[freeroleplay] Re: Game mechanics copyright status
- From: "Jerry Stratton" <jerry@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: freeroleplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2005 13:48:51 -0700 (PDT)
Thanks, Ricardo, I'll read yours later, but a couple of quick notes. As I
mentioned, this article is longer than the one I'll submit to use for use
(or not) on the Freeroleplay.org site. I will be making "your" version
much tighter.
Some of it I may need to re-organize, as I know the text contains the
answers to some questions but perhaps not where you're asking them.
I will be sticking solely to U.S. copyright law (and to a much lesser
extent, U.S. trademark law). It's taken years to research copyright law in
the United States.
I considered adding a note about the Berne Convention, but decided against
it; the Berne Convention isn't law, it's a list of things that signatories
should make law (as I understand it).
Among the international notes I removed, for example, was a side note
about trademark differences; in the United States, for example,
advertisers are "encouraged" to use their competitors' names in
advertising; in Germany they are forbidden to do so. That's just getting
into an area I don't want to go; it's more than another topic.
Also, your question about "healthy free market" and whether copyrights
were meant to publish or restrict, are very likely differences between
U.S. interpretations and other interpretations. Again, getting into a
history lesson is another topic (which I wrote about a bit in the linked
article, "A Broken Contract", but generally the lawmakers when copyright
was first added in the United States were heavily against monopolies.
Copyright and other monopolies were authorized solely because they thought
it would encourage publishing and public use, resulting in an "advancement
of the arts".
The example of how translations were not restricted was meant to emphasize
that aspect of the U.S. law's origins.
I'll see about adding new sidebars (as opposed to footnotes) where
appropriate. But I don't want to go too far afield.
More later.
Jerry
--
http://www.ItIsntMurder.com/
"Give a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and
you've depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees
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