Thread:Deathstalker666/@comment-1915529-20140702204420/@comment-3547390-20141230224409

I wrote a long and detailed "essay" about all the points Vork brought up (warning, I am as far from a lawyer as you can get, so listening to me might not be a good idea either), but my browser decided it would refresh for no particular reason on the last paragraph. I am keeping this mental note as a reason I know my computer hates me. My mouse was down by the paragraph bar, my function keys are far away from everything else, and I have absolutely no rational reason to explain why my browser decided it would be a good time to refresh. Expect this to be much shorter...

Vork is correct, the only real owner is the holder of the copyright. Of course, that does not simply include id Software, but also the Publisher. You also have to think of Sonic Mayhem, who owns any music in the game, but that is beside the point in this case. We are basically permitted to play the game and modify the files. Fan art and that stuff is allowed, as is this wikia. Walkthroughs, videos, screenshots, all of that is basically covered by the fair use act.

Fair use means that while the copyright owners hold the rights to the stuff, we can comment on it (walkthroughs and media included as commentary) and create fan art/mods. Also, as it is fair use to begin with, there really isn't a copyright on fan art. Fan art is made by the audience from a source project, it is different from an original piece, so that means that it isn't exactly in the same category. You could probably defend a terrible drawing of a person you made when you were a kid better than you could a picture of a Quake 2 boss due to it being trademarked.

When I own a game, I want to own a physical copy and not trust that a service will remain infinitely available so my library stays intact. Steam goes down 20 years from now, what happens to all your games today? Plus, if you have seen anything from my talks with Dominus, you should note that Quake couldn't be modified in any fashion. Nice when you have the freedom to not change anything on your own computer that is not even a client based game like so many modern titles today. Gotta log into the servers, meaning when they go down I won't be able to play the game. Gotta deal with the lag on a singleplayer game due to it being a local server and not a true singleplayer experience.