Discussion of copyright came up as a side topic in the thread "Another hit piece against Dungeons & Dragons".

My premise there was that a position I had for changing copyright is that anyone should be able to create a retroclone of old-school RPGs published in the 1970s and 1980s without fear of being sued. Under current U.S. copyright law, those games will likely remain under copyright until at least 2070, which to me is crazy. I think copyright should be capped at something like 28 years (which was the original term of U.S. copyright including renewal). In current markets, it is much faster to publish and market a book than it was in the early 1800s.

There was some disagreement about what copyright meant. Here are some general points as I see them.

1) Copyright covers more than just exact word-for-word plagiarism. Substantially similar games can be subject to a lawsuit, which came up when TSR sued GDW for publishing Gary Gygax's "Dangerous Journeys" RPG because of supposedly similarities to D&D. That didn't go to court, but character copyright was illustrated by the Krofft's suit that McDonaldland was an infringement on their H.R. Pufnstuff TV show.

2) Pure game mechanics seem parallel to processes, which cannot be copyrighted. Copyright could cover phrasing of a rule, but an alternate phrasing of the rule should be allowed.

3) Many elements of RPGs, though - like races, classes, spells, monsters, and magic items - aren't really mechanics in the normal sense. These could be copyrighted as similar to unique characters.

4) A potential out is that copyright allows for some borrowing of elements as long as it isn't too much. This is a fuzzily defined concept called "Fair Use" that has an outline of criteria but no exact definition.

5) The WotC Open Gaming License is a contract that allows use of certain copyrighted material without concern for copyright infringement. This only applies to material that was released under the OGL - which is mainly the SRD that has 3rd edition rules. However, the contract puts even greater restrictions on certain elements (called Product Identity) that would forbid even fair use of those elements.

I do feel like it shouldn't be 70 years after the death of the author. Kinda feel like it should be 50 years or the death of the author, whichever comes first. That said, I feel there is nevertheless value to be had in copyright lasting long enough that an author has creative control over what they have created. And I might find 20 years or the like a bit unjust given that somebody in their 20s when they made a thing would lose rights and creative control in say their 40s, and anybody could sell their books/inventions and profit without benefitting them at all. Still, interesting to see how things have creeped up over the years. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg/450px-Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg.png

The overly long copyright terms are actively detrimental to preservation of old works, creative expression as a whole, and by extension the cultivation of fandom.

There are many old rpgs that languish in limbo because fans have limited legal means to keep these games alive. There's only so much that fans can do when they can only produce material as a hobby without financial backing.

We saw this with the OGL. Once WotC published it, there was an explosion of third party products from both professional companies and hobbyists. Fans of the game could now publish their homebrew material and make a profit from it. Most of these products weren't successful and the boom eventually went bust, but just the promise of opportunity seemed to be sufficient. A similar phenomenon was seen when d20 Modern was released. Indeed, numerous independent d20-based products were released that didn't require WotC rulebooks at all. Right now we're seeing a similar flood of products being written compatible with 5e, regardless of genre.

Quote from: KindaMeh on October 07, 2022, 12:55:20 PM
I do feel like it shouldn't be 70 years after the death of the author. Kinda feel like it should be 50 years or the death of the author, whichever comes first. That said, I feel there is nevertheless value to be had in copyright lasting long enough that an author has creative control over what they have created. And I might find 20 years or the like a bit unjust given that somebody in their 20s when they made a thing would lose rights and creative control in say their 40s, and anybody could sell their books and profit without benefitting them at all. Still, interesting to see how things have creeped up over the years. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg/450px-Tom_Bell%27s_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg.png

That's already covered by trademark.

How exactly do you plan to address the problem of abandonware and orphaned works? E.g. Star Frontiers? WotC is never going to revive it, and even if they did it would suck, so why not let the fans make and sell new editions? What about other ruined IPs like Starship Troopers, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc?

Doesn't trademark only prevent them from lying about the source or sponsorship or likewise imitating brands? I'm not particularly well versed in that area, I must admit, so you may know more about how broadly that can be applied.

Kinda feel like you should have to prove you are or are seriously preparing for marketing something in at least some sense for patent to properly apply, maybe tie once a decade renewals to that. But to be fair, my "solution" was more me throwing a dart at a wall to see where it'd  land and what the reaction would be. I do feel like even or especially for iconic properties like Star Wars and the like fans could afford to wait until 2027 or the like, just to respect the copyright. (Though I also think you shouldn't be able to sell a franchise away from the original creator with the copyright intact.) I'm no legal scholar or lobbyist, so this is all pretty much out my butt.

Honestly, I can't bring myself to care if people start selling my books 20 years later. They can't change the fact that I wrote it and it is indelibly associated with me. Corpos are not gonna sell my book or make adaptations if they don't have exclusive rights to the franchise. Which they wouldn't, because I can trademark my work and maintain it in perpetuity by selling the books on kindle even if I never produce another one under current law. Why would anyone even sell my book if it's already available on kindle from my store? Aside from Gutenberg preserving it for posterity, what's the impetus?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 07, 2022, 01:59:38 PM
Honestly, I can't bring myself to care if people start selling my books 20 years later. They can't change the fact that I wrote it and it is indelibly associated with me. Corpos are not gonna sell my book or make adaptations if they don't have exclusive rights to the franchise. Which they wouldn't, because I can trademark my work and maintain it in perpetuity by selling the books on kindle even if I never produce another one under current law. Why would anyone even sell my book if it's already available on kindle from my store? Aside from Gutenberg preserving it for posterity, what's the impetus?

I dunno, if they can sell it for less and make a profit then why wouldn't they? Regarding Kindle, I guess they could choose to give you a monopoly digitally, though I dunno if they definitely would or what the rules are on that. It is indeed kinda weird living in the digital world we presently inhabit, and you make a good point that times have changed.

That said, if I were an author or inventor and folks could sell my work and continue it without my say-so, IDK, I might be a little bit cheesed. And maybe less incentivized to create or continue it past that 20 year mark in the first place. Hard to say for sure what the impact would be, though, since there'd also be a lot of competition I'd assume in continuing say a series with fan works and the like, which could be a good thing. Though I guess stand-alone products might wind up becoming more incentivized than series? It's kinda weird to think about.

There is a bit of a sliding scale due to financial realities. Once you start denting the bottom line of the 800 lb. gorilla, what amounts to copyright infringement in their mind gets looser and looser. A 99% clone that sells 10 copies a year...whatever, send them a nasty letter and be done with it. But if any of the popular OSR games were to get anywhere close to Pathfinder/CoC levels of revenue, they would get sued. It takes a lot of money to prove that you're right.

You're better off being as different as you can be. For copyright reasons, yes, but also just for common sense. Nobody wants to play low-rent D&D clone #15. They'll just play D&D. Your product will be stuck as a small fish in the same tank as the big shark. There's a bigger potential market for new stuff: new worlds, new lore, new everything. And copyright is not an issue for new stuff.

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 02:18:06 PM
There is a bit of a sliding scale due to financial realities. Once you start denting the bottom line of the 800 lb. gorilla, what amounts to copyright infringement in their mind gets looser and looser. A 99% clone that sells 10 copies a year...whatever, send them a nasty letter and be done with it. But if any of the popular OSR games were to get anywhere close to Pathfinder/CoC levels of revenue, they would get sued. It takes a lot of money to prove that you're right.

You're better off being as different as you can be. For copyright reasons, yes, but also just for common sense. Nobody wants to play low-rent D&D clone #15. They'll just play D&D. Your product will be stuck as a small fish in the same tank as the big shark. There's a bigger potential market for new stuff: new worlds, new lore, new everything. And copyright is not an issue for new stuff.

The problem with the ttrpg market is that it has an insane first mover advantage. It's impossible for new games to break into the market regardless of how different they are. A few years ago Monte Cook released an urban fantasy game with the most unique and surreal premise ever... and nobody played it.

This is why I gave up my dreams of making ttrpgs and decided to go into prose fiction and crpgs. Unlike ttrpgs, consumers will read/play more than one.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 07, 2022, 02:24:27 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 02:18:06 PM
There is a bit of a sliding scale due to financial realities. Once you start denting the bottom line of the 800 lb. gorilla, what amounts to copyright infringement in their mind gets looser and looser. A 99% clone that sells 10 copies a year...whatever, send them a nasty letter and be done with it. But if any of the popular OSR games were to get anywhere close to Pathfinder/CoC levels of revenue, they would get sued. It takes a lot of money to prove that you're right.

You're better off being as different as you can be. For copyright reasons, yes, but also just for common sense. Nobody wants to play low-rent D&D clone #15. They'll just play D&D. Your product will be stuck as a small fish in the same tank as the big shark. There's a bigger potential market for new stuff: new worlds, new lore, new everything. And copyright is not an issue for new stuff.

The problem with the ttrpg market is that it has an insane first mover advantage. It's impossible for new games to break into the market regardless of how different they are. A few years ago Monte Cook released an urban fantasy game with the most unique and surreal premise ever... and nobody played it.

Yes. I'd say that the network effect is very strong for tabletop RPGs. As another data point, one of the only times D&D has been seriously challenged was by Pathfinder, which is explicitly a D&D clone. 

Whenever I've suggested "make your own thing if don't like the corpo slop" in other venues so far, I've received a barrage of insults. It's frustrating.

Quote from: jhkim on October 07, 2022, 02:38:57 PM
Yes. I'd say that the network effect is very strong for tabletop RPGs. As another data point, one of the only times D&D has been seriously challenged was by Pathfinder, which is explicitly a D&D clone.

To be clear, you cannot copyright rules, just the expression thereof. So by clone, I take it to mean the same rules. The lore/fluff is very different.

The scope of copyright is subjective as well. There are only so many ways you can express the rule of rolling a d20 and comparing to a target number, so the copyright around the expression of that rule is very narrow. However, for an entirely new character class created from whole cloth, you will get a much larger scope of protection.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 07, 2022, 02:24:27 PM

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 02:18:06 PM
There is a bit of a sliding scale due to financial realities. Once you start denting the bottom line of the 800 lb. gorilla, what amounts to copyright infringement in their mind gets looser and looser. A 99% clone that sells 10 copies a year...whatever, send them a nasty letter and be done with it. But if any of the popular OSR games were to get anywhere close to Pathfinder/CoC levels of revenue, they would get sued. It takes a lot of money to prove that you're right.

You're better off being as different as you can be. For copyright reasons, yes, but also just for common sense. Nobody wants to play low-rent D&D clone #15. They'll just play D&D. Your product will be stuck as a small fish in the same tank as the big shark. There's a bigger potential market for new stuff: new worlds, new lore, new everything. And copyright is not an issue for new stuff.

The problem with the ttrpg market is that it has an insane first mover advantage. It's impossible for new games to break into the market regardless of how different they are. A few years ago Monte Cook released an urban fantasy game with the most unique and surreal premise ever... and nobody played it.

This is why I gave up my dreams of making ttrpgs and decided to go into prose fiction and crpgs. Unlike ttrpgs, consumers will read/play more than one.

I totally agree about the first mover advantage. We're at the point where D&D (TM) is popular because it's popular. Creating something new is much easier said than done.

There's also the aspect of conflicting (though interrelated) motivations for re-evaluating copyright: the desire to protect your moneymaking ability for original creations without losing it to knockoffs, which encourages a fairly broad definition of what constitutes a "knockoff", and the desire not to get sued out of the marketplace by lawfaring competitors, which encourages a fairly strict definition of what constitutes a "knockoff".

I've seen numerous attempts at scifi, urban fantasy, and more. Most have failed aside from a few dinosaurs that somehow cling to life. If you want to play anything else, you're screwed.

The ttrpg market is just not a growth sector. It may never be.

That said, there are some dedicated communities for abandonware games that could benefit from reduced copyright terms.

Not that it will ever happen, but I think copyright should be:

- 28 years for the original rights holder--including corporations if the creator signed over the rights as part of being employed directly by that company.

- A possibility of one 28 year extension for the creator and their heirs (where applicable).  This option would not be available to corporations, but of course the holder could "lease" the rights to anyone, including a corporation. 

- Absolutely no extensions of any kinds beyond those two periods.

The key aspect is that no matter what was signed or how it was worded, after the first 28 years, the copyright either ends (corporation owned from the get go) or it reverts back to the creator or their estate.