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from the I-see^w-hear-what-you-[almost]-did-there dept.
Voice-acting rights halt effort to put Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4
An ambitious modding project that sought to recreate Fallout 3 inside Fallout 4 is shutting down over unforeseen legal issues surrounding the original game's voice acting.
"The Capital Wasteland: A Road To Liberty" project was a five-person effort to implement the base content of Fallout 3 as a mod for Fallout 4, complete with the latter game's graphical and engine improvements. In a message to supporters, though, project lead NafNaf_95 writes that the mod has been shut down after a conversation with Bethesda, in which it "became clear our planned approach would raise some serious red flags that we had unfortunately not foreseen."
That planned approach involved an audio extraction tool that would have taken the voice acting from legitimate Fallout 3 files and converted them to a form that could be used in a Fallout 4 mod. Bethesda and an outside lawyer advised the Capital Wasteland team that extracting this licensed content, which wasn't fully owned by Bethesda, would be legally questionable under copyright law and could make the modders legally liable for damages.
Apparently, having installed copies of the two games and running a utility is not good enough for Bethesda's lawyers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday March 16 2018, @07:26PM
It's been a long long time since I used any modding, let alone tried to make one. (And that was more on "create your own level map" - not really modding as it is known today.)
Aside from questioning whether the engines are truly a format shift which I think I could by noting that engines are not record players, I'd rather just note that I believe format shifting is far less legally sound that you might believe it is. I rechecked my answer against the Fair Use FAQ of EFF ( https://w2.eff.org/IP/eff_fair_use_faq.php [eff.org] ). Format shifting is still something that is believed to be legal by lawyers, not a matter proven in law for software. It relies on decades old case law that, given the right case, could be overturned in light of new technology or upheld as still applicable. But more importantly it relies on being a Fair Use exception to Copyright. Fair Use is still a defense dependent on tests, not a prescriptive exception. (Fair use is invoked upon being accused of copyright infringement, not codified as an exception you cannot be sued for. It becomes matters of fact to be applied at a trial. And who wants to roll those dice?)
This sig for rent.