[LE] Copying Bethesda Content and Legal Paranoia

[WanderingIvie]

Strictly speaking this is Enderal modding, but Enderal is obviously based in Skyrim and I'm pretty sure more people here will have advice about this.

 

There's an Enderal mod that I was using (Detect Dead For Enderal, /enderal/mods/67), that with the current version of Enderal no longer works. It relies on Skyrim base game magic effects, that weren't used in Enderal and for that reason were removed. I poked around in xEdit to see if I could get it working, and I was able to, but only by making a copy of my non-Enderal Skyrim.esm, copying over the relevant magic effects from that, and updating all the references so that it didn't require the non-Enderal master file.

 

I've been testing it in-game for a few days and it works fine, the original mod author has given permission to modify/release bug fixes as long as they're credited, and I'm sure at least a few other people would find this helpful, BUT I'm worried about the legality of posting this, since Bethesda content isn't just being edited or overwritten but literally copied. Obviously this isn't really what piracy laws are intended for, this plugin won't do a thing for anyone who doesn't already own the game, but still.

 

Can anyone tell me whether I'm being too paranoid or not? Is there a precedent for this sort of thing?

[agerweb]

I can't see that this is a problem, as all you are doing is effectivelly adding back in content from the original Skyrim.esm that was stripped out of the Enderal Skyrim.esm. And as you say people using Enderal have to have the original Skyrim.esm and a lot of its resources for Enderal to work at all.

[WanderingIvie]

That was my thinking but it seemed necessary to get a second opinion, thanks for the response!