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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4622803" data-attributes="member: 40961">S'mon- look at the copyright law surrounding computer programs for an example of what I'm talking about.  It would be hard to claim that a computer program is anything other than a process, even a mathematical process.  But, they're mathematical processes designed to create certain visual, auditory, and aesthetic experiences.  That's an easy hook that led to copyright being applied to computer programs.  Now, there's a lot of money in computer programs, and the process wasn't entirely court driven- there was a lot of congressional lobbying and the eventual passage of a series of bills that codified most of this.  But the end result was the same- computer programs, even source code and not merely the aesthetic experiences of the user, are copyrightable.  And the courts continue to interpret intellectual property law (in my opinion and in the opinion of some commentators) largely based upon a general feel for whether someone is "cheating" within the norms of business and their industry. RPGs are different from computer companies because 1. there's less money, so no lobbying congress, 2. there's less money, so less litigation, and 3. there's less money, so there's less "cheating."  But if there were more money and there were more cheating, then I think that the current system where games have almost no intellectual property protection whatsoever but no one steals them anyways, would change.</blockquote>

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