Estimated legality of cloning an original build from a pretty famous video game?

Just thought I would throw this out there. K say I was inspired to rebuild a city from a pretty famous and well established video game, with original content of course. I just feel an attraction to a specific build and really have wanted to bebuild it in SL for a while now. And accurate, I plan on running the game on my laptop and making pretty detailed notes on how that version was built. But this is not an opporutunity to steal the textures. I really want to enforce that, I am a graphic artist by trade, that's what I do, and part of my challenge would be rebuilding the same textures from scratch, and mixing in some commercial obviously.

But if this is 100% original, yet cloned from an existing build. Technically they would be different. SL won't support meshes and the textures won't match, hypothetically that is.

But thoughts on such a feat. When does fan-made cross that line?

EDIT: Since people will just ask what city I am thinking of, it would be Bevin from Myst Uru. I always thought that some of the sections would make cool places for shops in SL. Which is totally unrelated, I just had to load it back up to make a similar Myst like puzzle for a totally unrelated build last week and got a bit nostalgic, lol

When you start making money on the back of it?

It's an interesting concept, but I'd have thought the same would apply to a replica of Stormwind, it's not your design and when commerce comes into the equation it makes it icky.

The best people to ask of course would be the Myst designers.

Didn't LL recently hire some exec that was involved with Myst? If you're really interested in keeping it legal, and you could figure out which Linden it was (and my memory isn't shot) you might send them an LM and see what they think. Be sure to make it clear you're not asking them for legal advice- just an off-the-record opinion.

The short answer is that they will probably grow more annoyed at you as you make more money off their ideas.

Also, remember that legal advice on the internet is frequently not worth what you pay for it..

This makes no sense. If it's cloned from an existing build, then by definition, it's not original.

If you're referring to the mechanics of creation, that's not really relevant, either for the semantics or the legality. It doesn't have to be a perfect copy to be in violation of copyright.

The real question is whether it's fair use. As has been said, commercializing it would be a pretty big factor, but not the only one. Just using it as a way to get attention for your skills would be an issue, even if you're not making money off it directly. At the other extreme, if you limited access to yourself and some friends, and were clearly doing it to build your own skills (and not to capitalize on the reputation of the original), you'd be on pretty strong ground.

Fair use is a tricky issue, and I'm not a lawyer. As has already been said, asking the Myst designers would be best.

Sigh, I for one would love to see Bevin back...why not get in touch with Cyan and see how they feel...they did a sim for Uru..they might be happy to have it as a fansite with a link back to the game.

I think you're be better off building an area inspired by the place you're thinking of, rather than building a direct copy.

I for one prefer to see original content. I have no moral objection to recreations - I just don't find them as inspiring as original ideas, or even several imitated ideas merged.

There's a saying, 'Copying ideas from one source is plagiarism; copying from several is research."

Actually the more time I spend in the stand alone version of Uru, the more I think it would be a crazy feat to even attempt such a thing. It is really unfortunate about the Cyan site, and that SL is so limited in its capacity. It would take a good year for one person to build something that intricate, and I am actually making an original build that is inspired by Myst, among other things. I was just doing research this week and forgot how amazing the build really is. I may as well cut n paste these links from another post. They are the existing Myst inspired places that I can find in world.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Pennycat/89/215/90
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Steeltopia/175/118/26
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eder%20Gira/60/24/30
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kitaro/94/155/70
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Numbakulla/215/18/23
http://slurl.com/secondlife/

This.

Well, yeah. But: more people will find interest and enjoyment in visiting a build based on The Egg Incubation Chamber from 'Alien' than in visiting a build based on This Chamber-Place I Thought Up.

I mean, in general.

That last one is really amazing!

Shorah!
If you check the Myst Forums you will find this:

>>Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the >>servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the >>data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.<<

I don't know if that has any bearing on what you are trying to do in SL. I'm no techie, but I thought maybe you could be contibuting to the fan-led revival of the cavern rather than trying to recreate URU in SL.

Incidentally, I thought someone had already made a Bevin here.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

- Albert Einstein

He probably copied that line from somewhere.

Oh wow ... I was cleaning out some old boxes last week and ran across my Myst strategy guide. It brought back memories.

I can't wait to see your build. I wanna ride the rocket.

To me this is not very different from the sims in SL with the star trek builds and the Harry Potter things.

It definately won't have a rocket, it is more like a copy of the concept, the actual content is totally original.

Which are themselves of highly dubious status legally.

In general, I suspect that many (but not all) copyright holders will have little objection to non-profit making recreations and content in SL provided they do not bring the brandname into disrepute (e.g. the Harry Potter Escort Agency) so long as there are no plans to have an "official" presence here. After all, fan-created content is a form of free advertising for the brand and it seems to be possible to have all sorts of fansites on the net without too many legal problems in most cases. Most of the time it probably isn't worth the effort of them trying to police things here.

Once you start making money from it though, or if the original creators are thinking of moving into SL, it might be a different story.

"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal outright."

— Pablo Picasso

Totally stealing that!