Copylefting (split)

[jerry]

However, because copyleft is a form of public domain...

Copyleft isn't a form of public domain any more than copyright is. Copyleft is specifically copyright. That's where it gets its power to "license" content-usage that would otherwise break copyright, with specific restrictions on that usage. Copyleft has (and can have) no control other than what copyright gives it.

Copyleft and copyright have the same basic purposes: to get material out to the public so that it can be used. In this sense, both copyleft and copyright are forms of the public domain. Items "copylefted" return to the public domain at the same time as they would have if they were copyrighted without the copyleft provisions.

I do think that when an individual adds copyleft on top of copyright that this is one way of working to fix copyright. The work will remain copyrighted for the indecent lengths of the current copyright term, but the public may use the copyrighted work under the terms of the copyleft license during that period.

Jerry

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Welcome to the Forge, Jerry!

I've split your post from the thread you posted to (Open licenses and indie games) for a couple of reasons.

The main one is that thread was "done" - it had raised a topic and dealt with it, and been inactive for a period of time. As you perfectly reasonably perceived, there do remain things in it to talk about, but typically what happens here is a person sees that and starts a new thread, referencing the old thread.

So you haven't done anything wrong; I'm merely splitting to maintain a kind of thread-integrity.

Anyway, to continue the discussion and to keep this thread from becoming a morass of copyright debate (there are other websites dedicated specifically for that), I will ask this: what specific role or opportunity do you see for self-publishers of role-playing games, given your point about copylefting?

I'm asking in hopes that you are interested in developing a point for general interest, rather than merely objecting to an isolated phrase.

Best,
Ron

[jerry]

Anyway, to continue the discussion and to keep this thread from becoming a morass of copyright debate (there are other websites dedicated specifically for that), I will ask this: what specific role or opportunity do you see for self-publishers of role-playing games, given your point about copylefting?

That's a wide-open question of the type I'm not very good at discussing, especially since it's late; it depends on what the publisher wants to happen with their game(s). If all they want is to let anyone do whatever they want with the publisher's works, all they need do is release it back into the public domain.

Retaining the copyright on a work and releasing it under a copyleft license is always going to be a statement of some kind, whether it's a political one about copyright or a commercial one about distributing development or a statement about the preservation of the rights of whoever uses the work, just off the top of my head.

Role-playing games, more than most other published works, but probably less than computer software, are more useful the easier they are to edit and distribute those edited copies. And they are more useful the greater the pool of gaming stuff available within the community for use. So I do think that the copyleft concept has great potential in gaming.

For role-playing games (as for software), a copyleft license preserves for "customers" the right not only to modify and distribute the work that was directly published by the original publisher, but also modified downriver works.

Certain restrictions of copyright -- such as distribution and modification -- are not very useful to gamers, the creative community that constitutes those who use table-top role-playing games when everyone else is getting laid or working late at the bar.

With computers, perfect copies of a digital work can easily be made -- and even modified, or further distributed -- by others, with no loss of the original work. This ups the ante on what makes a gaming work useful. As gamers modify games, sharing new forms of games -- then reacting and building upon them -- is not only natural, but this is the way the gaming community has thrived almost since its inception. In essence, the idea of copyleft is basic to the natural propagation of role-playing games among gamers. This is why the regular notion of copyright does not make sense in the context of gaming.

Simple 'public domain' publication will not work, because some will try to abuse this for profit by depriving others of freedom; as long as we live in a world with a legal system where legal abstractions such as copyright are necessary, as responsible authors and gamers we will need the formal legal abstractions of copyleft that ensure our freedom and the freedom of others. (FSF)

Well, I don't know. It's late and that probably doesn't fit well. The point is that the freedoms of copylefted games is what gamers do anyway. I've seen few rulebooks that have been used for more than a year that aren't pasted up with dozens of yellow notes or scribbled in all the margins with pencil or pen. A copylefted work is useful for a gamer because it lets them distribute these "house rules" within the context of the larger work, instead of as a supplement referencing that work.

Sometimes I'm not really sure how useful that is given that most of the things gamers create aren't difficult to make and avoid copyright issues.

On the other hand, last weekend we had a new player in our Gods & Monsters game, and I took the (as yet unpublished) sections of the Highland world book that were relevant to that player, combined them with the player info section of the adventure that the other players had already started, and copied/pasted those sections into a new document which I then e-mailed to the new player. That alone was probably legal even without a copyleft (though only easy because the work was on computer), but gamers being able to legally post such changed versions publicly for all their fellow gamers, that would be a cool feature of copylefted works.

I'm asking in hopes that you are interested in developing a point for general interest, rather than merely objecting to an isolated phrase.

Well, mostly it was that. I see too much confusion over what the public domain is, and how copyleft relates to copyright, as if they're not the same thing. I'm definitely interested in the wider discussion, though, or I wouldn't have cared about it enough to post. (I've been reading the Forge sporadically  for a little while now, and have found it interesting.)

Jerry