Copywrite laws are they to vague?

[Will]

Originally posted by Jack Simth:

quote:

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Originally posted by Will:
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.

Simply saying no direct copies is insufficient; for example: what happens if someone changes the color on the menu for SEIV? It isn't a direct copy any longer, after all. However, it still has all the problems of a direct copy. Sure, something as independant as producing skins from Marvel characters as a mod for a game is far removed from simply changing a color on a menu. However, the main difference between the two is one of degree (granted, an extreme degree). Where do you draw the line between that which you would like to be acceptable (skins) and that which you would not (changing a menu color)? Any such line is arbitrary, and subject to interpertation.

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Jack, you're misunderstanding. If someone only modified SEIV by changing a menu color and distributing the work as their own, that does violate copyright. This doesn't mean changing parts of SEIV like this cannot be done; in fact, Aaron has made it quite easy to make these modifications, and the mods can be distributed independantly of the game. To distribute anything else as your own essentially is plagerism.

Using SEIV as an example, what I'm talking about would be someone writing a game similar to SEIV on their own. A programmer could mimic, reverse-engineer, the exact setup of SEIV (systems connected by warps and containing planets, ships to colonize, attack, etc, resources generated from colonies, research, intelligence, diplomacy), and as long as the programmer does not copy any of the individual parts of the game (this includes the copyrighted images, sounds, etc. in SEIV, those would have to be reproduced independantly), it is fine. Of course, in the process of creating the "clone", it will inevitably become a different thing from the original, as the clone author imparts its own personal style and biases to the clone.

You're trying to visualize a line where copyright ceases to cover a work, and are using examples to draw that line within distinct components of a work. If you must imagine a line, however, it should be seperating the work itself and its components, and the ideas behind them.

=0=

On the disscussion of the nature of greed, the philosophical meanings of motivation, et cetera...

I usually think of the arguement as "There is no action that is not, at least in part, affected by selfishness". If you look up greed or selfishness in a thesaurus, you'll see that they're synonyms... and for most people, the two words are completely interchangable. I think that there are no two people that speak the exact same language; there are vast similarities in the words and structure in what we call language, but subtle differences between each person's interpretations in different parts. For me, `greed' and `selfishness' carry pretty much the same definition; however, for me, `greed' is stronger form, with more negative connotations, while `selfishness' is a softer form with both negative connotations and connotations to practicality, which are positive. The result is: "There is no action that is not, at least in part, affected by greed" makes me think, `People are inherently evil', while "There is no action that is not, at least in part, affected by selfishness" makes me think `People tend to look after themselves first, but looking out for others is also a form of looking out for oneself'.

The point of whatever it was I just typed up there is -- every person has a slightly different take on the meaning of a word, so quit quibbling on the details