Dune: Foldspace!

[folded]

Want to change Dune history?

Foldspace!

http://futureprometheus.com/fold/

[Mahdi]

Nice looking site, although a word of caution:

More than one RPG game like yours has been shut down by the Herbert Partnership's lawyers for copyright infringment. Just to be on the safe side, if I were you I'd do what the rest do and not use any of the characters from the books.

[folded]

You know what's so odd about that is, Kevin J. and the lawyers from Herbert Partnership, have looked over similar sites of mine and haven't had a problem with them. Is this some new thing they are doing ? The only person that seemed to have a problem with any of my sites in the past was Dr. McNelly, and this was some 5 years ago, concerning information I had taken from the DE and hadn't gotten his permission to use [specifically no-room technology used for the creation of Rakis Finds]. I removed the data from the site, and he was fine with it after that. Can you direct me to the people who were shut down by Herbert Partnership? Email addresses? Web site addresses?

[Mahdi]

I don't remember now, it's been a few years since I checked them out. I don't know what information was there that made the Herbert Partnership shut them down as I didn't find the site untl after it's legal problems started, but ever since then no Dune RPG I've played on or visited has ever used actual characters. They sue the house's, planets, etc, jsut not the characters. A case of better being safe than sorry. Besides, being able to create your own characters opens things up much mroe than having to use already created ones. Plus, using the alreay created ones you have a few people fighting over the same cahracters, and things inevitably follow the books to a certain extent.

If the Herbert Partnerships lawyers dn't have a problem with it, then your safe. I jsut know some others who weren't so lucky.

BTW, Anderson isn't a member of the Herbert Partnership.

[Gobalopper]

I believe the game was Thopter and was started by www.usul.net. Someone found out about it and tipped them off if I remember correctly.

[Mahdi]

There was one other as well.

[folded]

Thopter was a video-based game though, wasn't it? If anyone was making money off the site where it was, that may have been the problem. I don't have the site attached to any form of financial benefit -- no memberships with commissions per sale of book/movie clubs like Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble or the ilk, no paid advertising, etc. This is just the printed word. I had a long discussion with him on the subject. His words were something along the lines of: As long as you aren't making money off it, there's not a problem. We were allowed to use the characters and quotes from the stories. I was also lead to believe that KJA was one half of the Herbert Partnership, the other being BH. At the time, he had one of their [Herbert LTD. Partnership] lawyers check out the site. He told me later, it was fine.

[folded]

Oh and Foldspace isn't the only RPG that does this. There's another one that's been around for almost 2 years now, that does the same thing. No problem for them either because they aren't making any money off of it.

[Mahdi]

Hey man, I'm jsut saying that it's happened to two other sites that I know of. If the laywers ahve said it's fine, you don't have to try and convince me.

And no, Brian and Kevin are not each half of the Herbert partnership. Brian is part of it, but not half. There are about 7 or 8 members of the Herbert Partnershp. For a list of the members (minus Brian) check out the acknowledgments page of House Atreides.

[folded]

Which acknowledgement page? Do you happen to have the address?

[nemafakei]

Page as in page of book, I think. Which has no address.