Mike-hybrid
Wanderer
chupo said:LOL. Violating the terms of agreement is not against the law. What is it a class X felony? 10 to 15 years prison time? Seriously all that means is that OSI can stop extending their service to you. Have you ever heard of anyone serving jail time for making derogitory comments about race, sex, or sexual preference on OSI? Thats against the tos too.
This has to be the best post ever. What a fucking outstanding point you make. MUCH LOVE FOR THAT POST.
As for emulating being illegal. The person purchases a copy of UO, they are free to do with it what they like: whether it be modify the files, etc. As long as the person who owns a copy of the Ultima Online software does not redistribute it illegally (without permission of EA), they cannot be sued/taken to court.
As for the SERVER software, it is all derivitive work of the RunUO developers and team. They designed the code from scratch, therefore even though it is created to "emulate" any game, any court in the US couldnt touch them for it - because the code came from their brain. They didnt plagerize code.
Think of it as 2 people writing about the same subject. Example: 2 people have written books about Colin Powell. Their books are basically the same thing: a story about Colin Powell's leadership techniques, but neither wrote the same things/opinions. Therefore neither of the 2 plagarized the other's work. Make sense?
This has been discussed many times over, and I guarantee no matter how big free shards get, EA will not care. EA still makes money in the end, and thats what they do - work for money. We are different, we work for fun - and they know suing us wouldnt be worth the effort, because we arent making any money (except donations to pay for the server - which they cant touch because they are "donations").
Hope this makes sense. But really, the bottom line is what chupo said. Violating the OSI/EA ToS means nothing outside of their servers. The ToS is agreed to in order to receive their "service" (connecting to their servers and playing).