> Of The Sigil > > What does this interpretation mean? It means that, while > second-generation > products must respect your first-generation PI, > third-generation products > not only must not, but in all likelihood CANNOT (because the > second-generation products couldn't include your PI unless they got a > separate agreement, and thus your PI designation will not > show up in second > generation products - meaning that the third generation > products will be unencumbered by your PI designation).
Your logic seems sound, but the implications might not be as sweeping as you indicate. On its face this interpretation would appear to allow an unscrupulous publisher to create an interim work and distribute it through a low-cost medium such as the web, and then create a third-generation work based on the interim work. This particular situation might be considered acting in bad faith, but if not it effectively nullifies all PI designations that are not copyrightable. If the interim works were published by a third party such as a web-based warehouse of OGC it could effectively eliminate the usefulness of PI that is not also copyrightable. I think the issue to consider is that copyright is not built on hard-and-fast rules like those you cite. It is also governed by the burden of precedent. Take the case of character infringement - if I create a suave secret agent with immunity from prosecution who works for an arm of the British government and it isn't a parody, then at some point I am going to cross the line and be infringing upon the James Bond character. What is that line? Nobody knows. But the fact remains that while the individual elements of James Bond are not copyrightable by themselves, when taken together they at some point become a protectable entity. It is likely that this would occur in the case you describe. Consider a first generation work contains PI names, a second generation work does not, and a third generation work contains many of the same names as they appeared in the first-generation work. A case might be built that the third-generation work infringed upon the first work if (when taken as a group) the original PI names define a protectable fiction. The more specialized or valuable the names (such as those relating to a particular fiction setting), the more likely such a case could be built. I think the lesson to be taken from this is that it is best to PI only those things you feel strongly about protecting, and not to worry about things that are merely incidental to your more valuable works. Attempting to declare absolutely everything possible as PI might actually enable a third party abuse of your work, rather than making abuse less likely. -Brad _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
