Is RunUO Illegual?

[happymarc]

Is RunUo an Illegual Product?

 

[shrundowr]

No.

 

[Lichtblitz]

Never accept legal advice from non-professionals. Especially on the Internet. Everyone in here believes to the best of their knowledge that it isn't illegal in their respective countries but that's not a guarantee. You won't receive a professional answer in here (I guess) so you'll end up provoking a subjective discussion ;-)

 

[shrundowr]

Its 100% legal in the U.S. (Country which governs the copyrights.) You don't need to be a professional, just to know how to read.

 

[aberent]

My understanding is that RunUo as a product might be legal since it is all original code, but running your own public UO Server might not be.

There is a good article on this on uo.stratics.com

http://uo.stratics.com/content/guides/emulatorfaq.shtml

However the answer above about never accepting legal advice from non-professionals was also good advice

 

[shrundowr]

License agreement != law.
The license agreement is for a subscription service. Its just rules for continued use of their service. You either agree, and get to use the service, or don't/violate the agreement at which point the subscription service gets cut off.

You don't 'agree' to a copyright, you must either heed it or be in violation of it.


but anyway, its really common sense:

• Are you at any point, transmitting, copyrighted content to others? No.
• Are you at any point receiving copyrighted content from others? No.
• Does the product consist of copyrighted content, or require copyrighted content to work? No. (You can use RunUO with custom clients, with mul files consisting of 100% custom content if you so desire)

Its legal. Or at the very least not in violation of copyright law, in the United States, the country in which the copyright holder resides.

Also, the whole bit about professional advice, is bogus.

If someone has a bad cold, I'm gonna tell them to drink lots of fluids and get rest. I don't need to be a doctor to give common sense advice.


Its legal </story>

 

[aberent]

lol, drink lots of fluids I love it. What would you say to chest pains

I am not a lawyer so I am not sure who is correct. What you say makes sense but some of the other articles I read also make sense. I obviously am willing to take the chance by running my own UO Server but it would be nice to have a clear answer on this issue.

Here is a link to a court transcript in the US where Blizzard was able to sucessfully shut down a WoW emulated server:

http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/05/09/043654P.pdf

I wonder how a RunUO server might be different.

 

[shrundowr]

The UO client was made Pre-DMCA, and thus not governed by DMCA rules.

Blizzard != UO

This was also civil litigation, not criminal. They were able to prove that the server caused them damages, not that any laws were broken.

Thanks for linking to your shards website, I had no idea you had one, given that its right in your signature, and that you are on a website whose main audience is people who run, manage and administer UO servers

 

[aberent]

This conversation just turned nasty, goodbye.

 

[Jeff]

This conversation just turned nasty, goodbye.

I don't think it turned nasty. Anti-Basic's points are all legitimate.

 

[shrundowr]

I was just pointing out the folly of going out of your way to say you own a server when pretty much everyone here does. Don't be so sensitive, sarcasm isn't necessarily harmful.

 

[happymarc]

Well I think that all of your points are legitimate, and both of you are right somewhere down the line... But in our society, you usually get in trouble if you cause damages...

RunUO made me play and Pay for Ultima Online, after starting my own solo shard on which I play alone, I decided to re-initialize my EA UO Account on which I've had 4 characters for the past 5 years... I play both worlds, the EA Online Servers are amazing for me, I get to play with a bunch of people and there is always new content... And then I also play my own little solo world shard that I mold and create different accounts with different characters... I Have this dynamic where my different characters sell stuff to each other and I play my own little world... It's Solo, but so much fun!

And In actually inspire myself alot from the EA servers to build my solo World.

Ultima 7 was for me the greates RPG ever created, and now thanks to Run UO I can have a modern and completely Huge and Endless Solo Ultima RPG!

I really appreciate it so much... call me crazy! I'm just happy!

 

[shrundowr]

Well I think that all of your points are legitimate, and both of you are right somewhere down the line... But in our society, you usually get in trouble if you cause damages...

RunUO made me play and Pay for Ultima Online, after starting my own solo shard on which I play alone, I decided to re-initialize my EA UO Account on which I've had 4 characters for the past 5 years... I play both worlds, the EA Online Servers are amazing for me, I get to play with a bunch of people and there is always new content... And then I also play my own little solo world shard that I mold and create different accounts with different characters... I Have this dynamic where my different characters sell stuff to each other and I play my own little world... It's Solo, but so much fun!

And In actually inspire myself alot from the EA servers to build my solo World.

Ultima 7 was for me the greates RPG ever created, and now thanks to Run UO I can have a modern and completely Huge and Endless Solo Ultima RPG!

I really appreciate it so much... call me crazy! I'm just happy!

then my only real advice to give you is not to mention your server ingame or in any other EA controlled communications (EA forums, etc) that can be tied to your account. They can't shut your shard down, but they can terminate your EA account and characters

 

[happymarc]

Ha well you know what, that wouldn't bug me... Cauz I know that i'm not causing any damage to them and that I'm a really dedicated fan... Doesn't matter to me man... And I really don't think they'd do that...

I personally think that RunUO is good for Ultima Online's business, it keeps the game alive... and it certainly reinvigorated my desire to play EA Servers... If I had a fully loaded Free Shard full of people that I stole from EA servers, I'd be causing some sort of harm... but come on man, I believe it takes people on a constant Payroll to really make Ultima Online a fully loaded and interesting game to pay for every month, there's a lot of work involved...

Nobody will cause harm to EA with a little Second Age Like Shard in my opinion...

 

[aberent]

Nobody will cause harm to EA with a little Second Age Like Shard in my opinion...

I am not 100% sure that is true, I think in your case you are correct, if a couple people are playing on a private server not a huge deal. However consider Hybrid claimed that at one point they had 200,000 active accounts. That is a huge potential revenue loss.

On a seperate note, there are only about 160,000 players remaining in the EA Servers spread over many shards, that would mean that Hybrid is the most popluated UO World out there?

 

[shrundowr]

Ha well you know what, that wouldn't bug me... Cauz I know that i'm not causing any damage to them and that I'm a really dedicated fan... Doesn't matter to me man... And I really don't think they'd do that...

I personally think that RunUO is good for Ultima Online's business, it keeps the game alive... and it certainly reinvigorated my desire to play EA Servers... If I had a fully loaded Free Shard full of people that I stole from EA servers, I'd be causing some sort of harm... but come on man, I believe it takes people on a constant Payroll to really make Ultima Online a fully loaded and interesting game to pay for every month, there's a lot of work involved...

Nobody will cause harm to EA with a little Second Age Like Shard in my opinion...

I'm not saying they will, I'm saying that they can, and have in the past banned people for just mentioning freeshards.

Running freeshards is a bannable offense under their license agreement.
If you don't blab about your server in places where EA can hear about it, they won't know about it.
Whether or not you can cause them to lose players is irrelevant, it is against their rules, and the only thing that factors in, is whether or not they feel like losing your account is worth the write-up to enforce said rule.

Just dont blab about your stuff in EA channels and you should be fine. Its called a precaution.


(didn't mention ANYTHING about a lawsuit)

 

[happymarc]

OMG 200,000 People on a free Shard!!!

Ok I really didn`t think it was that big! Around those numbers I believe there`s a potential for a law suit.

But then again a close study of the case is necessary... but around those numbers, its starting to get dangerous I believe.

 

[aberent]

OMG 200,000 People on a free Shard!!!

Ok I really didn`t think it was that big! Around those numbers I believe there`s a potential for a law suit.

But then again a close study of the case is necessary... but around those numbers, its starting to get dangerous I believe.

Lol, I guess the good news is that they are not likely to go after little guys like us if they are ignoring large servers.

 

[Jeff]

I am not 100% sure that is true, I think in your case you are correct, if a couple people are playing on a private server not a huge deal. However consider Hybrid claimed that at one point they had 200,000 active accounts. That is a huge potential revenue loss.

On a seperate note, there are only about 160,000 players remaining in the EA Servers spread over many shards, that would mean that Hybrid is the most popluated UO World out there?

The difference being, the style of UO that Hybrid gives, does not exist on EA... EA cannot claim anything against Hybrid, because EA doesn't give you the same play style. None of the people playing Hybrid would ever consider playing on EA, unless EA came out with a UOR style server, which they will not.

 

[Nockar]

Thieves!! You’re all GOIN TO BURN!!!!!!

HAHAHH