Comment Talk to them both. (Score 1) 14
First of all, contact the copyright owner. It's not about how likely he is to pursue you legally, but the fact that if you are giving him the clear opportunity to pursue you legally, should you proceed without his knowledge. You can reiterate that you're not doing it for the money, and you can will his or his company's name somewhere on the program you're building.
You make the point that both the game and the manual are pretty easy to find for free download, so either the copyright holder doesn't care about the violations or isn't willing to go after them. Well, I don't know a lot about the legal side of such issues, but I think this thinking is dangerous to take too far: after all, it's pretty easy to find Super Mario Bros. for download on emulation sites, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo is still very protective of its copyright.
Anyway. Second point: contact the original creator. I don't think you're legally obligated to, but come on. It's only honest. He made the game. Even if he's completely into what you're doing, it'll seem a nasty shock when he eventually finds out the game was carefully recreated without any contact with him at all. I say, talk to him, and if he asks you not to release it, then honor that request.
I doubt he will, though. After all, if he's got a download link for the game up on his website, that means that currently he is paying (bandwidth) for people to download the original game free of charge . It seems to me that most people in that situation, if you were to approach them at tell them that your project would credit the original creator and give a link back to his website, then he'd be rather flattered by the whole idea.
You make the point that both the game and the manual are pretty easy to find for free download, so either the copyright holder doesn't care about the violations or isn't willing to go after them. Well, I don't know a lot about the legal side of such issues, but I think this thinking is dangerous to take too far: after all, it's pretty easy to find Super Mario Bros. for download on emulation sites, but I'm pretty sure Nintendo is still very protective of its copyright.
Anyway. Second point: contact the original creator. I don't think you're legally obligated to, but come on. It's only honest. He made the game. Even if he's completely into what you're doing, it'll seem a nasty shock when he eventually finds out the game was carefully recreated without any contact with him at all. I say, talk to him, and if he asks you not to release it, then honor that request.
I doubt he will, though. After all, if he's got a download link for the game up on his website, that means that currently he is paying (bandwidth) for people to download the original game free of charge . It seems to me that most people in that situation, if you were to approach them at tell them that your project would credit the original creator and give a link back to his website, then he'd be rather flattered by the whole idea.
