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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Delta" data-source="post: 4033846" data-attributes="member: 40269">John, what business are you in? You commented on how one poster's being in Sweden would bias his opinion, where do you practice your work? It really sounds like you must have some heavy incentive to spend so much time arguing against public domain and openly accessible works. I'm guessing that you work in a company of some moderate size in the proprietary publishing or software business, and feel that the issue generally affects your bottom line.The crux of the issue for me is earlier where you argued that "Most people are not authors, they are gamers." Philosophically, I (and most people I know) would completely disagree. I feel that everyone should have the right to be an author. Moreover, all gamers actually participate in the act of authorship by writing their own gaming scenarios and characters -- hey, that's the magic that let D&D take off in the first place. And in the age of the internet everyone also has the capacity to publish their works -- practically everyone has a blog these days.So why would anyone spend so much time trying to prop up restrictions, and trying to create a wall between gamers and authors -- that doesn't have to be there, legally, ethically, or technically? I certainly get more mileage out of open source software and movements that firmly support free speech than those that fight against them in favor of some tiny company's tentative profit. Artistically, I'm in a punk band where the philosophy is "Anyone can do it," and I firmly defend the rights of everyone to create their own stuff and participate in the culture; no one is specially annointed. The social effects on bands that have had to deal with the large copyright-industry labels are pretty uniformly devastating, if you read up on them. My band provides almost all of our stuff for free downloads online, and it's exciting to try and support ourselves in the new era when everyone can publish and get access.And I'll definitely be sticking exclusively with 3E. It was specifically Open Gaming that brought me back to the D&D game in 2000, and if WOTC doesn't support it anymore, then the future value of their products isn't enough for me to bother with.</blockquote>

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