Quote from: Omega;815342Personal example. I had one would be publisher hire me on to help design a game based on his IP. About midway through he pulled the "Well you know game rules arent protected" gag. Eventually he showed his true colours and refused to even pay me the measly little consulting fee.

Fuck that piece of shit.  While I think IP sank down to embarrassing levels I still believe if you hire a person to make a game for you, then you pay that person.  That IP owner is a shit bag and needs to be called on that.

The problem with a lot of low level hobby stuff is that the money involved is small, you are often working across states (or even countries), and your ability to actually get any money out of the offender is pretty darn low.

Which, of course, helps create an environment that lets shitheads like that get away with it.

Quote from: Will;815349The problem with a lot of low level hobby stuff is that the money involved is small, you are often working across states (or even countries), and your ability to actually get any money out of the offender is pretty darn low.

If you freelance, you have to decide from the get-go what your minimum is, and scent out quickly if a potential job isn't going to quite make it.

You have to consider not only your time actually doing whatever it is you are doing, but also the time spent on things like setting objectives and milestones.

You should never agree to conditions that let clients waste (without compensation) your time, and always set milestones for payments.

Quote from: Bren;815330Yes one can imagine any number of things. But those imaginings aren't very relevant.

No imagining needed, since that's pretty much how a wide swath of academia works.

If you insist that expiring copyright means taking from someone, then you really haven't conveyed that you don't believe in anything less than eternal copyright. So I guess I retract that portion of my previous post.

Quote from: Will;815266I suspect most of us agree that 'corporations are people' is a really baaaad thing.

Your right to sue a corporation, as opposed to simply individuals within a corporation, is tied to the doctrine of corporations being fictional entities.  So no, I do not agree.

Quote from: GameDaddy;815343Been tried. 1918. Russia. First Lenin, the Stalin. Didn't work.

Been tried before that. All of human history prior to the 18th century.

Quote from: GameDaddy;815343Been tried. 1918. Russia. First Lenin, the Stalin. Didn't work.

You're claiming that the Soviet Union was founded as a gift economy of ideas?

Remember, you're supposed to be hiding your creations for the next five hundred generations, so what are you doing posting your copyrighted material out in the open where just anyone can find and not appreciate it?

Quote from: Mistwell;815356Your right to sue a corporation, as opposed to simply individuals within a corporation, is tied to the doctrine of corporations being fictional entities.  So no, I do not agree.

I'd much rather individual owners of a corporation be held legally responsible than getting a legal "out".

Quote from: rawma;815359You're claiming that the Soviet Union was founded as a gift economy of ideas?

Remember, you're supposed to be hiding your creations for the next five hundred generations, so what are you doing posting your copyrighted material out in the open where just anyone can find and not appreciate it?

Communism. From the latin word Communis -- i.e. Common, Universal. Noun.

A theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, with actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole, or to the state.

Gift wouldn't be a word I would use for this though.

Hasbro has not only ripped off designers. They make you pay THEM just to submit a game. They use a temp agency sort of deal. If I recall correctly about 200$ a game submission, and if rejected, you have to pay it again to re-submit.

Found out about that while getting one of my games back from them that theyd acquired via their absorption of MB.

Quote from: GameDaddy;815362Gift wouldn't be a word I would use for this though.

I'm not sure why you wouldn't, when you just did; but the sensible reason would be because it's a completely different thing (both in theory and in practice).

Quote from: rawma;815355No imagining needed, since that's pretty much how a wide swath of academia works.

That is not how the academics I know work. They get a piece of the money. And I haven't seen any statues.

QuoteIf you insist that expiring copyright means taking from someone, then you really haven't conveyed that you don't believe in anything less than eternal copyright. So I guess I retract that portion of my previous post.

Sigh. Golly gee then it's a good that I didn't insist that expiring copyright is legally taking something without compensation.

What I did insist on is that violating legal copyright is taking from someone. What jhkim and now apparently you can't seem to grasp is the difference between violating copyright which is illegal and using ideas that are out of copyright which is legal. jhkim, and possibly you, seem to have a notion that the ideas articulated by one person are inherently owned in common by their country, society, all mankind, or something and that the person articulating those ideas is allowed some control by society to be nice.

To me it is clear that the legal foundation of copyright is a tradeoff between society providing protection for the creator for a limited time (what a fair time period should be is currently an answered legal question, but an open question in this thread) of the ideas that the creator has articulated in return for those ideas eventually entering into the public domain for the benefit of others.

What copyright is not based on is some notion that all ideas are owned in common by society and society is granting a right to the creator to be nice or solely to stimulate the production of more ideas which in turn are automatically owned by society. Copyright is intended to be an exchange of value – protection of the creator's exclusive control of their idea is given by society for a limited time in exchange for the creator granting eventual public access to the ideas which the creator created.

Quote from: TristramEvans;815360I'd much rather individual owners of a corporation be held legally responsible than getting a legal "out".

It is not really feasible to hold the owners of a corporation responsible. In a large publicly traded company there are thousands even handreds of thousands of individual shareholders. And those individual shareholders typically don't know the ins and outs of management decisions and even if they did, do not hold enough power to influence those decisions except, possibly, when acting in mass.

Quote from: Bren;815393It is not really feasible to hold the owners of a corporation responsible. In a large publicly traded company there are thousands even handreds of thousands of individual shareholders. And those individual shareholders typically don't know the ins and outs of management decisions and even if they did, do not hold enough power to influence those decisions except, possibly, when acting in mass.

Which is the same defense they heard at Nuremberg time and time again.

Yeah. I'm kind of the opinion now that everyone in management should be held culpable for the actions of a company. You don't get to pass the buck and shrug and scurry under a rock when investigators come calling.

If you don't want that kind of responsibility, make sure you run things right. And if you can't be sure, go do something else.

Then again, if it were up to me, I'd execute BP's management and all the regulators they bought off publicly, and give a long, meaningful look at all the other oil companies equally shoddily managed.

Quote from: TristramEvans;815402Which is the same defense they heard at Nuremberg time and time again.

And we have achieved Godwin's law!

Edit: It's like Light Speed but with more uniforms.