copyright infringment question

miju

would appreciate some of the sage advice you guys always give out to avoid a potential situation down the line.

If you have a look here you'll see the myspace flash player and half way down the page my sites flash player

now , i'm purposely trying to make the look of our flash players similiar so bands will hopefully replace myspaces with ours and indeed when you use both flash players you will see that they present data and operate in different ways ,

so basically altough they dont function the same way at all , because of the similiar look would this appear to be copyrigh infringement on myspaces flash player?

any advice appreciated as IMO i think it's a borderline call

Seth Brundle

Surely you should be asking myspace support?

miju

well i was thinking that but then i wouldn't trust them to be unbiased in their response especially when your asking them about something thats aimed at replacing their flash player

axer

Well you are copying their design/look of the player which is a copyright infrindgement in itself.

Seth Brundle

miju wrote:

well i was thinking that but then i wouldn't trust them to be unbiased in their response especially when your asking them about something thats aimed at replacing their flash player

In other words you are reluctant to ask the property owner if you can use a hacked version of their property on their website?
Their response is obviously going to be biased because of what you are trrying to do. Check out the sites T&Cs - I would be surprised if there was not something in there about this.

miju

not reluctant at all as i've already submitted a question and am awaiting a reply as i couldn't find anything in their T+C's

the flash player is not a hacked version of the myspace player it is a complete custom job to tie in with software running on our site at the mo

Seth Brundle

You know what I mean!

comer_97

miju why don't you make your player look different. A bit sharper.

From what I understand, you are trying to tempt people to use your flash player instead of the free one on myspace.... If you want to move them from myspace offer something different not the same.

You know what i mean?

forbairt

miju how would you feel if someone copied the style of your player to drive traffic from your site ?

forbairt

miju wrote:

not reluctant at all as i've already submitted a question and am awaiting a reply as i couldn't find anything in their T+C's

I think the topic is actually irrelevant then ...

We wouldn't know how myspace would react ...
You are probably infringing on their copyright though .. and unless you get written consent to do what you want I wouldn't do it.

But as Comer said ... just design a nice one its not like people "love" the myspace one is it ?

Gordon

It's completely cropped top&bottom on Mac Firefox, I'd take a screeny but I can't right now. I won't comment on the copyright but if you are going to do something to replace the myspace flash player it's got to look cool. What I can see now just looks like the myspace one.