You are assuming most MUD admins have the time and money to hire a lawyer
and sue someone for infringing on their ideas. As a long time (now "clean
and sober") Mud-addict I knew very few fellow admins who would do much more
than crash the other guy's MUD if they thought he was stealing without
permission. A majority of muds are "hobbies" and as such whether they
claim PI or not I don't know that it is really an issue. And if it ever
went to court it would fall under the same laws of copyright and trademark
that any claim to intellectual property does so whether they claim
something as "theirs" or not doesn't mean much if it falls outside the laws.
At 11:35 AM 5/8/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>I have a concern about this idea. I am interested in this
>as it mainly pertains to MUDs. One of the ways that MUDs
>grow is by people playing a game, getting sick of it,
>then starting their own to make a "better version" of
>the previous game. Now, in the past, people could do
>this, and the original owners might get upset, but
>they couldn't do anything about it. I don't like the
>idea of getting legal issues involved in the creation
>of "content" for MUDs. I think people will see this setup
>and claim that every little thing they make for their game
>is their own incredibly special "product identity".
>
>Then, if they see a similar idea or they know their players left
>to make their own game and used some of their ideas (like
>for a cool spell), this whole notion of PI will lead to
>lawsuits or threats of lawsuits in an area where previously
>people would...well...steal ideas and improve on them without
>worrying about it. Being able to do this is what makes the
>state of the art as it were advance more quickly. And
>how will people deal with situations where two people
>come up with "The longbow of purple chicken shooting",
>and one of them considers it PI and wants to license it
>to make money off it, and the other one just gives it
>away?
>
>John
>
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