactly makes something like Flappy Xoom and the Doom Live Wallpaper legal to distribute? I'm asking because I'm interested in seeing the Doom Battle Chess come to fruition, but am now curious where exactly the line is drawn.

Flappy Doom:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ZENVENT.FlappyDoom&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dflappy+doom&pcampaignid=APPU_1_4fOpVbSmHMyq-QHApYKgAw

Doom live wallpaper:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=827898

Now, both of these use Doom sprites, but are essentially different products. One is a game of a different genre and the other is a live wallpaper. Of course neither could replace Doom or cause Doom sales to suffer, which is one of the main stipulations of copyright infringement. If anything, theyd boost Doom sales.

So where exactly is the line drawn and what makes these two apps legal to distribute?

Thanks in advance to anyone who helps me clear this up.

[Graf Zahl]

Fonze said:

So where exactly is the line drawn and what makes these two apps legal to distribute?

I do not think these are actually legal to distribute. It's probably just that the ones that can take them down haven't noticed yet that they actually exist, I think these people have to deal with far bigger things regularly.

[Linguica]

Fonze said:

Of course neither could replace Doom or cause Doom sales to suffer, which is one of the main stipulations of copyright infringement.

No it's not. Here's the main stipulations of copyright infringement:

* Do they have a copyright on something?
* Did you use it without permission?
* It's copyright infringement.

If you're talking about a fair use claim, that's a very high bar to clear, and there is no chance that using copyrighted art in your own game would clear it.

[Fonze]

I was talking about a fair use claim.

It's been years since I've been in a classroom, so my knowledge was a bit dusty. I looked up some info and found this on a website.

http://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/copyright-faq

Are there any copyright limitations?
There are several limits on copyrights. For example:

Fair Use allows the public to use portions of copyrighted work without permission from the copyright owner. To decide whether a use is a fair use, courts look at four factors:

The purpose and character of the second use: Is it just a copy, or are you doing something different from the original work? Is your use commercial?
The nature of the original: Was the original work creative or primarily factual?
Amount used: How much of the original work was used, and was that amount necessary?
Effect: Did the use harm the market for the original work? For example, would people buy this work instead of the original?

I suppose if what you say is true the fair use claim may be for naught. But it is always good to learn :)

I suppose I could circumvent the situation by attempting to contact the company that owns the copyright to Doom and seeing if I could negotiate something. But in the likely chance that doesn't work out, I would like to know where the line is drawn, because the limitations of a fair use claim wouldn't have been put into place if they were to never be used.

*Edit*
Would another way to circumvent the problem be to require an iWad in order to run? Similar to what makes what we do on a daily basis legal.

[Maes]

They are not legal: they just try to get "under the radar".

However, truth be said, I don't recall any official takedown action ever being taken against such derivative works. OTOH there have been several takedowns of source ports that included the IWADSs, even if just the shareware one. Go figure.

[Fonze]

Interesting that they'd take down something with the shareware version attached... It's shareware, that's kinda the point, lol. Although if it was being sold I could see the conflict. Well I guess as ownership changes hands expectations do as well.

So you're saying that the wads we produce are not legal to distribute? That simply cannot be correct. Unless you are saying that (what is it nowadays, zenimax or something?) looks the other way on wads produced by mappers so long as it doesn't cost them money (ie. iWads being distributed for free)? That's pretty much in line with the fair use copyright rules and after the source code was released, well, to be expected.

Of course I'm only a young buck at 25 who hasn't been in a classroom in a few years, but it would seem to me that as long as it's handled with (extreme) care, it should be ok. I'd like to hear what more have to say. Also, I'd like to hear more about what makes our pWads ok to distribute with entire sites dedicated to just that, as it seems what I've learned may not be entirely accurate.

[scifista42]

WADs that don't contain copyrighted IWAD contents (for example maps and graphics (etc) from Doom2.wad) are legal to distribute, obviously. Not just PWADs, even custom IWADs. Either they contain material directly copyrighted by idSoftware or another author/company, then they are not OK, or they don't, and then they are OK.

[geo]

So about Doom Battle Chess I'm going to have flexibility where its not Doom. You on your own can import sprite piece packs. So if you want legit chess pieces you can or if you want doom monsters or super heroes or pro wrestles you can. I can get the game legal as just a generic chess game that lets you import sprite animations.

[Fonze]

Ty scifista, that's what I had thought.

Geo, I like where you're going with this.

[Linguica]

Yeah, WADs are perfectly legal so long as they don't use copyrighted assets - it's just a file format. Any WADs that include IWAD stuff, edited or not, are almost certainly technically illegal, and have always been a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

The real biggest issue, IMO, is trademark. Zenimax could claim that we have no right to even use the name "Doom" - or "DOOM", as the word mark is specifically fashioned. This is not just an idle concern - Zenimax has done it at least 18 times.

[geo]

Hatred's logo looks a lot like a Doom logo. Doombringer's game is pretty Doom in its name and its a FPS.

Hasbro, Dreamworks and Six Flags are in the sights? The person with Doomsday Approved might have DC after him too. The Dreamworks thing for the button of Doom? Well there's a Temple of Doom too. They're going after someone for Legion of Doom? I'm pretty sure some pro wrestler or company owns Legion of Doom.

I finally took a look at the live Doom wallpaper, its pretty nice. iD / Zenimax should put money into doing the same thing. The problem is people already have it for free. Thanks fans.

[Clonehunter]

Linguica said:

The real biggest issue, IMO, is trademark. Zenimax could claim that we have no right to even use the name "Doom" - or "DOOM", as the word mark is specifically fashioned. This is not just an idle concern - Zenimax has done it at least 18 times.

This has always been a pretty shade bid in my eyes. It's like the Candy Crush Saga trying to pout an end to the Banner Saga because "Saga" is in both of their names (Or however that story went). Doom is a word. A very common word.

[fraggle]

Legality is one thing, but whether app stores will distribute them is another thing entirely. Even if they're entirely legal, they can fall foul of heavy-handed rules imposed by Apple and Google:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/source-ports/72810-what-happened-to-doom-touch/

If you're thinking of putting something like this on one of the app stores, the best advice I can give you is to completely avoid using the word "Doom" - in the game, in the title or in the description.

[raymoohawk]

maybe the app or game could be like sourceports and not include an iwad, you install it and it looks for the iwad and if it doesnt find it it downloads freedoom, or if you do have the doom iwad it takes the resources from there

[Fonze]

Yeah raymoo, I think that's what the general feel is. But without it auto-downloading freedom. That's up to geo, but I think he's leaning towards that not being the case.

Linguica and fragile are right. As I said in other thread, both "Doom" and "Battle Chess" words should be heavily avoided. Thats just begging for a lawsuit and of course the app stores will take it down. I don't think "Doom" will be difficult to avoid, as geo is leaning towards Doom monsters just being essentially an add-on.

The live wallpaper apparently was taken down off the app store by Zenimax, though it still exists in other places.

[Gez]

Fonze said:

I was talking about a fair use claim.

It's been years since I've been in a classroom, so my knowledge was a bit dusty. I looked up some info and found this on a website.

http://www.teachingcopyright.org/handout/copyright-faq

I suppose if what you say is true the fair use claim may be for naught. But it is always good to learn :)

I suppose I could circumvent the situation by attempting to contact the company that owns the copyright to Doom and seeing if I could negotiate something. But in the likely chance that doesn't work out, I would like to know where the line is drawn, because the limitations of a fair use claim wouldn't have been put into place if they were to never be used.

*Edit*
Would another way to circumvent the problem be to require an iWad in order to run? Similar to what makes what we do on a daily basis legal.

These apps would likely fail the third point, because they'd need to argue that any amount greater than 0 was necessary. And that's something really hard to do if your app is not meant to be either a parody of, or a documentary on, the original game.

[Fonze]

You said parody... That could work if the animations were made to be funny.

Alright f*ck it lets just do a star wars/tom cruise/metallica parody/documentary in battle chess.

[Quasar]

fraggle said:

If you're thinking of putting something like this on one of the app stores, the best advice I can give you is to completely avoid using the word "Doom" - in the game, in the title or in the description.

Which makes finding it for the uninformed very difficult. That's the hidden cost.

[geo]

Avoid using Scrolls too. I wonder if calling something the Elder would be cool though. The Elder Statesmen.

[SavageCorona]

I thought it was only illegal to sell these sorts of things for money or distribute it in such a way you can access the assets for yourself.

[Maes]

Linguica said:

Yeah, WADs are perfectly legal so long as they don't use copyrighted assets - it's just a file format. Any WADs that include IWAD stuff, edited or not, are almost certainly technically illegal, and have always been a sort of sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.

I'd like to see if my "distributed IWADs" theory can be verified -aka, if searching every lump of every PWAD in the archive, eventually a complete working IWAD can be assembled by cherry-picking those lumps whose checksums match the known ones of the lumps in the IWADs-. Eventually, this requirement could be relaxed by allowing for map-specific lumps to be generated (e.g. NODES, SECTORS, REJECT etc.) from the linedef data alone.

I'm pretty sure that at least all the sound and graphical assets could be reconstructed/recovered in this way.

[Fonze]

SavageCorona said:

I thought it was only illegal to sell these sorts of things for money or distribute it in such a way you can access the assets for yourself.

Me too, but we'd have to talk to a real lawyer on this, I suppose.

Maes, I understand what you're talking about, but that's a bit over my head right now ;p sounds interesting, though. By that logic all pWads should be illegal because they could cause Doom sales to drop. But people would have to be educated enough on programming to be able to do that I the first place, nevermind that the issue would become what that person did to extract everything illegally and of course distibution.

[scifista42]

SavageCorona said:

I thought it was only illegal to sell these sorts of things for money or distribute it in such a way you can access the assets for yourself.

No, as explained earlier in this thread, copyright works differently, so that profit technically doesn't matter.

Fonze said:

By that logic all pWads should be illegal because they could cause Doom sales to drop.

No, not all PWADs. Only each individual PWAD that contains a piece of copyrighted IWAD content should be a little bit illegal.

[Fonze]

Thanks for the insight scifista, laws that are somewhat vague and open to interpretation make situations that involve them hairy.

[Maes]

Fonze said:

But people would have to be educated enough on programming to be able to do that I the first place, nevermind that the issue would become what that person did to extract everything illegally and of course distibution.

For the first part, there are always enough educated people with all the right knowledge and the necessary free time to pull it off, that's a given.

About the second part, it's one of those things that fall into the legal twilight/meta zone, where one must answer the question if a sequence of legally permissible actions can nevertheless amount to an illegal outcome.

E.g.

1. using some IWAD resources here and there is legal (de-facto).
   
2. Extracting the length and CRC-32/MD5/SHA1 checksum of each lump and IWAD is also legal (I don't know if mere properties can be considered "derivative works", but for the sake of argument let's say that they are not).

Put those 2 things together and bingo, any piece of data with the right size and checksum is a piece of the IWAD. Throw in some knowledge of how the IWAD format works (not necessarily the exact order in which lumps appear, though) and at least a functional fac-simile of an IWAD can be made from the thousands of scattered pieces around the internets. Those pieces had 20+ years to scatter, BTW ;-)

So, if doing the latter is considered illegal, can a sequence of legal steps lead to an illegal outcome, or is there some misstep higher in the chain of events?

[Linguica]

Maes said:

* using some IWAD resources here and there is legal (de-facto).

The whole point of considering something as "de facto" is that it is not "de jure", aka, actually literally legal.

[Fonze]

Well, most maps don't technically contain the resources, do they?

I thought that was the point of requiring the iWad to run, because it houses all of the resources. Of course I'm a dummy, so you must account for that,

[geo]

Those header graphics here on doomworld aren't yours. You didn't make them and you don't have the rights. I won't tell though..... A second time.

[Maes]

Linguica said:

The whole point of considering something as "de facto" is that it is not "de jure", aka, actually literally legal.

So everything pivots on the benevolence of id in the past, and the tolerance (?) of Bethesda. In theory, either of them could take their ball and go home, so to speak, or decide to "reap" the fruits of 20+ years of waiting and start an unprecedented crackdown on everything remotely related to Doom.

As in other contexts, an apparent long-going benevolence/tolerance can be transformed into an insidious "honeypot" trap, if suddenly The Powers That Be decide that their pound of flesh is overdue.

[Fonze]

The guy who made the Doom Live Wallpaper said it was Zenimax who threatened him.

Idk if they're associated with Bethesda, but I'd guess they might be a parent company or something.