My opinion is unpopular but I'll share it anyway: I don't think "copyright" should be a thing at all (barring fraud).

It causes endless problems for creators, including those who want to use HPL, REH, CAS, stuff.

It makes people fearful of sharing a PDF they bought with their friends so they can create PCs.

It makes some OOP games hard to find.

It's main purpose is to transfer money to Disney etc.

I hope that one day this will look as ridiculous as suing Napster users is now. Now music access is basically free for everybody. Should be he same for books.

I have published a dozen books and my main hurdle is obscurity, not piracy.

If anyone wants to publish a supplement for Dark Fantasy Basic, be my guest, I'll be delighted.

If you don't have a couple of bucks to buy one one my PDFs, feel free to pirate it, at least until you get the money. (please put it in the right folder this time ).

Nowadays most stuff is funded by KS anyway (not mine, unfortunately, for geographical reasons).

But it doesn't really matter what I think, this will be decided by US, China, Disney, etc.

With that said, I think it is very fortunate that we have the SRD, a real blessing. It makes D&D MORE popular IMO, not less popular. I might write a SotDL supplement myself if it had a SRD.

The current copyright times are absolutely insane.

If I was given a magic copyright law wand...

*edited*

Held by an Individual:

The 60 years, +20 year extension for the Author and/or their descendants.


If the rights held by a company, are sold, or part of work for hire:

60 years, +20 year extension for the Author and/or their descendants.


That is far more than enough time for an author and/or their offspring to profit from their creation. Given that someone in their 20's may create something great - 60 years on top of that is literally a lifetime, with +20 more than enough for the kids to cash in...

I would also make a provision that Trademarks based on copyright works lose protection after those time periods as well. Like the trademarked superman "S" symbol which was base on the copyrighted superman illustrations that would eventually fall into public domain...

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

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 03:17:26 PM
...
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.

The bar to compete is high.

Not only do you have to be better as a system, you need to release 3-4 supplements a year to support your game and remain 'relevant'. Then you have to stay profitable enough, long enough, for the First mover to become incompetent enough, long enough, for the players of the dominant game to even give you a look.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on October 07, 2022, 03:52:51 PMThe 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.

Why 28, out of curiosity? I admit my own rather lazy impulse would have selected a round number like 30.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 07, 2022, 04:16:34 PM
Why 28, out of curiosity? I admit my own rather lazy impulse would have selected a round number like 30.

28 years was the original term of copyright in the U.S. according to the Copyright Act of 1790. I'm pretty sure that's where he's getting the number from.

Quote from: jhkim on October 07, 2022, 12:32:06 PM
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).

I think 28 plus 28 with renewal works for me. But yes it needs to be shorter.

Quote from: jhkim on October 07, 2022, 12:32:06 PM
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.

Yes but if one goes this route to make a clone have a IP attorney on hand. This is not settled case law.

Quote from: jhkim on October 07, 2022, 12:32:06 PM
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.

The D20 SRD has no product identity other than mentioning a handful of Wizard's Trademarks. So you lose nothing in that regard of the D20 SRD. The only right you are giving up is being able to claim compatibility with a trademark without a separate license.

Since most publish in the time they have for a hobby what the d20 SRD offers is clarity. You don't need an IP Attorney to make use of it. Just treat anything that not mentioned as the IP property of Wizards. It is not hard and hundreds have successfully used the content to realize their work in the form they wanted. The few that didn't were idiots especially now that we are nearly 25 years in.

It is not mysterious and it is not hard. If it is not one of the vintage RPGs that can not be derived from existing open content then I feel bad but unless you make nice with the IP holder they will remain unavailable for use. But as Zweihander RPG demonstrates there are options in that regard. The trick is capturing the feel of that RPG if you can't replicate the exact details.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PM
My opinion is unpopular but I'll share it anyway: I don't think "copyright" should be a thing at all (barring fraud).

Prior to the advent of the internet that was a recipe for authors getting their works ripped off and printed without compensation. There were several examples of this throughout history before the current system started to take shape in the late 19th century.

But that was a result of the fact you have to handle and distribute mass quantities of physical items (books). Today yeah you would still get ripped off. But patronage can be made to work as shown by those who earn a living distributing free stuff.

Quote from: Jaeger on October 07, 2022, 03:59:38 PM
The current copyright times are absolutely insane.

If I was given a magic copyright law wand...

Held by an Individual:

The 60 years or the lifetime of the author, + 20 year extension for their descendants.


If the rights held by a company, are sold, or part of work for hire:

60 years from first publication, +20 year extension for the Author and/or their descendants.


That is far more than enough time for an author and/or their offspring to profit from their creation.

I would also make a provision that Trademarks based on copyright works lose protection after those time periods as well. Like the trademarked superman "S" symbol which was base on the copyrighted superman illustrations that would eventually fall into public domain...

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

Quote from: rytrasmi on October 07, 2022, 03:17:26 PM
...
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.

The bar to compete is high.

Not only do you have to be better as a system, you need to release 3-4 supplements a year to support your game and remain 'relevant'. Then you have to stay profitable enough, long enough, for the First mover to become incompetent enough, long enough, for the players of the dominant game to even give you a look.

And your fans will drop you like trash as soon as their original fav game makes a token apology.

I want fans who actually appreciate my work for its own sake. Those looking for a rebound guy can fuck off

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 07, 2022, 02:42:22 PM
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.

I won't insult.  Why not make your own thing? 

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PM
My opinion is unpopular but I'll share it anyway: I don't think "copyright" should be a thing at all (barring fraud).

I've gone back and forth about this and my current view is that Copyright should never expire. If I created a painting, why should the government be able to come into my house and say that I no longer own that painting anymore? I made it, it is my property. If I want to sell it, I should be able to sell it.

The expiration of copyright is government sponsored theft.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PMIt causes endless problems for creators, including those who want to use HPL, REH, CAS, stuff.

Why should the government facilitate you using other people's works?

This is related to RPGs as well. Yes, the current copyright system discourages people from supporting abandoned IP. But why support those IP in the first place?

IMO, it is much better to encourage people to create new games and new IP than it is to facilitate people use the same old IP from decades ago.

Quote from: Cathode Ray on October 07, 2022, 06:14:08 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on October 07, 2022, 02:42:22 PM
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.

I won't insult.  Why not make your own thing?

They don't provide any good answers besides being butthurt they aren't doing it themselves.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 07, 2022, 06:41:48 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PM
My opinion is unpopular but I'll share it anyway: I don't think "copyright" should be a thing at all (barring fraud).

I've gone back and forth about this and my current view is that Copyright should never expire. If I created a painting, why should the government be able to come into my house and say that I no longer own that painting anymore? I made it, it is my property. If I want to sell it, I should be able to sell it.

The expiration of copyright is government sponsored theft.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PMIt causes endless problems for creators, including those who want to use HPL, REH, CAS, stuff.

Why should the government facilitate you using other people's works?

This is related to RPGs as well. Yes, the current copyright system discourages people from supporting abandoned IP. But why support those IP in the first place?

IMO, it is much better to encourage people to create new games and new IP than it is to facilitate people use the same old IP from decades ago.

Have you ever tried creating a substitute for an extremely detailed IP that you love but which was abandoned or driven into the ground by the owner? I have.

When I tried making a retroclone of Star*Drive, I quickly became exhausted with having to create legal friendly substitutes of the aliens and stellar nations. I gave up. I didn't see the point in trying. The ideas were already perfectly serviceable and I couldn't produce anything that would be equal or better in quality. I'm just jumping through hoops to avoid being sued and have no desire to reinvent the wheel. In fact, this is how I feel about all TSR's scifi IPs because they're all painfully generic to begin with!

When I tried doing a retroclone of WW's urban fantasy, I finished my pitch in about an hour because I had a plethora of public domain sources to draw from. (Also, the original ideas liberally ripped off other authors and/or weren't good in the first place, so I didn't have competition to measure up to.) At that point, it wasn't really a retroclone but an original urban fantasy setting.

I do think we should incentivize original work over fanfiction because a heck of a lot of people squander their talents that way and it promotes a stagnation of ideas that I absolutely despise (altho in my experience this is mostly a problem with ttrpg settings due to the absurd first mover advantage brand loyalty I constantly complain about), but ideas don't exist in a vacuum. Stories are informed by prior stories. We've reached a point where overly copyright terms are actively harming creative expression. They're limiting the ability of artists to express themselves and the ability for older works to be preserved and shared with new generations.

Quote from: jhkim on October 07, 2022, 04:21:08 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on October 07, 2022, 04:16:34 PM
Why 28, out of curiosity? I admit my own rather lazy impulse would have selected a round number like 30.

28 years was the original term of copyright in the U.S. according to the Copyright Act of 1790. I'm pretty sure that's where he's getting the number from.

Yes.  And granted it was probably chosen based on the idea of 7s:  7 years as child, 7 years to assist, 7 years to be formal apprentice, then just extended to another 7 to get established.  So this was enough time to get at least the first part of your family well-established.  If someone would prefer rounding up to 30 for "a generation" or even 35 given increased life expectancy, I wouldn't quibble. 

I rather like 28 given my parameters, though, because it puts a limit on how long a corporation could have it before the rights reverted automatically back to the creator.  28 is already a long time to wait if you were middle-aged when you signed something over to a company.

To round it off and make both work, just say 20 for the first term (corporate), then maybe two 20 year extensions for the creator.  Not much more than the 56 of before, and easy to remember.  Or since the thing is supposed to be generational, could use the "half generation" of 15 years that some support, and maybe have 3 terms of that (if you think 60 years is way too long). 

The intent behind the original law was that there was supposed to be sufficient window for the creator to get a lot out of it for themselves and their immediate descendants.  Then it was supposed to revert to the public for the greater benefit of the society that enforced the law that gave them that window in the first place.  Which sounds pretty reasonable to me.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 07, 2022, 06:41:48 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PM
My opinion is unpopular but I'll share it anyway: I don't think "copyright" should be a thing at all (barring fraud).

I've gone back and forth about this and my current view is that Copyright should never expire. If I created a painting, why should the government be able to come into my house and say that I no longer own that painting anymore? I made it, it is my property. If I want to sell it, I should be able to sell it.

The expiration of copyright is government sponsored theft.

I'm half-sure you are jesting.

Anyway, you still own your painting, but I should be able to copy your painting (from memory or from a picture on the internet) with my own paints and canvas (which is my property) without government interference.

No one is even entering your house - they are entering MY house (or PC etc.) to make sure I'm not using my paintbrushes in an unlawful way.

IP is government enforced monopoly. It requires the government agents with guns to work - as I'm sure you're not suggesting you're going to enforce your own IP when someone in China pirates your book. You need the TTIP for that.

IP didn't exist before that. Shakespeare, Mozart, Homer didn't need copyright to leave a mark in history.

Also, in practice this would be a nightmare. Should Disney be sued for using Cinderella and The Snow Queen? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies would never happen. People would be sued by writing a version of the Iliad.

If taken to the extreme, it would prohibit covers, sampling, quotes. We would be paying royalties to the descendants of the first homo sapiens (or neanderthal, apparently) that had the idea of crating a painting in the first place.

It is simply insane.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on October 07, 2022, 06:41:48 PM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 07, 2022, 03:55:01 PMIt causes endless problems for creators, including those who want to use HPL, REH, CAS, stuff.

Why should the government facilitate you using other people's works?

This is related to RPGs as well. Yes, the current copyright system discourages people from supporting abandoned IP. But why support those IP in the first place?

IMO, it is much better to encourage people to create new games and new IP than it is to facilitate people use the same old IP from decades ago.

You don't have to encourage or prohibit anything. Let people write new things, with or without using existing ideas. People want new character's? Let them have it. New Conan stories? Let them have it too. Why not both?

I think the term "D&D Heartbreaker" was created to describe people's pet game they made, then nobody played. 

It's not the same as copyright being so long.  That may exist mostly because of the Disney Corporation.  I think they keep lobbying for the copyright duration to get longer and longer so they can hold onto their own properties that were made in the 1930's. 

Right now the only way to get a lot of that stuff is to go to foreign sites like Project Guttenburg in Australia.  You can download old books for free because Australian law says a copyright is 50 years.  Anything from 1972 (as of this year, 2022) is in public domain.  Aka you can just download Edgar Rice Burroughs novels like Tarzan or A Princess of Mars, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, or Heinein's Starship Troopers.  Yet people still buy E-reader files from Amazon because they don't know.

D&D is going to start falling under that law pretty soon.  In 2027 both Holmes B/X and AD&D will be considered public domain in Australia.  In the USA, not so much. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on October 08, 2022, 08:55:46 AM
Right now the only way to get a lot of that stuff is to go to foreign sites like Project Guttenburg in Australia.  You can download old books for free because Australian law says a copyright is 50 years.  Anything from 1972 (as of this year if 2022) is in public domain.  Aka you can just download Edgar Rice Burroughs novels like Tarzan or A Princess of Mars, or Dracula, or Starship Troopers.  Yet people still buy E-reader files from Amazon because they don't know.

It is not only because they don't know - it is convenience too. I often buy Dostoyevsky's novels for a buck or two on amazon, just so I don't have to look for it. If there were no IP, people would still buy books, either for convenience or to support the author.

Likewise, people listen to Spotify even when they could hear the same songs on YT for free. People use Patreon and Kickstater even when they can become free riders. Etc.

BTW, having ERB in the public domain is great.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on October 08, 2022, 08:45:43 AMAnyway, you still own your painting, but I should be able to copy your painting (from memory or from a picture on the internet) with my own paints and canvas (which is my property) without government interference.

You can make your own painting similar to mine just like you can make your own book similar to Lord of the Rings (lord knows that thousands have done this already). You just can't make and sell an exact copy of my book.

QuoteIP is government enforced monopoly. It requires the government agents with guns to work - as I'm sure you're not suggesting you're going to enforce your own IP when someone in China pirates your book. You need the TTIP for that.

If someone steals my car, the government will help me try and get it back and punish those that stole it. I don't see why a book I wrote shouldn't get the same treatment. And, just like the US government is incapable of retrieving a stolen car from China, copyright is no different.

It all comes down to whether or not you view intellectual property as property or if you look at it as some form of socialist community owned item.

To me IP is property and should have the exact same protections as any other kind of property.