Hmm..
I had this whole rant going, but, mweh. I'll keep it short. (looks at new rant. So much for "short" =P)
Look at 8 bit theater. Look at cover bands. Look at fan fiction and fan art. Look at pop art (Soup cans, anyone?). Look at Mad magazine. Hell, look at my damned website. Borowing, re-using, satire, and imitation have been long protected by US law. Now, there's exceptions, but basically, if someone were to do this (and this applies to the reactor reloaded project, as well), you could NOT do the following:
*Claim that you invented the intelectual proerty.
*profit from this little venture.
That's it. The chronodemo guys were falsy accused of the second item, and i think someone at Squeenix made the mistake of thinking they were doing the first, as well.
Also, i should note that over at the adventchildren.net forums, there's someone whos been seriously pimping a 2d AC based game for months. And ac.net is the one site Square keeps a bead on, if anything. They've even had contact with ac.net on numerous occasions about their content. But they havn't seemd to have a problem with the ac2d game. Of course, it seems low quality, and if any mroe than 100 peopel dl it (for free, obviously), I'll be surprised. So it's not a threat to square at all.
The Chrono demo project, (if it HAD been a ripoff-remake like Square thought) was a popular project with a big following, an square thought they were trying to make money. So obviously that's a big fat NO!
I think it is also worth mentioning that nuklearpower.com (home of 8-bit theater, the most popular ff sprite comic out there) makes money from banner ads, yet Square has never even touched the webmaster of the site. Why? My guess is a) he's not directly ripping them off, only borrowing thier character designs and general ff story as homage and b) Square would have 10,000+ fans kicking at their front doors to leave Mr. Clevinger alone. You dont wanna piss off THAT many fans.
On the reverse side is my ff7 site (I'm not spamming, honest). I take screenshots from the game, and put them up with the game script, along with several of the games files (like midis and a few movies). And, yes, i give square full credit for what they've done: created the game. Now, i'm sure ff7-u is below Square's radar (I think i get like, 10 unique hits a day =P), but even if it wasn't, they still couldn't/wouldn't touch me because i am NOT making any money off the site (no ads, yay!), the text was typed out by me (I dont just copy fromt he game, about half the text is flavor text or description), and all the screenshots are edited. So even though, in the final analysis, i'm putting Square's intelectual property out there for anyone to see for free, it's the fact that it's a totaly different media, i'm not claiming i made ff7, plus the no profit thing that basically means I'm safe, too.
So what I'm saying is, yes, you can do this. However, Squeenix can dish out a S&D notice, as is their right to do. Whether you choose to fight it or not would be your decision. Mind you that they could bury you in paper work, you'd have to pay all sorts of legal fees...
But like i said, keep it free, make sure you're upfront about intellectual property ownership, and keep it discreet, and you won't have a problem.
[edit] appologies to qhimm: i realize this is a little less on the "Knowledgeable" side, but i think citing real life references kinda justifes the point of my post =)
