vNovel Interactive has modified the version of Moonlight Walks on their website to change the title, and to display the license to their users prominently. Now that they're complying with the license, the problem has been resolved to my satisfaction.
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Just a note, for the record.
Vnovel interactive (vnovel.info) has recently published my game, Moonlight Walks, on their website. They've done this without my permission, and in a manner that is not consistent with the - incredibly lenient - license that Moonlight Walks was released under.
Moonlight walks was released under the following license, a modified version of the MIT license:
Moonlight Walks can be downloaded from http://www.bishoujo.us/moonlight/. The unauthorized version can be found at http://vnovel.info/moonlight/.Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
This Software may only be distributed under the name "Moonlight Walks" if the visual and audio output it presents in response to user input is unchanged. If such output is changed, then the Software must be distributed under a different name.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Vnovel is in violation of our copyright in two ways:
1) Despite their game being a substantial copy of Moonlight Walks, they do not include the license/permission notice required by the second clause above. On their website, there is a copyright notice that claims "Copyright 2012 vNovel Interactive. All rights reserved." - a copyright notice that doesn't apply to Moonlight Walks. While they do credit Mugenjohncel and myself, they do so behind an unlabeled tab, and do so in a way that doesn't mention our copyright interest.
The license notice is displayed when someone reaches an ending of the game - sort of. Instead of the messages I placed at the end of the game, they display this screen. Click on it to view it on actual size - and see if you can read the copyright information:
2) Their version of Moonlight Walks massively changes the audio and visual output of the game. For example, the opening pan is completely missing, as are several images in game. The text is reformatted, and the text box has been changed. While the license allows this, it also requires that if you change the output of the game, the name must be changed. What they have is a game that displays "Moonlight Walks" on its title screen.
I did this because I think free culture is important - I wanted to let people translate and remix Moonlight Walks, and to port it to new platforms if something was to happen to me. But at the same time, I wanted people who attempted to find the definitive version of Moonlight Walks to be able to find it. The license I released it under was an attempt to find a compromise that's good for everyone - and it's this compromise that vNovel is violating.
I contacted vNovel yesterday to ask them to come into compliance with Moonlight Walks' license. And while a representative replied quickly, the have yet to reply to my second email, where I asked them to remove it from their site until they came into compliance. It's been 24 hours, in the middle of the week. They have yet to respond to that email - and why they've changed their navigation to use "Moonlit Walks" as the game name - but the title in-game, and the URL, both say moonlight walks. They've yet to add the license to their web page, and the deceptive copyright notice is there.
On their homepage, they use the term "PyTom's Moonlit Walks". There's no such thing.
This is a little personal for me. Moonlight Walks is _my_ game - now, mine and Mugen's - and I while I'm fine with people remixing it, I don't like people releasing an altered games under the same title, or with using my name to promote an inferior version.
I will note that vNovel is banned from the forum, for using multiple accounts on a single residential connection to promote their product.
I'm hoping that posting this will help convince people that vNovel is a company they don't want to be associated with. And I wanted to make it clear that I have no affiliation with vNovel's version of Moonlight Walks.
I'm sorry I had to post this, but thank you for reading.
PS: vnovel.com has nothing to do with these guys. vnovel.com is the good guys.
