Agree, esp. regarding creative suppression and intimidation.
While one should respect the law, I do wonder how the GP can so factually and confidently, conclude the project's legal status.
For example, only as recently as April 2012, did Namco Bandai choose to even register the trademark for "Pac-man" in Europe. In addition, Midway Games, who previously owned the distro rights in the USA, filed for Chapter 11 in 2009.
I certainly have no clue as to it's status, but I do know there is often a digression between what a person thinks is illegal, the actual law, intepretation of the law, case law (e.g. precedents), politics of the law, pragmatic issues etc. Hence the reason we have lawyers, that understand these issues better (and even then, they often disagree with each other). There are also degrees of legality (civil, criminal etc) from jay walking, copyright infringement, patents to mass murder and genocide.
Is Wikileaks illegal? Did Samsung illegally create certain Android smartphones? etc.
Is <x> illegal?, does not seem like a simple boolean, for a wide range of values.
The author of this project, is clearly a huge Pac-man fan, does not appear to be profiting financially (released the source on GH), and is generating interest in a product, that could be potentially be capitalized on by the rights holder.
While one should respect the law, I do wonder how the GP can so factually and confidently, conclude the project's legal status.
For example, only as recently as April 2012, did Namco Bandai choose to even register the trademark for "Pac-man" in Europe. In addition, Midway Games, who previously owned the distro rights in the USA, filed for Chapter 11 in 2009.
I certainly have no clue as to it's status, but I do know there is often a digression between what a person thinks is illegal, the actual law, intepretation of the law, case law (e.g. precedents), politics of the law, pragmatic issues etc. Hence the reason we have lawyers, that understand these issues better (and even then, they often disagree with each other). There are also degrees of legality (civil, criminal etc) from jay walking, copyright infringement, patents to mass murder and genocide.
Is Wikileaks illegal? Did Samsung illegally create certain Android smartphones? etc.
Is <x> illegal?, does not seem like a simple boolean, for a wide range of values.
The author of this project, is clearly a huge Pac-man fan, does not appear to be profiting financially (released the source on GH), and is generating interest in a product, that could be potentially be capitalized on by the rights holder.