Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1468458" data-attributes="member: 10201">Chalk that one up not to my poor understanding, but to my poor writing. I concur entirely on what you say: the expression is copyrighted, but not the idea. However, it's often easier to get people to think of it as the object (even if that "object" is a collection of electronic bytes) that is protected, with that protection extending to include copying of the object (even into other formats).Of course, if what i've read is true, that MP3 rips of CDs you own are legal, that's yet another exception to the rule, and is one more piece steering the concept towards IP ownership, rather than merely use: it supports the argument that you've bought it and can use it however you want, much like a tire.And, just to muddy the waters further, there's a concept in copyright that if the expression can't be divorced from the idea, the expression can't be copyrighted, either. Thus, frex, you can't copyright a math formula--you can copyright a math textbook, and you can copyright a story problem in the book, but an actual equation is just a statement of fact, there is no "expression" involved. Thus, under this logic, it's possible that the very basic rules in an RPG (such as "d20 + mods ≥ DC") aren't eligible for copyright, period, and it gets fuzzy as to how "built up" a ruleset has to get before it becomes copyrightable (or, conversely, how much of it you can copy, and how exactly, without infringing).</blockquote>

Verification