Hello, I am lawyer with a PSA: almost everyone is wrong about the OGL and SRD. Clearing up confusion.

[Mistwell]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Intellectual property law should be abolished

I am sure this was dealt with by others, earlier, so never mind

 

[Mistwell]

Never mind

 

[Bohandas]

@Mistwell The publisher goes out of business in my scenario; without copyright law nobody would ever pay money for a book or movie again (outside of crowdfunding or very rarely donations to the author after the fact if they really really liked it)

 

[Mistwell]

@Mistwell The publisher goes out of business in my scenario; without copyright law nobody would ever pay money for a book or movie again (outside of crowdfunding or very rarely donations to the author after the fact if they really really liked it)

Then nobody would create entertainment. What a horrible world you envision.

 

[Bohandas]

hobbyists would create entertainment

 

[Clint_L]

@Mistwell The publisher goes out of business in my scenario; without copyright law nobody would ever pay money for a book or movie again (outside of crowdfunding or very rarely donations to the author after the fact if they really really liked it)

Everybody goes out of business in your scenario. Can we keep the conversation focused on the real world that exists? Maybe stop trying to hijack this thread with anarchist fantasy land?

 

[Mistwell]

hobbyists would create entertainment

Yes, which means no more professional quality movies or television shows again. No more professional novels. No more professional comic books. No more professional games. So many forms of entertainment would simply go away. What a horrible world you envision, where the "cure" is far worse than the "disease."

 

[Clint_L]

Yes, which means no more professional quality movies or television shows again. No more professional novels. No more professional comic books. No more professional games. So many forms of entertainment would simply go away. What a horrible world you envision, where the "cure" is far worse than the "disease."

We could start another thread about this. Call it "should games only be made by hobbyists?" Let's leave this thread to the lawyers - I feel like I am learning stuff from it.

 

[Remathilis]

Then nobody would create entertainment. What a horrible world you envision.

A brief thought experiment.

You're a DM. You run a game for friends. I will assume you also don't run your game using only adventure paths or modules, you make your own adventure scenarios. Maybe your own campaign. You run a game people find entertaining, and you charge your players fair market value for your entertainment and they gladly pay you for it!

No?

You do it for... Free? Why? Isn't your labor worth it? Isn't the time you invest in making your own material worth as much as any writer?!

Maybe it's because you derive income from another source so that your labor as a dungeon master isn't worth monetization. Perhaps if more people were free of the shackles of worrying about food and shelter, they could make art and entertainment for non-monetary reasons. Artists would paint, directors would make movies, writers would write and they could do it for expression, not material gain.

Maybe such a world doesn't have someone who can make Avenger's Endgame, but ask yourself if that's really all that bad? It also doesn't have someone who can destroy an entire swath of game designers in one bad 9000 page legal document.

Anyway it's beyond the scope of this thread. I just want to point out that art and entertainment does not need a profit motive to be made, and the abolishment of such profit motive would not necessarily be the end of art.

 

[Greg Benage]

hobbyists would create entertainment

I mean, there’s a share-alike license for creators who don’t want to get paid.