On the Open Game License...

[Ben Wilson]

Remember about 6 years ago when the open gaming license came out? I
hadn't started law school yet, but I stated on the old Fudge forum my
concern about the license. In law school, I specifically wrote a paper
on non-exclusive transfer of copyright, which was at the heart of the
OGL. This exposed how the OGL benefits Hasbro over the mom-and-pop
game author. Fudge employs OGL. Now, are you ready for this?

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html According to the U.S.
Copyright Office, "Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its
name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does
copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark
material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game.
Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law
prevents others from developing another game based on similar
principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an
author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form."

In simple layman's terms, RPG rules cannot be copyrighted, therefore
FUDGE cannot be copyrighted. The individual rule books that have been
written are "the particular manner of an author's expression."
However, I can write FUDGE rules in my own way and lay copyright on
that manifestation of the rules. No copyright can prevent a person
from restating rules their own way. You just have to be careful that
you do not plagiarize _how_ somebody else wrote them.

What the OGL did was allow direct plagarization of "the particular
manner of an author's expression."

When it comes to uncopyrighted works, victory goes to the one who can
out-produce and out-market.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I
recommend you seek competent legal advice.

--
Ben Wilson
"We cannot determine the character or nature of a system within
itself. Efforts to do so will only generate confusion and disorder."
Boyd

[Aaron Clausen]

Golly, Ben, I thought you were a lawyer! Or maybe you just play one on TV :-)

Now, when are we gonna get the next edition going.

--
Aaron Clausen
mightym...@gmail.com

[Ben Wilson]

Just went to law school. Not a lawyer... :-) I have the degree.

So, what I'd like to do first is tweak the site, then I can use my
participation in AstroEmpires to try to drum up some interest...