Re: Copyright question

["Arthur Payne" <payneprod@Hotmail.com>]

Nah, you'd be fine.
I studied copyright laws only a few months ago and there's enough difference 
in what you suggested that you'd get away with it.


>From: Karel Bagchus <H.Bagchus@cable.a2000.nl>
>Reply-To: gameprogrammer@gameprogrammer.com
>To: gameprogrammer@gameprogrammer.com
>Subject: Copyright question
>Date: Fri, 03 Sep 1999 11:44:18 +0200
>
>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.
>
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