DMCA used to defend fan translation

November 19th, 2010, 12:16 Posted By: wraggster

News via http://www.romhacking.net/forum/inde...pic,11763.html

I am just passing the word along because this may be useful to fan translators and ROM hackers.

Many people have complained about the www. gamereproductions. com selling their work, so I decided to do something about it. As of today, he is no longer selling Der Langrisser.

I filed a DMCA takedown request with his Web host, after which HostMonster.com disabled his page and contacted him. He removed the Der Langrisser translation from his offerings and the site is back up.

The way I did this was by using a CreativeCommons license that forbids derivative works to license our patch software. This effectively required all users to break the license agreement to use our patch. Therefore, any website hosting or selling a patched Der Langrisser ROM became open to DMCA takedowns from both our team and Extreme Co., Ltd.

I also embedded two of my original font designs in the game in binary, because the US Supreme Court has already ruled that the binary representations of fonts – not their actual appearance – are subject to copyright: this was an ace in the hole in case my CreativeCommons plan failed.

You can find the wording of my takedown request and the logic behind why it works in the attached thread. I hope this will be useful to other fan translators seeking to exercise some control over the sale and distribution of their work.

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