Copyright question

[Karel Bagchus <H.Bagchus@cable.a2000.nl>]

Hi,

I would like to hear your thoughts on my following problem:

A while ago I went to see the movie "The Matrix" which I just loved from
start 'till end. After looking around a bit on the net, I found the movie
website http://whatisthematrix.com. They have a screensaver to download
("The Matrix Code") that emulates the scrolling characters on the "matrix
monitors" that you can see in the movie.

However, I wasn't impressed with the screensaver at all, and since I'm in
the screensaver business I thought, "I can do better then that", and made
my own "Matrix Tap". But it has gone far beyond being just a joke and a
replica of the original, it has configuration options for character color,
character highlight occurence, highlight luminance threshold, string morph
speed, scroll mode and scroll speed.

and I wrote a fax to Warner Bros. proposing a deal that they can use my
screensaver for free, and that I would get a copyright clearance so I could
put it up on my website as well.

My motivation for asking the clearance was:

"Although the therm 'The Matrix' is common in many Science-Fiction novels
and scrolling characters on a screen are visible in many movies, I do
recognise the fact the the initial idea came from seeing the movie 'The
Matrix' that Warner Bros. holds copyrights over."

They responded with:

"Please be advised, as a general policy, Warner Bros. does not license
material for use on non-Warner websites".

Now my question is this: Would I be in trouble if I changed the name from
"Matrix Tap" to let's say "Geek Code" and set the default character color
to blue instead of red, and take any reference to "The Matrix" out of the
source code, and then put it up on my website.... Would I be safe or in
trouble ?

Karel.

-------------------------====#### Class Logic ####====---------------------

                                 Software Development

                          Microsoft Certified Professional

		Karel Bagchus 
		mailto:karel@classlogic.com
		http://www.classlogic.com

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		1092 HA Amsterdam
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