>Hi Neal,
>Not to be picky but if you had read one more paragraph in the document you
>had quoted the meaning would have been more closly in agreement with my
>statement. To wit:
> "Some material prepared in connection with a game may be
>subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or
>pictorial expression. For example the text matter describing the rules of
>the game, or the pictorial matter appearing on the game board or container,
>may be registrable."
>Now considering that RPGs are _mostly_ text matter describing the rules of
>the game, any lawyer worth his salt would successfully argue that the system
>is primarily descriptive text and therefore protected.
that's not quite what it says. it says that the text matter
describing the rules could be copyrighted. that is not the same as
saying the rules are (or could be) copyrighted. copyright does not
protect ideas, only their expression. if i can write a game that
contains the same rules as D&D, but without any plagiarism (and no
simple search-and-replace tricks, either), i'm pretty much safe as
far as copyright is concerned. [trademark could be an issue, if
there are trademarkable terms within the rules of D&D whose
alteration would alter the rules themselves, but i think Role Aids
pretty conclusively showed that that can be worked around pretty
easy, and even still be compatible.] for that matter (and now i'll
have to go look this up and find the exact laws/rulings), since
copyright can not protect ideas, it has been determined (in at least
some fields/areas) that if the expression is essentially in unique
correlation with teh idea, that the expression can't be copyrighted,
either. as a concrete example, you can't copyright a math equation.
the reasoning is that since there is no reasonable alternate way to
express the idea, the expression itself can't be deemed creative or
original, so the "author" has no claim to it. i wouldn't be
surprised if similar reasoning applied to some of the formulae and
charts in D&D.
now, you may be right taht the majority of an RPG is copyrightable,
since it *is* mostly text matter describing the rules (and setting,
and what makes a good story, and so on). however, that doesn't mean
that the underlying system is in any way protected. this wouldn't
even be a problem, except that, unlike most games, the line between
"game rule" and "creative expression" in an RPG is rather fuzzy.
frex, the GMing advice in most games: it doesn't contain a single
rule in the sense that most boardgames have rules, nor would most
people (RPers included) when describing the rules of an RPG include
those bits. but it seems to me that "it's ok for the GM to fudge die
rolls to make the game more dramatically interesting, or to save a
PC's life" is most definitely one of the rules of the game [assuming,
of course, taht you play the game that way]: it affects/regulates the
play of the game, and removing it would quite obviously change how
the game came out. so, are rules to be boiled down to their
simplest, mathematical essence? that is (taking the D&D example),
are characters really just a complex mathematical algorithm for
translating player initiative and random luck within the world into a
probability for success and progression to the next obstacle? under
that definition, all the rest (class name, personality, names of
spells) is just trappings, much like the names of the squares on a
Monopoly board (which can be changed completely for different
versions, without changing the game at all). or, is the fact that my
character is a Human Monk of pseudo-African culture, who carries a
throwing stick, a staff/spear, and a throwing rope, different from
some other character with a +2BAB and d4/d6/d3(entangling) damage
stats?
> Also that letter,
>while an official document, is still just an opinion as to how the law will
>apply. Courts exist to determine who's opinion is correct.
true. but the courts generally start from the legislation and
accompanying rules, so unless there has already been case law
rejecting the LoC ruling embodied in the letter on games (quoted
above), it is reasonably to abide by it. and it is likely (though
not guaranteed) that if there had been such case law, the
above-referenced letter would have been removed or revised.
woodelf <*>
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://members.home.net/woodelph/
What's new?
Um, cee over lambda?
_______________________________________________
Ogf-l mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
