Removal of illegal packages

[Neal McBurnett]

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 02:46:24PM +0200, Adna rim wrote:
> I checked viruskiller. First on its offical website (http://www.parallelrealities.co.uk/virusKiller.php) you can find:
> 
> "Source code is distributed under the GNU General Public License. Resources are Non Free. This game should not be added to Linux distributions or respositories."
> 
> 
> I compaired viruskiller from its original source and the ubuntu package and the music/sound files are identically. Stripping music/sound/gfx and icon folder makes this package totally useless. It's just an ui whichs left without any use to the user. Also the music/sound/gfx can't be found in the internet as single-download, so users had to download the package from it website (see first link) unpack it and move those packages. Is this still covered by the debian-policy because it would be much trouble for users to make these games work.
> 
> Best would be to remove the package and let debian know. Afaik also fedora contains this package.
> 
> But who's the original copyright owner? Maybe we can ask him to free those rescources?

From debian/copyright in the "blobwars" source package:

 All music and sound effects contained within this game are taken from
 various freely accessible internet websites. In all cases this music
 and sound is assumed to be placed within the public domain and
 therefore free to distribute.  [Parallel Realities] accepts no
 responsibility for audio contain herein that was made freely
 available without the consent of the owner.  All character names used
 within the game are copyright and/or trademarks of the respective
 owners. They are not in any way associated with either Blob Wars :
 Metal Blob Solid or Parallel Realities.

Possible copyright issues were flagged for Debian back in 2007:

 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=420276

and the response was to include the above in the copyright file and
push it back on the reporter to pursue it in debian-legal.  I don't
know if that happened, but it would seem better to have asked for
clarification from the author at least.

It sounds like a mistake from the beginning to package this, if the
author wouldn't dig out the original copyrights or vouch for it.  For
Ubuntu, it first appeared in dapper, and for Debian, in sarge,
starting in 2004.

Neal McBurnett                 http://mcburnett.org/neal/