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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Heard" data-source="post: 1558665" data-attributes="member: 7280">At a much decreased rate thanks to the constant extensions and self-serving legislations that narrow it. I don't know what important point you were trying to make with the emphasis on the not being able to copyright the public domain. That's the entire point isn't it? To move the intellectual into a format that makes it reusable as reinterpretation by society at large as quickly as possible while still balancing a short term of monopoly to fund the creative process? It's not a way to print money and it shouldn't be a squatter's market thanks to the economic needs of a few of the most wealthy IP holders. Neither my daughter or my granddaughter needs nor deserves to make money off the sale of my IP, and even I myself would be better off serving the public domain by being rationed in my ability to make money off of my own works. So you've got a trickle of content dripping into the public domain, so what? That's better than stifling creativity with IP lawyers entirely?  I disagree with this entirely. The different substructures may have changed but there is still an awful lot more individual products on the shelves and available than even 6 years ago. The fact that there are a lot of d20 games out there is more of a function of entrance costs, control and quality. If White Wolf were to open up the Storyteller system in a similar sense I imagine that they too would see a similar jump in Storyteller products on the shelves. I remember when licencing (I assume) was cheaply available in the early 80s for gaming products and there were dozens of associated lines adding into Traveller and D&D via Judge's Guild and other tiny presses. MP3.Com had more artists out there than you'd EVER see in a big label catalog, because while the problems with distribution are different the effect is similar - there is absolutely no shortage of monkeys willing to create and share their efforts, only an artificial barrier to commerce built by the various entertainment industries by their own sabotage of efforts they don't control and judicious usage of copyright law to maintain as high of a wall around the elite club where the money is as possible. The monopoly of copyright, built to serve the public, now serves the wealthy few who can hope to influence and maintain as rabid protections as possible. The entire dialogue with the original intent is false now, people function as if copyright were something given to the public by the creators instead of something that the public grants to the artist. That was not the intent and it's wrong to legislate as if it were.</blockquote>

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