OGL To Be Renamed Game System License (GSL)

[occam]

And I think you're wrong. This is not a "hippie movement". This is the end of a short parenthesis in our history. Copyright in its present form is as doomed as Titanic after hitting that iceberg.

I'm curious, as someone who has clearly stated the extreme position on this side of the IP argument, how you think a world without copyright would work? What would be the incentives for continued production of books, music, movies, etc.? Open source software works because its developers usually have "real" jobs (often writing proprietary software), or customers are willing to pay for support or other ancillary services. If books, songs, and movies are generally made available to all as free downloads (which is what I assume you mean by the death of copyright and the support of organizations such as Pirate Bay), how do authors, musicians, actors, directors, producers, etc. make a living? Who pays people to produce artistic works, if they have no control over distribution?

I'm genuinely curious about how people see this working with a serious consideration of human nature; I don't, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.

 

[Ranger REG]

What I'm wondering right now is, exactly what material is being left out of the new SRD?

Does anyone know?

Answer: Content that you can copy-n-paste.

The new SRD will give you page references from core rulebooks (and future supplements) as to what you CAN use with the GSL.

Good luck to designers and publishers from getting repetitive twisting neck injury (looking back-n-forth between the new SRD and the core rulebooks).

 

[Ranger REG]

I for one would love to expand on talent trees and things of that nature.

You could use the Modern System Reference Documents since it introduces the talent trees concept.

 

[Cergorach]

I'm genuinely curious about how people see this working with a serious consideration of human nature; I don't, but maybe I'm suffering from a failure of imagination.

As I stated previously, this needs social change, the basis is already there. Ask a plantage owner 200 years ago if the abolishment of slavery was possible, they would have reacted much the same as you do now. The same goes for racism, equal rights for women, freedom of religion, gay rights, etc. All these things weren't introduced overnight and certainly weren't easy. I'm not trying to equated copyrights with slavery, but rather pointing out that even difficult changes have ways to succeed.

Even now Open Source Software is being developed for 'free'. Certain companies dedicate programmers to the development of OSS, because this makes the software more valuable to them (and in turn to the rest of the world). There will always be people who love what they do and will do it whether they are paid for it or not. But the question is then of course whether this is enough material to sustain the entertainment of mankind and if it's of high enough quality. If it's not, then you'll get folks that want something better, they'll pay something to create. Whether that's n individual that finances a writer for a book or a community that finances a film, or a state that does both. Imagine that instead of paying for all the copyrighted you buy now, you'll pay a 'tax'. That is a huge amount of money, no one is trying to get rich off it, so essentially everything can go to the creators, instead of all the support staff (marketing/finance/it support/management/etc.).

Technology also plays a huge role in this. We're moving away from media carriers such as paper, disc, and tape. Music can be easily downloaded and played on a digital media player, television and movies can be streamed (or downloaded), and books can already be read on digital paper that can be reused for a decade. Actors can already be almost be replaced with 3D characters (Beowulf/LotR battles) and music can be created without an actual instrument.

Imagine that when you go to the movies, you don't actually pay for the movie, but for the huge screen and soundsytem that is used for the duration of the film. Hardware you'll need to buy, because those still are physical products, and cannot be copied infinitely without consuming resources. But the development process could work in the same way as the software/media as described above.

Will this happen? Possibly. When will it happen? The next decade will make the technology readily available and the newer generations will get more comfortable with Open Source, not to mention the idea that information should be 'free'. Currently the corporate funded institutions that try to fight 'file sharing' (such as the Riaa) are already ineffective at stopping consumers, and instead concentrate more on groups that earn money with 'piracy'. Many governments already allow some form of file-sharing without legal consequence...

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

OSRIC does serve a purpose, to support a game system Wizards won't license, and its creator said he'd shut it down if there was a legal version of it available similar to the 3e OGL license.

I did say that, and I still say it.

 

[kunadam]

If books, songs, and movies are generally made available to all as free downloads (which is what I assume you mean by the death of copyright and the support of organizations such as Pirate Bay), how do authors, musicians, actors, directors, producers, etc. make a living?

In Hungary - and I think in other countries too - we do pay some extra money when we buy an empty CD/DVD copy machine that is collected by some central copyright agency and then redistribute. Yes I do pay authors, musicians, whatnot even when I write out my e-mails, work, photos that I take.
I do not suggest that it is a good system, or that this is the future. But it is a gross simplification that all downloading is theft (as far as I know it is legal in Hungary as far as you don't earn money, but sharing it is not legal).

It will change, as one cannot stop filesharing.

Do I pay for e-books or PC games? No. I buy them to support the developers/authors to create yet another good book/softwerw. Thus in my view I'm actually invest in the future (otherwise I would feel stupid to pay for something I can have for free).
Do I buy books because I cannot download them? No. I buy them because after staring at the screen for 12 hours a day I love to sit down and read a physical book (and printing out dowloaded books is against the environment).
See, people would pay for comfort, or to say "well done!"

 

[Urizen]

You could use the Modern System Reference Documents since it introduces the talent trees concept.

Yeah I'd figured that was where the talent trees were coming from. Thanks for the advice.

It's going to be pretty interesting to see what they do with them.

Right now I'm thinking of doing:

Race books

A Blood Throne Conversion

Class-specific books.

 

[pawsplay]

I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.

True, but copying was also difficult. They didn't have electronic copies of everything to worry about.

 

[Vigilance]

I don't claim this answers all the questions, but it is a fact that Aristophanes, Shakespeare, and Mozart all worked in the absence of meanginful copyrights, and the early 20th century, a time when jazz, boogiee woogiee, ragtime, blues, and rock n roll all came into existence and matured, was a time of relatively weak copyright.

Ah, but those are all performance arts. Performance arts are always safer because they rely on, well, a performance.

On the other hand, Shakespeare, as an example, was very cautious about written copies of his work getting out before his company was done performing them. Because as soon as written copies were available, others were perfoming his plays, paying no royalties to him, because there was no law against that.

As a counter example, Cervantes wrote one of the most successful novels of all time, in an era of cheap and easy replication (the printing press) and died a pauper, while publishers sold his books worldwide.

So performance art and other hard to replicate art (say, the Sistine Chapel) were indeed safe before copyright.

But other artforms have not fared as well historically.