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Author Topic: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons  (Read 19002 times)

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #210 on: October 02, 2022, 02:12:17 PM »
I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.
That’s not how copyright works. You’d still be able to sell the book and receive payment for it.

FingerRod

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #211 on: October 02, 2022, 06:04:58 PM »
I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.
That’s not how copyright works. You’d still be able to sell the book and receive payment for it.

You could also sell my book, though. Or a large publisher could. So now I am competing with myself, right? Happy to be wrong here.

Effete

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #212 on: October 02, 2022, 06:38:57 PM »
I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.
That’s not how copyright works. You’d still be able to sell the book and receive payment for it.

But who would buy a book when they would be able to just copy /scan /duplicate it at absolutely no cost or repercussion?

GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #213 on: October 02, 2022, 06:48:15 PM »
I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.
That’s not how copyright works. You’d still be able to sell the book and receive payment for it.

Except now it's legal to distribute PDFs of it, it's also legal for ANYONE to make a print run and sell it.

Who would buy when free downloads are legal?

Why should we allow a megacorporation to just take my book and profit from it?

Why would they buy the rights to make a movie when they can wait 20 years and do it without EVER giving me a dime of it or the merchandize?

Cue the idiots calling me a socialist because I believe in private property.
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Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

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GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #214 on: October 02, 2022, 07:00:49 PM »
I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.

The idea behind that argument, at least in the US, comes to the Constitutional authorization:

Quote
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
.

The argument is if you are incentivized to rely on a single work for your lifetime then the most successful are encouraged to be the least productive. If your novel at 25 pays the bills at 60, why would you write another novel?

There are a lot of weaknesses in that idea, including a misunderstanding of how most working authors, the infamous midlist, survive, especially in the new age of indie books. Watching the original "20 Books to 50K" video is a good explanation for anyone curious.

The argument that government needs to authorize me to profit from what I create is ridiculous, and I do believe Copyright needs limits, mainly because of megacorporations and the ERB/JRRT estates. A physical author/creator owns what he creates.

Now, why shouldn't the creator be able to inherit to his progeny and they to theirs?

Because ideas! But my book isn't an idea, it's a book, you are free to write a novel with a soldier marooned in another planet full of human looking aliens.

Otis Adelbert Kline wrote his Planet of Peril before ERB and yet both had their own copyright to their creation. Because the idea is "what if life in Venus and an earthman goes there?", but the execution was unique.

You're free, right now, to go write a novel series about the same idea as long as you're not plagiarizing a work that's copyrighted. You're not free to write a novel about Carson Napier in Venus and say it's your creation tho.

The idea is a vehicle that doesn't need horses, a Ford, Honda, Tesla aren't ideas tho.

You guys need to learn the difference between game mechanics (can't be copyrighted) and the expresion of said mechanics.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #215 on: October 03, 2022, 09:57:43 AM »
Life of the author where it's not a corporation seems reasonable to me for copyright,
Orphaned copyright products should enter the public domain immediatly.
You can't accomplish both of these goals at once. There's tons of authors who are apathetic and don't care to preserve their own works, and plenty of others who simply don't have the time and know-how to properly preserve their works.

I don’t believe copyright should last for the life of the author. There’s no economic incentive for copyright to last longer than 20 years or so.

If I write a book when I am 25, by the time I turn 46 I should stop receiving any financial gain from that book? We’ll have to disagree.
That’s not how copyright works. You’d still be able to sell the book and receive payment for it.

Except now it's legal to distribute PDFs of it, it's also legal for ANYONE to make a print run and sell it.

Who would buy when free downloads are legal?

Why should we allow a megacorporation to just take my book and profit from it?

Why would they buy the rights to make a movie when they can wait 20 years and do it without EVER giving me a dime of it or the merchandize?

Cue the idiots calling me a socialist because I believe in private property.
Here's the paper where I got the 20 years figure from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3300&context=facpub

Quote
Why should we allow a megacorporation to just take my book and profit from it?
Long story short: the Burroughs Estate retains control of Tarzan trademark even though the copyright is expired. It's not legal for anybody to release Tarzan-labeled products without the Estate getting royalties.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2022, 10:00:17 AM by BoxCrayonTales »

GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #216 on: October 03, 2022, 11:14:34 AM »

Here's the paper where I got the 20 years figure from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3300&context=facpub

ANYONE can write a paper justifying their position based on theoretical law and "principles". I don't agree with the 20 years limit.

Why should we allow a megacorporation to just take my book and profit from it?
Long story short: the Burroughs Estate retains control of Tarzan trademark even though the copyright is expired. It's not legal for anybody to release Tarzan-labeled products without the Estate getting royalties.
[/quote]

I can take whatever Tarzan books ARE in the public domain, make a print run as long as I put a different name on the cover, for instance: Edgar Rice Burroughs' Jungle Lord.

Furthermore, ERB IS dead, you're conflating trademark with copyright, those aren't the same thing, and I already said trademark should expire at the same time than copyright.

In my opinion this should be life of the author or, if they die young, a number of years after his death to protect the wife/children from ending destitute.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #217 on: October 03, 2022, 11:28:01 AM »
Life of the author where it's not a corporation seems reasonable to me for copyright,
Orphaned copyright products should enter the public domain immediatly.
You can't accomplish both of these goals at once. There's tons of authors who are apathetic and don't care to preserve their own works, and plenty of others who simply don't have the time and know-how to properly preserve their works.

So, when you say orphaned you don't mean orphaned but neglected.

IF you meant orphaned then you can with an integral overhaul of copyright law, one that isn't made to protect megacorporations while screwing the little guy:

The author is a physical person, it should be defined as such in the law.

If a corporation hires you to write/develop an IP for them, YOU are the author, and you sold them an exclusive right to the copyright, which is tied to you and will expire when you die.

Now please explain EXACTLY what type of works are we talking about here, because I think you're talking about video games/software alone, since I don't see how else the author has to do something special or technical for the work to be preserved.

So what you want is for the law, if the creator of a software neglects it in your opinion, to strip away HIS property rights and force the author to put the source code in the public domain...

But software is a very different beast, so you want MS Office to be put in the public domain after 20 years... Who in their right mind would develop ANY software? Besides the people already on the FOSS train?

This is ideological and doesn't take into account human nature.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

jhkim

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #218 on: October 03, 2022, 01:47:49 PM »
Life of the author where it's not a corporation seems reasonable to me for copyright,
Orphaned copyright products should enter the public domain immediatly.
You can't accomplish both of these goals at once. There's tons of authors who are apathetic and don't care to preserve their own works, and plenty of others who simply don't have the time and know-how to properly preserve their works.

If a corporation hires you to write/develop an IP for them, YOU are the author, and you sold them an exclusive right to the copyright, which is tied to you and will expire when you die.

Now please explain EXACTLY what type of works are we talking about here, because I think you're talking about video games/software alone, since I don't see how else the author has to do something special or technical for the work to be preserved.

So what you want is for the law, if the creator of a software neglects it in your opinion, to strip away HIS property rights and force the author to put the source code in the public domain...

But software is a very different beast, so you want MS Office to be put in the public domain after 20 years... Who in their right mind would develop ANY software? Besides the people already on the FOSS train?

Taking the last question first. The lifetime of a specific software release is much shorter than 20 years. I'm am reasonably sure that over 95% of the profits for any release are in the first five years. To get significant profits after that, you need major updates to the software. If a third party could legally sell Office XP from 20 years ago, they would take roughly zero profits away from Microsoft. As a test of that, we can see that plenty of corporations engage in non-copyrightable technology like inventions, drug development, and genetic tech - which are only protected by patent that lasts for 20 years max.


I don't speak for BoxCrayonTales, but for me, the example I'd want to talk about is tabletop RPGs. I believe that retroclones of old school RPGs from the 1970s and 1980s should be flat-out legal. If someone has an old dog-eared book from a basement and there is a cool mechanic or idea from it, I think they should be able to use it in their new game as-is. There are lots of variants of old games and even complete retro-clones that I consider to be genuinely positive development of the original. The authors shouldn't be considered evil plagiarizers, but rather trying to positively develop the games. To get more specific, I think anyone should be able to create their own version of Star Frontiers, even though the original is still available for sale.

Effete

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #219 on: October 03, 2022, 02:32:55 PM »
If a corporation hires you to write/develop an IP for them, YOU are the author, and you sold them an exclusive right to the copyright, which is tied to you and will expire when you die.

No.

That's not how it currently works, nor should it be how copyright SHOULD work. Corporate personhood exists specifically for this reason. An individual might be the author of a book, but the copyright belongs to the corporate entity, not the author. Part of being a hiree is that you voluntarily absolve yourself of some individual liberties. If I flip burgers at a fast food chain, I can't personally collect profit on those burgers, even though it was my labor that went into cooking them. That's the same principle behind rights ownership. You might author a book, but you write FOR the company. That's what they pay you for (and you get paid regardless of how the book sells). The company is taking the financial risk here, so the company retains the rights.

This is different from an author writing in their individual capacity, where the author and the rights holder are usually the same person.

Expiration of copyright upon the death of the author/creator is not only stupidly arbitrary, it would result in a legal quagmire. Suppose you wrote a book and while flying to an event to announce it's publication, the plane crashes and you die. Does your book immediately slip into the public domain, leaving not only your family unable to collect profits, but also leave the publisher in a position where they are unable to recoup the production costs? Meanwhile, Amazon Books, Kindle, and anyone else could reproduce and sell the book for 100% profit.

No. I think the best way to handle copyright expiration is current method, with a fixed period of time. Currently the US law is 70 years after author's death or 95 years after publication. We can have a debate as to whether or not that is too long, or whether death of the author should even be a factor, but time limits are the best and most fair metric to use.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2022, 02:35:54 PM by Effete »

Effete

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #220 on: October 03, 2022, 03:24:47 PM »
I believe that retroclones of old school RPGs from the 1970s and 1980s should be flat-out legal. If someone has an old dog-eared book from a basement and there is a cool mechanic or idea from it, I think they should be able to use it in their new game as-is.

These are two different things, and the fact that you conflate them shows that you don't understand the laws or the argument being had in this thread.

First, the Courts have ruled that "game mechanics" cannot be trademarked, and morons have misunderstood what that means for years. A "game mechanic" is merely an isolated function, such as "roll d20 and add a modifier," or "gain experience to level up." A COLLECTION of game mechanics (typically refered to as "a system") is an artistic expression and constitutes a common law trademark under US code. Wizards' OGL is nothing more than a trademark license, allowing the public to use their "common law trademarks."

Again, it is the EXPRESSION of game mechanics that creates the trademark. This includes, but isn't limited to: the specific names and configuration of attributes, the specific names and configuration of skills, names of feats (including the term "feat" itself), names and descriptions of monsters, etc. Any company has the right to withhold trademarks they don't want to include in a license, which is why the OGL restricts access to beholders, carrian crawlers, yuan-ti, and a few other iconic monsters.

If there is an individual mechanic from an old RPG, you don't need any permission to use it in your own product. A "retroclone," by definition, is not just a single borrowed mechanic, but the entire expression of mechanics. When you so ignorantly say it "should be flat-out legal" to use these old systems, you are saying it should be legal to steal trademarks.

Quote
There are lots of variants of old games and even complete retro-clones that I consider to be genuinely positive development of the original. The authors shouldn't be considered evil plagiarizers, but rather trying to positively develop the games. To get more specific, I think anyone should be able to create their own version of Star Frontiers, even though the original is still available for sale.

But retroclones are already "legal" provided the creator follows the OGL. I read recently that a judge has even ruled that the OGL cannot be revoked and now must exist in perpetuity due to the shere amount of content created while using it. Wizards' has unbottled the genie, and they cannot put it back no matter how badly they want to.

As for your last statement, anybody CAN make their own version of Star Frontiers, they just cannot use any trademarks not expressly allowed by OGL /SRD. Basically, this means they can't call it "Star Frontiers", use any proper names for races, planets, or NPCs, etc. But there's absolutely nothing stopping someone from making "D&D in space." Plenty of people already have.

If what you are actually saying is you think people should be allowed to publish their own games using the Star Frontiers IP, again, you are advocating for trademark theft.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2022, 03:28:08 PM by Effete »

GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #221 on: October 03, 2022, 04:22:44 PM »
If a corporation hires you to write/develop an IP for them, YOU are the author, and you sold them an exclusive right to the copyright, which is tied to you and will expire when you die.

No.

That's not how it currently works, nor should it be how copyright SHOULD work. Corporate personhood exists specifically for this reason. An individual might be the author of a book, but the copyright belongs to the corporate entity, not the author. Part of being a hiree is that you voluntarily absolve yourself of some individual liberties. If I flip burgers at a fast food chain, I can't personally collect profit on those burgers, even though it was my labor that went into cooking them. That's the same principle behind rights ownership. You might author a book, but you write FOR the company. That's what they pay you for (and you get paid regardless of how the book sells). The company is taking the financial risk here, so the company retains the rights.

This is different from an author writing in their individual capacity, where the author and the rights holder are usually the same person.

Care to quote where I say it's how it currently works?

In YOUR OPINION it shouldn't work like that, in mine it should work exactly like that.

Expiration of copyright upon the death of the author/creator is not only stupidly arbitrary, it would result in a legal quagmire. Suppose you wrote a book and while flying to an event to announce it's publication, the plane crashes and you die. Does your book immediately slip into the public domain, leaving not only your family unable to collect profits, but also leave the publisher in a position where they are unable to recoup the production costs? Meanwhile, Amazon Books, Kindle, and anyone else could reproduce and sell the book for 100% profit.

In my opinion this should be life of the author or, if they die young, a number of years after his death to protect the wife/children from ending destitute.

No. I think the best way to handle copyright expiration is current method, with a fixed period of time. Currently the US law is 70 years after author's death or 95 years after publication. We can have a debate as to whether or not that is too long, or whether death of the author should even be a factor, but time limits are the best and most fair metric to use.

No, I don't agree.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

GeekyBugle

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #222 on: October 03, 2022, 04:28:59 PM »
Life of the author where it's not a corporation seems reasonable to me for copyright,
Orphaned copyright products should enter the public domain immediatly.
You can't accomplish both of these goals at once. There's tons of authors who are apathetic and don't care to preserve their own works, and plenty of others who simply don't have the time and know-how to properly preserve their works.

If a corporation hires you to write/develop an IP for them, YOU are the author, and you sold them an exclusive right to the copyright, which is tied to you and will expire when you die.

Now please explain EXACTLY what type of works are we talking about here, because I think you're talking about video games/software alone, since I don't see how else the author has to do something special or technical for the work to be preserved.

So what you want is for the law, if the creator of a software neglects it in your opinion, to strip away HIS property rights and force the author to put the source code in the public domain...

But software is a very different beast, so you want MS Office to be put in the public domain after 20 years... Who in their right mind would develop ANY software? Besides the people already on the FOSS train?

Taking the last question first. The lifetime of a specific software release is much shorter than 20 years. I'm am reasonably sure that over 95% of the profits for any release are in the first five years. To get significant profits after that, you need major updates to the software. If a third party could legally sell Office XP from 20 years ago, they would take roughly zero profits away from Microsoft. As a test of that, we can see that plenty of corporations engage in non-copyrightable technology like inventions, drug development, and genetic tech - which are only protected by patent that lasts for 20 years max.


I don't speak for BoxCrayonTales, but for me, the example I'd want to talk about is tabletop RPGs. I believe that retroclones of old school RPGs from the 1970s and 1980s should be flat-out legal. If someone has an old dog-eared book from a basement and there is a cool mechanic or idea from it, I think they should be able to use it in their new game as-is. There are lots of variants of old games and even complete retro-clones that I consider to be genuinely positive development of the original. The authors shouldn't be considered evil plagiarizers, but rather trying to positively develop the games. To get more specific, I think anyone should be able to create their own version of Star Frontiers, even though the original is still available for sale.

If I have access to MS Office's source code from 20 years ago, I can create an Office suite that works with their documents perfectly. I wouldn't be selling their shit, I could take the parts of the code I need and integrate them into any of the opensource office suits and fuck their proffits.

You don't understand how software development works, what I'm talking about or the difference between game mechanics and their expression.
Quote from: Rhedyn

Here is why this forum tends to be so stupid. Many people here think Joe Biden is "The Left", when he is actually Far Right and every US republican is just an idiot.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

― George Orwell

jhkim

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #223 on: October 03, 2022, 04:45:00 PM »
I believe that retroclones of old school RPGs from the 1970s and 1980s should be flat-out legal. If someone has an old dog-eared book from a basement and there is a cool mechanic or idea from it, I think they should be able to use it in their new game as-is.

These are two different things, and the fact that you conflate them shows that you don't understand the laws or the argument being had in this thread.

First, the Courts have ruled that "game mechanics" cannot be trademarked, and morons have misunderstood what that means for years. A "game mechanic" is merely an isolated function, such as "roll d20 and add a modifier," or "gain experience to level up." A COLLECTION of game mechanics (typically refered to as "a system") is an artistic expression and constitutes a common law trademark under US code. Wizards' OGL is nothing more than a trademark license, allowing the public to use their "common law trademarks."

Effete, a collection of game mechanics can be *copyrighted*, but they are not generally trademarked. Trademark applies only to distinct text or images that are used in marketing - so for RPGs, trademark is only distinctive content that is on the cover of the book, not in the interior. The Open Game License is a *copyright* license, not a trademark license. It is explicitly *not* a trademark license, as specified in item #7 of the OGL.

Quote
7. Use of Product Identity: You agree not to Use any Product Identity, including as an indication as to compatibility, except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of each element of that Product Identity. You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark. The use of any Product Identity in Open Game Content does not constitute a challenge to the ownership of that Product Identity. The owner of any Product Identity used in Open Game Content shall retain all rights, title and interest in and to that Product Identity.
Source: http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/ogl.html

During the 3E era, there was a separate D20 System Trademark License that companies could use, but it is no longer offered. I have some explanations and references to case precedent on my old website here:

https://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/copyright/


If there is an individual mechanic from an old RPG, you don't need any permission to use it in your own product. A "retroclone," by definition, is not just a single borrowed mechanic, but the entire expression of mechanics. When you so ignorantly say it "should be flat-out legal" to use these old systems, you are saying it should be legal to steal trademarks.

First of all, mechanics are copyrighted, not trademarked as I said. (In theory, a mechanic could be patented, like WotC's patent on collectible card game "tapping" mechanic - but as far as I know, no tabletop RPGs has ever had a patent.) I would invite you to look into the lawsuit between TSR and GDW over publishing of Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys. Dangerous Journeys wasn't even close to a retroclone of D&D, but it had some similar mechanics - and especially the ones which took some text gave pretext for the lawsuit.


There are lots of variants of old games and even complete retro-clones that I consider to be genuinely positive development of the original. The authors shouldn't be considered evil plagiarizers, but rather trying to positively develop the games. To get more specific, I think anyone should be able to create their own version of Star Frontiers, even though the original is still available for sale.

But retroclones are already "legal" provided the creator follows the OGL. I read recently that a judge has even ruled that the OGL cannot be revoked and now must exist in perpetuity due to the shere amount of content created while using it. Wizards' has unbottled the genie, and they cannot put it back no matter how badly they want to.

As for your last statement, anybody CAN make their own version of Star Frontiers, they just cannot use any trademarks not expressly allowed by OGL /SRD. Basically, this means they can't call it "Star Frontiers", use any proper names for races, planets, or NPCs, etc. But there's absolutely nothing stopping someone from making "D&D in space." Plenty of people already have.

If what you are actually saying is you think people should be allowed to publish their own games using the Star Frontiers IP, again, you are advocating for trademark theft.

1) I am advocating that the law should be different, such that copying a 40-year-old RPG should be considered the same as copying a 90-year-old H.P. Lovecraft story. I believe that the current terms of copyright law are excessive to the point of inhibiting creative expression rather than enhancing it. Authors benefit from being able to freely use public domain works like Homer and Shakespeare. Authors like A.C. Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft and others of their era should be free to use from.

2) The *only* retroclone that is legalized under the OGL is a retroclone of 3rd edition D&D that doesn't include the experience table. It does not, for example, allow a retroclone of 1st edition AD&D, which has a lot of text and mechanics that are unique and were never made into open game content.

3) You reference the OGL in relation to Star Frontiers, but nothing in the original Star Frontiers was ever released under the OGL, so the OGL is irrelevant to releasing Star Frontiers. Also, Star Frontiers is not in any sense "D&D in Space" like Spelljammer. It has mechanics and background entirely unrelated to D&D.

Effete

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Re: Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons
« Reply #224 on: October 03, 2022, 04:59:46 PM »

Care to quote where I say it's how it currently works?

My god, you argue exactly like a fukken Leftist!
By taking a single phrase out of context and pretending I insinuated something I didn't. You know I won't find a quote of you saying that's how the law currently works because such a quote doesn't exist. But then you'll claim victory for beating down the strawman you erected.

Quote
In YOUR OPINION it shouldn't work like that, in mine it should work exactly like that.

In my opinion this should be life of the author or, if they die young, a number of years after his death to protect the wife/children from ending destitute.

Okay, so I missed this part apparently. That's my mistake.

What age would be the cutoff for being "young"? How many years after death would the protection last? Is date of publication a factor at all? If someone publishes a book at 60 but then dies, what happens? Was he "too old" so the work immediately becomes public domain and fuck his 56 year old widow? What about a 22 year old that had no family yet?

Your idea for copyright is so convoltuted, if it was a game system it would virtually unplayable with how many exceptions and contingencies would be involved.

Personally I don't think death should be a factor at all since it's entirely arbitrary. A fixed amount of time from date of publication is the fairest method because it means everyone is playing by the same rule. Everyone from the author to the family to the genral public has a clear idea of when that copyright expires, and they can make plans accordingly.


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No. I think the best way to handle copyright expiration is current method, with a fixed period of time. Currently the US law is 70 years after author's death or 95 years after publication. We can have a debate as to whether or not that is too long, or whether death of the author should even be a factor, but time limits are the best and most fair metric to use.

No, I don't agree.

Are you able to articulate why?