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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1558574" data-attributes="member: 19675">The Public domain isn't being strangled.  The Public domain is constantly increasing in size, daily.  Once something falls into the public domain, it can NEVER be copyrighted again.Copyright is not perpetual.  While extensions are permitted, even the longest extension is still finite.  Eventually, the guy who got successfully sued by Disney for trying to do an animated Mickey Mouse ripoff porno movie will be able to do so.  Well, probably not THAT guy, but anyone who still wants to do that could.The ability to make the first economic use of IP is the essense of copyright.  Instantly dumping IP into the public domain does no one any good.OGL (the Open Gaming License) is what it is- a LICENSE- not the wholesale release of IP into the public domain.  Licensees are still subject to rules and restrictions- you can't just use something produced under OGL for ANY reason.  You violate the license, it can be yanked.  It can even be the basis for a lawsuit.  In other words, there are still copyright holders with their hands on the wheel controlling what gets used for what.As for its affect on creativity- like it though I do- the OGL has probably stifled creativity more than it has stimulated it.  Sure, there are plenty of D20 based games out there, but they're all D20 games.  It used to be that if you bought a new game, you got a new system with it.  GURPS, HERO, Palladium and Storyteller are still holding their own, but I haven't seen but a couple of completely new game systems actually hit the shelves recently.  Looking at my bookshelf, I can see more than 60 different RPGs.  All of the ones pre-D20 are different from the ground up- character generation, combat, spell system, etc., even the ones that were trying to rip off D&D.  Since D20...lets just say that there are a lot of D20 versions of already extant good games from many companies- Traveller, Deadlands, Call of Cthuhu, Legend of the 5 Rings, The Trinity System, Silver Age Sentinels...  When was the last major diceless RPG system released?  Quite simply, new non-D20 games are handicapped in the current RPG market.  How is the critically acclaimed D6 WWII superhero game GODLIKE doing?  Green Ronin's Spaceship Zero?  In Nomine?  You should be able to find most of them in discount bins.With that homogenization, we have gained conceptual portability-learn 1 game, learn them all.  However, lots of character has been lost.  Example, Traveller didn't use a decimal numeric system-it used hexidecimal (those silly math-heads!).  It was also the only game system I know of that had the chance of PC death during character generation.  Traveller D20 loses all of that.As for the availability of material in a world with unfettered downloading, my conclusion was not as harsh as that other poster.  There will still be material available, possibly even lots.  Quality, however, will suffer.  Anyone who has a quality game will keep it in house because he knows he won't get any cash for trying to go commercial.In a world where theft of IP is legal, there is no economic incentive to disseminate IP, only altruistic ones, and very few people are prepared to produce IP exclusively for altruistic reasons.  Artists, authors, designers, etc. all have to eat, clothe themselves, house themselves.</blockquote>

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