Using Satellite Images

I'm working in a racing game and I thought about using satellite images of real tracks (without using real track names or anything, just the satellite image). Is this copyrighted or something? Could someone clarify me this?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yep, most sporting venues are copyrighted, although it's usually a case of taxpayers paying to build the venues and big businesses then actually reaping the profit for themselves. It should be illegal and it's certainly not moral but that's the way the politicians grovel to do back room deals with big business. That is in US. In other countries, sporting venues tend to more often be public.

 

I'm not sure you can copyright something like a track layout. I can't see how the distinct layout of a track could be protected under copyright laws. The satellite image itself might get you into more trouble, usually these are owned by google or whoever took the photo.

I'm no lawyer, seek professional advice before engaging.

 

He's talking real imagery and most tracks and sports venues in USA are sponsored and have real advertising and copyrights. I'd be willing to bet the businesses involved with Indy 500 are not going to sit on their hands and allow all comers to release Indy 500 race games.

However, feel free to be an Elvis impersonator, just so long as you don't use copyrighted works of Elvis to impersonate him without paying royalties; although truthfully you're going to have to make a lot of money for any business to come after you with a lawsuit.

 

You generally would want to edit out anything like the sponsorship stuff. Still, it's a sticky enough issue that I'd suggest formal legal advice.

Or become popular. Not making money is not an effective defense against copyright infringement.

 

That's true, I once had a 2D cartoon drawing that I but on a t-shirt and it resembled Einstein and the online store would not allow it to be described in anyway using the name Einstein so I took the name off.

However, there were public domain pictures of Einstein and those photographs were allowed to be put on t-shirts without licensing by other people. I felt it was very two-faced and hypocritical.

I think my problem was that someone, somewhere had created a cartoon character called Little Einsteins and copyrighted it but I didn't bother researching the exact reason why.

At any rate, using a geographical name and a number is enough to let people know the focus of your game without worrying about legal complications like I had with a caricature of Einstein. Call it the Chicago 500 or the Detroit Motorway. I remember visiting professional car crash derbies when I lived in Indiana so you could try one of those and call it the Indy Derby.

 

This. Though there is stuff like OpenStreetMap, which provides open-source data from which you could construct maps. In some ways that's better than a satellite image, as you get data saying where a road is rather than pixels saying what colour places are.

 

Thank you guys for the replies.

I think I should use the satellite images only as a start point/draft to make the tracks and remove those images once I get the tracks built to avoid legal complications.

 

Whatever you do with them, just double check with the provider or license that it's allowed.

 

It's not all that hard to design tracks. You just have to give away all your money, get hopped up on vagisil and make a left turn, then another left turn, then another left turn.

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_and_Stupid

 

The Einstein brand is owned by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, being monetized, and has licensing agents contracted to protect it.

The grandkids don't really like the situation.