Fiendish Dire Copyright
Posted 3rd October 2009 at 07:55 PM by pawsplay
IANAL. YMMV. Some thoughts speaking as a creator and a reader and a philosopher:
"Intellectual property" is properly understood as a metaphor. What is owned is not the ideas themselves, but a right or franchise to profiting from them.
Copyright in the US does not protect:
In short, games. The specific text may be copyrighted, and the game may contain patents or trademarks, but nothing that is purely an idea can be copyrighted. Copyright, indeed, was created in order to advance the propogation and promulgation of ideas:
In short, infringing a copyright is not "theft." It is infringement, and is covered under a separate set of laws. Infringement is different in many ways:
- If I infringe a work, I do not deprive someone else of it.
- Once a work has been copied and made freely available at no cost, there is no way its value can be restored to its owner.
- Infringing means depriving an owner of a royalty; theft means causing at least some small measure of harm.
- A copyrighted work has no value to its owner alone. An object has no value to anyone else but its current possessor. Consider the difference in value between the copyright of a book and the value of the book itself.
So in viewing IP rights with regard to rpg publishers, I would say the principle struggle is, on the one hand, to assure proper royalties and attributions are made to creators, while on the other hand, their works are able to be readily used and enjoyed. Certainly, a publisher is entitled to be recompensed for the development cost of a book. But just certainly, the public should not be deprived of access to out-of-print but interesting works simply because the copyright holder does not wish to see them distributed. Copyright allows the copyright holder to control and profit from their work. Copyright law does not permit the government to censor works as a proxy, any more than it is permitted to censor works for any other reasons.
No mandate, suggestion, or intimation should be derived from the above opinions as to the rightness of any particular action with regard to a copyrighted work.
I truly believe that creative works are the great flower of civilization, and I think we should strive in every way to see those works increased and multiplied.
"Intellectual property" is properly understood as a metaphor. What is owned is not the ideas themselves, but a right or franchise to profiting from them.
Copyright in the US does not protect:
Quote:
Originally Posted by US Copyright office
Ideas, procedures, methods, systems, processes, concepts,
principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a
description, explanation, or illustration
principles, discoveries, or devices, as distinguished from a
description, explanation, or illustration
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Constitution of the USA
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
- If I infringe a work, I do not deprive someone else of it.
- Once a work has been copied and made freely available at no cost, there is no way its value can be restored to its owner.
- Infringing means depriving an owner of a royalty; theft means causing at least some small measure of harm.
- A copyrighted work has no value to its owner alone. An object has no value to anyone else but its current possessor. Consider the difference in value between the copyright of a book and the value of the book itself.
So in viewing IP rights with regard to rpg publishers, I would say the principle struggle is, on the one hand, to assure proper royalties and attributions are made to creators, while on the other hand, their works are able to be readily used and enjoyed. Certainly, a publisher is entitled to be recompensed for the development cost of a book. But just certainly, the public should not be deprived of access to out-of-print but interesting works simply because the copyright holder does not wish to see them distributed. Copyright allows the copyright holder to control and profit from their work. Copyright law does not permit the government to censor works as a proxy, any more than it is permitted to censor works for any other reasons.
No mandate, suggestion, or intimation should be derived from the above opinions as to the rightness of any particular action with regard to a copyrighted work.
I truly believe that creative works are the great flower of civilization, and I think we should strive in every way to see those works increased and multiplied.
Tags: copyright, publishing
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