[Will]

Originally posted by Pax:
Seriously -- do you think SE4 would be as good as it is, if Aaron had no guarantee that at least some money from the sale of SE4 would find it's way into his pocket? He'd have to get and keep a "real" job, and SE would be relegated to a "project in his spare time" -- if it didn't get dropped altogether.

Actually, Aaron did have a "real" day job until, IIRC, just before the release of SEIV Gold. The whole SE series was initially just a "labor of love" sort of thing, trying to make a game like Starfire (he has said that Starfire was his main inspiration in the series), and continually improve it and make it better. So, for something like seven or eight years, SE really was a "project in his spare time", which makes the games all the more remarkable to me. And this is also why SEIV Gold, DO, SE:SF, and SEV are coming out in quick succession; Aaron is VERY good at what he does, and the exposure he's gotten since Shrapnel picked up publishing duties has allowed him to quit his day job and work with (play with?) his games full time.

But, back to the topic of copyrights... Pax, it seems that you think PvK is advocating the removal of copyright entirely. At least that's how your arguements are sounding to me. But how I'm understanding PvK's position is that copyright is held in too broad a sense, which very often turns out to be a Bad Thing.

To go back to the original example, with the the character skins in the game, I don't think copyright should cover the Marvel characters in a case like this. The trademarks would cover it, yes, but not copyright. Copyright should be used to protect individual works, but should not be expanded to entire abstract concepts and ideas, as it often is. Examples: 20th Century Fox suing Universal saying that Battlestar Galactica is a copy of Star Wars; Nancy Stouffer suing J.K. Rowling because "Harry Potter" was somewhat similar to "Larry Potter", then J.K. Rowling suing Dmitry Yemets because "Tanya Grotter" was somewhat similar to "Harry Potter"; Pets.com suing "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" because Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is a dog puppet just like Pets.com's mascot. And I'm sure there are several more examples of absurd claims. If you took this view of copyright just a little farther, then SE4 is infringing on MoO's "copyright" on 4X games (or whichever was the 'first' 4X game). Or any manual on the C language is violating the copyright on K&R's original C manual, etc.

Fan art is an independant, creative work modeled off of some other work that the fan appreciates. To me, it just seems wrong that something that is not a direct copy be a violation of copyright, the right of a creator/copyright holder to determine how his/her/its individual works are duplicated and distributed. It does not give the creator/copyright holder the right to prevent the creation of any similar works.