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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 1559559" data-attributes="member: 2013">Bzzt.  Wrong. Copyright CAN in fact be retroactively extended and take works out of the public domain.You might think so.  Congress doesn't.(Emphasis mine).I find it hard to believe that anyone thinks under the current regime that ANYTHING will ever fall out of copyright again, since the current methodology is simply:IF Copyright Term of Steamboat Willie MINUS Today's Date is less than 2 yearsTHEN Extend Copyright Term.Just because it nowhere states infinity doesn't mean it de facto IS infinity.You've hit on the essence of copyright.  The problem is, current media companies would adjust your statement to:"The ability to make any use of IP is the essence of copyright."Very true.  However, the restrictions are relatively minor and have the (to some, undesirable) stricture that anything you create through derivation must also be released with those same minor restrictions.  In other words, if you stand on the shoulders of those who came before, you must be willing to let others stand on your shoulders, too (most people and corporations involved in IP - hate that stricture, which is probably why we see such limiting PI declarations in an attempt to close down as much as possible).This may be a "chicken-and-egg" thing.  Why did games pre-OGL have "from the ground up" character creation rules?  Answer: Because you HAD to do it that way to avoid copyright snags.  Why is there so much d20 stuff post-OGL?  Because you DON'T have to build from the ground up and you can avoid potential copyright pitfalls.  If all I want to do is publish an adventure, why should I have to re-invent the wheel (a new game system) to do it?  The OGL allows companies to create small "add-ons" rather than re-design the whole game system from scratch.  This lowers the "intellectual" barrier of entry considerably.  That means people can more easily support the d20 system.  Because of all that extra support, "other systems" are headed for the discount bins, because they lack it... I'm not sure which is the cause of the other, but I am relatively certain that the reason other systems aren't seeing the same level of support as d20 is that they CAN'T (due to copyright nastiness).  If GURPS or Palladium or other systems opened up their rules under an OGL or similar agreement, I'm sure you would see them getting support as well.It may be that those who are so desperate to hold on to "their precious" will wind up losing everything in the long run.  :/Again, lack of support is due to "closed content."I don't quite agree, and I'll show why in a moment.There IS economic incentive to disseminate IP... but it's a much tougher incentive.  You absolutely, positively must "get it right" the first time.  This is because there is always going to be some time lag between the time your product hits the shelves, and a "mass-produced copied substitute" is available.  If you do it right the first time, by the time the copied substitute is available, it's "too late" to put much of a dent in your sales.Exhibit A: The first Freeport adventure.  It's 100% OGC (I believe including maps and all - I'm not sure, as it was sold out at my FLGS and I never got a copy); legally, therefore, it can be copied under the OGL. But it hasn't been.  Why not?  Because Green Ronin did it right the first time.  Anyone who wants one has already paid for one; if I were to put out a copy, I wouldn't get any sales.To me, what that means is that quality would go up - people would make sure they did it right the first time, and not lazily rely on copyright to protect them, because they'd know it's "get it right or die" as opposed to "hey, even if we get it wrong, nobody can compete with us thanks to copyright."  Truly, honestly, I believe lack of copyright would lead to higher-quality work because of this principle.  And those who knew they could do it right would still do it.Just a thought. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />--The Sigil</blockquote>

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