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[Max White]

Because frankly modifying a program to suit your needs should be entirely legal and there are ABSOLUTELY no moral ramifications.

Well, not looking at the moral grounds here, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of 'philosophy', but rather the legal stand point. No, no you can not. Most propriety works forbid modification, and it is well within there rights to do so.

[Neonivek]

Because frankly modifying a program to suit your needs should be entirely legal and there are ABSOLUTELY no moral ramifications.

Well, not looking at the moral grounds here, because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of 'philosophy', but rather the legal stand point. No, no you can not. Most propriety works forbid modification, and it is well within there rights to do so.

When your dealing with an original work. Fine as your destroying something. If your dealing with something that is public and thus dealing with a captive audiance. Fine as your forcing your modifications on people.

When your dealing with a souless copy and your not dealing with a captive audiance. Why not?

If you buy a copy of the Mona Lisa... By ALL means you can draw a mustache on it. Heck throw it in a fire.

If you buy a copy of Hamlet. By all means white out every instance of Hamlet's name and write... heck... Your name. Heck burn the book!

When you buy a game. By all means replace every single main character sprite with... well... Yourself. Heck burn the disc.

Mind you I don't support modifying a game to get the hidden stuff a company is selling. That is more of a practice I think companies should just stop though.

[Max White]

Well like I said, legal reasoning, not moral reasoning.
Let us assume product A is software that does some of the things you need it to do, but is missing other key features. So let's think of it as a text processor with no function to change font size. But you need to be able to change font size for nice headings. So you break in and install that functionality, and then be so kind as to wrap only your modifications into a neat little installer that will add changing font sizes to any instance of the program.

But this annoys the company making product A, because now they can not sell an upgrade that includes font sizes. As far as they can see, you have robbed them of potential market. The law sides with Company on this one.

[breadbocks]

That doesn't mean you can give it to everyone you meet.

[Biag]

It's not about the act of modifying the software, it's about reposting the software for other people to download free of charge. You can do whatever you want with your copy, but the product is not yours to give away.

[Neonivek]

Actually the law doesn't support the company so easily, split down the middle.

Especially depending on where you live.

As it is within the buyer's right to modify their own products EVEN IF it would lead to a company losing money, and distributing a modification could just be a distribution of your own work that happens to modify a product.

So in this case, I'd need a legal statement. As well as the exceptions within the statement. As I know that modification of Movies/videos and images are legal within certain areas even in American Law.

and not EULAs... most of those are not legally valid under contract law.

[Shadowlord]

There's a huge difference between modifying the exe file itself (including decompiling it, modifying the decompiled source code, and recompiling that, which is what was done with Terraria to make some of these programs), and "mods" which modify other components of games, such as artwork, or removing the startup commercials, which can often by done by simply deleting the movie files for them.

Posting a program that mods another program - I don't think that's illegal, but I'm not 100% certain. The way I understand it, that wouldn't be illegal, but running the program would be, or something like that. It's all a bit confusing. In any case, there are situations where it's legal to modify a program to remove copy protection (generally when the copy protection does not function properly), or to modify programs in general (to make them work on your computer, because they are too old to do so), but it's still illegal to distribute the modified programs. But that's not what we were talking about, really.

We're not talking about works in the real world, we're talking about programs. Programs can be copied. Programs can be modified without destroying the original. Replacing the sprites in data files has nothing to do with modifying the program itself.

[4 new replies have been posted! Do you want to re-- no! I'm leaving now, damnit. :<]

[Neonivek]

That is also a good point Shadowlord. Technically some things arn't modifications but intended to be used for a modification.

A sprite sheet for example.

Unfortunately this is harder to find info on... I found information that many places make it illegal to mod a program to remove copy protection... though I could already figure that out.  Though that isn't what we are really talking about.

I also have yet to find a single arrest on modding that isn't about copy protection.

[Shadowlord]

As it is within the buyer's right to modify their own products EVEN IF it would lead to a company losing money, and distributing a modification could just be a distribution of your own work that happens to modify a product.

So in this case, I'd need a legal statement. As well as the exceptions within the statement. As I know that modification of Movies/videos and images are legal within certain areas even in American Law.

Try http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html

[breadbocks]

As far as I can see, the only semi legit way to distribute a mod for terraria would be to make a patcher for the mod.

[adwarf]

Sorry to deviate fromk your current conversation, but what does the Dirt Rod thing do

[Max White]

Especially depending on where you live.

Welcome to Australia, where pseudo intellectual property get rights to kick ass.

Sorry to deviate fromk your current conversation, but what does the Dirt Rod thing do

Allows you to pick up dirt.

[Darvi]

It moves dirt.

[adwarf]

OK thats just useless

[Max White]

Yes, now you know.