On Saturday, May 29, 2004 8:52 PM woodelf wrote: > At 12:21 +0200 4/12/04, Peter Brink wrote: > >On Monday, April 12, 2004 6:07 AM woodelf wrote: > >> Have we ever actually definitively answered the question of what > >> constitutes "a work" for purposes of the WotC OGL? While it of > >> course makes more sense for it to be defined as you say, so that > >> aggregate works like magazines don't have to abide by the license > >> restrictions /in toto/, is there any evidence of this in the > >> license itself? Or any evidence against it? > > > >Well, I guess "work" is defined differently in different > >jurisdictions. A full proper definition would fill several pages of > >text, so let me give you a few examples of what IMO constitutes a > >work: > > > > * A role-playing game book > > * A role-playing game rule description > > * A spell > > * A monster > > > >Basically anything which could be said to stand by it self is a work. > >A sub-rule of a game rule is not a work because it is dependant upon > >its "parent" for making sense. > > But who decides what is a "rule" vice a "subrule"? For that matter, > who decides what "makes sense" on its own? If your definition were > correct (that a work has to "make sense" standing on its own), i'd > argue that a significant number of D20 System supplements don't > qualify, and the OGC-only portions of them most certainly don't.
Rereading my comments on the definition of the notion of a "work" they strike me as less than helpful. I recall that we were discussing the scope of the license and since OGL does not in fact provide a definition of what a "work" is, we were wondering what a work in the OGL sense might be. My comments were sadly lacking in clarity I think, partly due to the fact that in countries belonging to the civil-code author's right tradition (as compared to the common law copyright tradition), we make a difference between a non-copyrightable product and a copyrightable work. A work, in this sense, is a intellectual product - such as a description of the rules of a game - which meets the requirements for copyright protection, commonly called "the level of originality". A work must be the result of an individual, independent and original act of creation. A work must also in its execution express a certain amount of individuality, independence and originality. That is, a product which is the result of creative labour but shows no traces of it, is not eligible for copyright protection. Finally, it must be practically impossible for two persons, independent of each other, to create the same work. This last criteria is also known as the double-creation criteria and is used as an aid when investigation whether a certain a product qualifies for protection (it cannot be used in contrario however, a low possibility of double-creation is in it self no proof of copyright protection). But keep in mind that a work is not, at least not in civil-code countries, a physical object - a book is not a work. A book is a physical manifestation of a work, it's the outer form of work. A work in a copyright sense is an abstract legal construction. What can be protected by copyright law is the expression of an specific interpretation of a set of abstract ideas. The ideas themself cannot be protected, nor can the outer form. No one can copyright the way in which a work may be shown, performed or copied, etc. A side effect of this is that a work need not be fixed on any tangible media, it can exist only in the mind of its originator. Normally of course copyright protection only makes sense when a work *is* fixed on a tangible media... The "make sense" notion was an attempt (and not a very good one) of explaining the not so simple concepts of originality and independence. My line of thinking (as I recall it) was that a rule had a better chance of being recognized as a work on its own than a sub-rule. In general terms descriptions of game rules have a hard time getting copyright protection because the are not particularly original, independent and individual. Most game constructors are well informed about other games and their rules, making it difficult to pass the Independence test. Further, given the number of role-playing games around (I read somewhere that there are more that 1400 of them around) it is a great challenge to come up with something original these days, which makes it difficult to pass the originality test. And finally, game rules descriptions are primarily functional texts, they must explain the methods used to play a game, which in turn tend to give them a technical, manual like character - which makes it difficult to pass the individuality test. Game rule descriptions tend to be objective descriptions rather than subjective interpretations and objective descriptions are not copyright protected. There's also the risk of double-creation. Given that most role-playing game constructors know of many other games; and that all role-playing game rules are made up in roughly the same way; and that there are plenty of games and game constructors; the risk of double-creation must be considered to be significant. There is in fact an example of this criteria being used to asses the copyright of a game rule system. The Danish Supreme Court ruled in -92 that five pools systems should be denied copyright protection based on the risk of double-creation. The line of reasoning that the Danish Supreme Court uses in this case is clearly applicable to other types of game systems as well. The few legal cases that we have here in Scandinavia, that deals with the rules of games, that I have been able to dig up - have not awarded any copyright protection to descriptions of individual game rules, only to the description of a whole game rules system. To be honest, of the thirty or so role-playing games that I own, only a few qualifies for copyright protection and D&D is not one of them - quite frankly D&D belongs to those games which shows the least traces of the required properties needed for copyright protection. > And don't forget WotC's pronouncement that a book and its web > enhancement are "one work" for purposes of the WotC OGL. Ditto two > books shrink-wrapped together. For whatever legal weight that has. Well, if the book and the web page share the same inner form they are the same work. Two different books shrink-wrapped together are two works, not one. < snip > > Agreed. So two or more works, stand-alone in content, written by > different authors, and in the same physical object, are distinct > works, Many works, by the same author, collected in a collective work (such as a magazine or an encyclopedia) are distinct works too. > but two works, stand-alone in content, written by different > authors, and in two different objects/locations are the same work. Eh? :) A typo I assume? Your example have two separate works. A novel and a movie (closely) based on the novel are two manifestations of the same work. An illustration based on a description in a novel is normally a separate work, though. > or, in short, we have contradictory pronouncements from WotC, and the > license itself doesn't give us a definition, so, no, i don't think we > actually know what a "work" is in the context of the WotC OGL. > -- Well, since there is no definition, local copyright law must be used to provide it. /Peter _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
