Quote from: Bren;814990Only if you think that Walt Disney is still alive and creating Mickey Mouse stories.

Walt Disney didnt create Mickey Mouse.

Quote from: Bren;814990Only if you think that Walt Disney is still alive and creating Mickey Mouse stories.

Movies generally include a statement in the credits that the corporation is the author of the work immediately after its creation for purposes of copyright law, or some such boilerplate. And the Walt Disney Company is still "alive" and creating Mickey Mouse stories. It might not apply to Mickey Mouse, if Disney didn't have the foresight to do so back then, but it will apply going forward to new copyrights.

Although Mickey Mouse is a terrible example since it's possibly the most prominent trademark of Disney.

Quote from: TristramEvans;814992Walt Disney didnt create Mickey Mouse.

Funny, he's listed as a creator. And Ub Iwerks, who is also listed, has been dead for over 40 years. So neither creator is alive. So again, not the same argument that allows Disney corp (a non-living, non-creator) to continue to renew copyright.

Quote from: rawma;814998Movies generally include a statement in the credits that the corporation is the author of the work immediately after its creation for purposes of copyright law, or some such boilerplate. And the Walt Disney Company is still "alive" and creating Mickey Mouse stories. It might not apply to Mickey Mouse, if Disney didn't have the foresight to do so back then, but it will apply going forward to new copyrights.

Although Mickey Mouse is a terrible example since it's possibly the most prominent trademark of Disney.

Until we get to draft corporations, I'm going to stick with my notion that corporations are not actual people.  Allowing corporations to unendingly renew copyright is not what I have argued for.

Quote from: Bren;814999Funny, he's listed as a creator. And Ub Iwerks, who is also listed, has been dead for over 40 years. So neither creator is alive. So again, not the same argument that allows Disney corp (a non-living, non-creator) to continue to renew copyright.

Yeah, he stole him from the creator, then had the guy blacklisted.

I'm not certain what you're arguing here though, that corporations should have special rights not granted to humans?

In general I'm kinda lost as to what Bren is arguing for except for the ongoing financial security of the children and grandchildren of people who did something.

What I'd like to see, as far as copyright is a 30 year term, with one renewel. This means up to 60 years during a creator's lifetime. If the creator dies within 5 years, their inheritor would then still have 25 years to mooch income off of someone else's work. I would also like to see a subclause of expiry after 10 years if the product is not published, so the holder cannot simply sit on a copyright. And, as I said previously, I don't think copyrights should be transferable.

That in my estimation, would be an optimal state of affairs.

Quote from: Bren;815002Until we get to draft corporations, I'm going to stick with my notion that corporations are not actual people.  Allowing corporations to unendingly renew copyright is not what I have argued for.

But where do you draw the line? Imagine a creative co-op with numerous members; periodically one dies and is replaced, giving them the potential of much longer, potentially unlimited creative lifespan in the manner of the Tines in A Fire Upon the Deep. When has the creator died? With the first member, the last original member, a majority of the original members, or when someone judges that they've wandered too far from the original creative vision?

Quote from: jeff37923;814909I'd like to read more of WotC or other large game companies being reasonable about the targets of their C&D letters that Omega was talking about.

Star Frontiers: That one was odd. When TSR ended some of the designers of the game told a fan group that they could copy and put online the stuff. Later Steve Jackson threatens them (for a game they dont even own) and has the site and all the fan material too removed. The fans went to WOTC who then said "Sure. But ONLY if nothing is sold. EVER." Apparently simmilar happened with MSH. But I have never seen the full details.

Another was the FRUA group. TSR and then WOTC gave us permission to convert modules and monsters to FRUA modules and sprites. SSI even handed over the source code when things were closing up. Marvel even granted some limited allowances. WOTC when asked later extended the allowance to Neverwinter.

RoboDerby Express: Originally a PNP express version of RoboRally. WOTC sent them a C&D and when asked, requested that the name be changed.
Heres my own build with Glyos bits as robot pawns instead of the dice.
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1468581/roboderby-express

BSG Express: same story as RoboDerby. PNP express version of the board game. Got nailed with a C&D by FFG and was told to change the name.

Cant find it now but one Rules summary for Arkham Horror was requested by FFG to remove some rules refferences. Probably others out there too that were asked to just tone it down a little.

Advanced HeroQuest got a C&D from Games Workshop and somehow wrangled a deal to allow them to host a PNP of the game online as long as it was not being sold. They later got in trouble when someone started selling it. But worked it out with GW.

Alien Assault is another one. A PC version of Space Hulk that got its permissions yanked at the 11th hour. When asked, GW told them to change the name and direct imagry.

Thats rare though as GW regularly goes after rules summaries and fan made games based on their stuff. Getting an OK from them seems rare. There is a big list of all the stuff they had yanked in 2009 and then afterwards. Some for games they only distributed in the UK.

Others have been hit with C&Ds for summaries or fan material and just asked to remove logos or imagry from the game so it does not look official.

Other companies are the diametric opposite. The owners of the Mutant Chronicle games had taken down all the fan translations of the Swedish only expansions from Sinkadus. (Which is understandable for the rules part) Though the people who own Drakkar och Demoner now have about the whole print run of DoD up online free.

So ask and chances are the publisher will work with you to make it allowable as usually its one or two elements that triggered the C&D

Quote from: Larsdangly;814925I think that this sort of fiddling of details you refer to is an unintended negative consequence of the stupidity of the laws in this area. It is like sanctioning complete and unabashed plagarism in an english class, provided you shuffle and replace just enough words to wring all the music out of the original language. I'm not sure I understand why we do this to ourselves; as far as I can tell the only reason to put out retroclones with the serial numbers filed off is just to avoid the meddlesome hectoring from a few self-appointed guardians of legal correctness. Has anyone ever actually been sued for this stuff?

Yes. Publishers have gone after a few when they start selling the effectively stolen game. But it is brutally messy and most just shrug and move on. WOTC is about the only one I can recall off the bat. They and Hasbro just recently finished and started some court cases against some publishers bootlegging their stuff or in the WOTC case, a game that was just simmilar to one of theirs. The whole WOTC vs Cryptozoic case that is I think still going.

 Happens alot with board games too and there have been some brutal legal battles over the years. One practice weve seen a few times is someone will release a game and someone else will then somehow patent it and then C&D the creator or at the very least claim credit. Even big publishers will pull that. WOTC  and FFG have.

Quote from: TristramEvans;815007What I'd like to see, as far as copyright is a 30 year term, with one renewel. This means up to 60 years during a creator's lifetime. If the creator dies within 5 years, their inheritor would then still have 25 years to mooch income off of someone else's work. I would also like to see a subclause of expiry after 10 years if the product is not published, so the holder cannot simply sit on a copyright. And, as I said previously, I don't think copyrights should be transferable.

That in my estimation, would be an optimal state of affairs.

Well, for what it's worth, you get _my_ vote.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;814856I'm not the one crying like a child because I feel entitled to something that doesn't belong to me.

That's good. Neither am I.

My argument is optics in the internet age. As I tell my clients, I don't give a fuck if you have the right to do something, my focus is if what you are choosing to do and how you are choosing to do it is truly good for business.

The entertainment mindspace is an insane battlefield today. Anything you can do to encourage the fanbase is crucial to do and anything that alienates them is crucial to avoid.  

You can both encourage your fans AND protect your IP. Just requires more finesse than C&D letters.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;814856What did TSR learn?

They learned not selling enough stuff means you get bought out at bargain basement prices.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;814856IP protection and the whiny gamers from that didn't harm them at all.  Bad management of products and horrible hemorrhaging of money did.

TSR was making bad decisions when D&D was hot, but they were protected from their decisions by the fandom throwing money at them BUT at a certain point, the D&D fever cooled and instead of caretaking their customer base, they pissed on them.

Word of mouth is powerful stuff.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;814863By the time WOTC gets its head out if its ass and actually has digital tools to offer, there will probably be several generators of equal or higher quality floating around on torrent sites not "hosted" anywhere that can be shut down with a C&D.

True.

By partnering with fans, a company can maintain a voice in the development of the community, even without overt control.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;814907I've come to the conclusion that the best solution would be a legally mandated right to create derivative works in the same way that there's a legally mandated right to record cover versions of songs.

It's a good raw idea, and it could be finessed to offer protection to all parties - aka, how do you guarantee payment? Perhaps something like we are seeing from Amazon's KindleWorlds.

Quote from: CRKrueger;814908Unfortunately Disney's power will ensure that US Copyright length becomes near-perpetual, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership will allow companies to strangle international spread of IP.

"China vs. IP" will be very interesting in the next decade.

Quote from: Larsdangly;814916What do you folks make of the now common practice of publishing clones of other people's games?

It's nothing new. D&D created the core concepts of RPG play and there were a dozen other RPGs with minimally different aspects before 1980 dawned.

How different is T&T vs. RQ vs. D&D when you step back from the minutiae?

Roll up a character + invent a persona + go on adventures + resolve stuff with dice + cast spells + get magic treasure + become more powerful + rinse and repeat.

The only difference today is the OGL grants permission for designers to emulate the original rules in their clones. In 1975 until 2001, you had to zig zag a little bit (not much really) to make your own game.

I prefer OSR games that step forward in some manner, but much of the OSR fandom is happy with slightly cleaned-up, nigh-identical rules.

And another one.

Mythic hit the creators of Myth for having a Y with a flame over it. When asked they just requested the removal of the flame.


and


Which makes sense.

Quote from: TristramEvans;815005I'm not certain what you're arguing here though, that corporations should have special rights not granted to humans?

No. That is the opposite of what I have said.

Quote from: TristramEvans;815007In general I'm kinda lost as to what Bren is arguing for except for the ongoing financial security of the children and grandchildren of people who did something.

:huhsign: You might try reading my posts. The thread has moved on while you have been elsewhere. Try these: here, and here, and also here.

And as the thread has moved on I may have missed your answer to these questions I posted a while back.

Quote from: Bren;814898How about you tell us what problem your suggestion is supposed to fix? And how that fix is supposed to provide a benefit to society commensurate with reducing the value of the copyright to the creator?

Because Bria Hensen is an argument I am unfamiliar with. Some explanation of the relevance would be nice.

Quote from: rawma;815009But where do you draw the line?

I dunno, maybe with a max of two or three creators listed? Or let them list as many creators as they want, but the first to die is the one that counts. Something could be managed if creative co-ops become an actual thing that involves real money rather than some law school test edge case.

Since there seems to be some confusion, I'll repeat what said in the post you responded to. I added the bold to emphasize the main point. Drafting corporations was my sarcastic commentary on the current legal notion of corporate personhood in the USA.

Quote from: Bren;815002Until we get to draft corporations, I'm going to stick with my notion that corporations are not actual people.  Allowing corporations to unendingly renew copyright is not what I have argued for.

So one solution might be to just go to a fixed term of X years from date of first publication in a jurisdiction with the copyright holder allowed to renew Y times to protect ongoing publication of the work. If there is no ongoing publication at some reasonable, non-trivial level the copyright doesn't get renewed so a copyright can only shelve a work for at most X years.

Quote from: Omega;815021Mythic hit the creators of Myth for having a Y with a flame over it. When asked they just requested the removal of the flame.

That sounds more like a trademark issue not a copyright issue.

Quote from: Lynn;814962Because a "clone" can embody the mechanics or ideas of a game (which are not copyrightable), rather than the actual text of the game; whereas a PDF is effectively a "reprint" of the actual copyrighted work.

This why it is legal, not why it is ethical. Why does anything think it is ethically o.k. to make a fucking obvious copy of someone else's game, perhaps re-written (badly) and tweaked with some bog-standard house rules, when it is verboten to just reproduce that material?

Quote from: Larsdangly;815037This why it is legal, not why it is ethical. Why does anything think it is ethically o.k. to make a fucking obvious copy of someone else's game, perhaps re-written (badly) and tweaked with some bog-standard house rules, when it is verboten to just reproduce that material?

Correctly done clones use two things:

1.  Stuff that isn't someone else's property, and thus can be ethically used.
2.  Stuff that *is* someone else's property, but property they gave explicit permission for you to use (and even modify) as long as you abide by their terms (e.g., the OGL).

If you're using stuff that they don't own, and stuff they do own but that you have permission to use/spindle/fold/mutilate, and you're abiding by the terms of the agreement (e.g., you're not using or claiming compatibility with their trademarks under the OGL) then I'd say you can go to sleep with a clean conscience.