Re: jim kitchen headed for a great big lawsute?
Dark, I certainly see where you are coming from, and in principle I agree with you. Unfortunately, it all comes down to what the developer's objective is and how much that particular copyrighted material means to him/her.
For example, back in 2004 when I started USA Games I had plans to start USA Games as a business. As such I had several plans and ways to advertise the games and expand outside of the Audio Games Forum and Audyssey List. For one thing I figured once I got a couple of good accessible games developed I could go to the NFB, AFB, ACB, or RNIB and try and get them to sponsor my games with their customers. I could contact large resellers of accessible products like In dependant Living Aids and see if they would carry my games in their inventory. Those are definitely good ideas for building up a potential customer base, but that would all assume I had soul control over the copyrights and trademarks.
If I write a Star Wars game, for instance, and then try to sell it I am likely to end up in all kinds of legal problems. The more I publicize and advertise the game the more likely Lucas or someone is likely to find out about it and could begin legal proceedings against me or USA Games. If I sell it that would be all the more reason to take me to court and for them to get reparations in lost sales since under the law anything I make off the games technically belongs to the copyright holder. So obviously going the commercial route could be ultimately self-destructive.
So as I see it the best way to handle it would be to release the game as freeware or open source, under a fan fiction type license, which would probably forestall any legal proceedings. At most all Lucas would do is ask the court for a cease and desist order, and the game would have to be taken down and destroyed. That would also mean that advertising would not be beneficial to the project and it would be better to just advertise via Audyssey, the Audio Games Forum, an d like places and hope Lucas doesn't hear about it. No sense in dragging NFB, RNIB, ACB, AFB, etc into the mess as they probably won't want any part of a legal hot potato such as that.
So the choice is this. If a game developer is interested in developing something for profit, getting a lot of press, and exposure then it is safer to develop something he or she has the full rights to. On the other hand if publicity and money aren't an issue, he or she truly wants a copyrighted work that isn't accessible, then he or she can do so as long as they keep it under the radar of the copyright holder. Make sense?
I'm inclined to agree with you to a certain point that copyright law has gotten out of hand, and in cases such as this I don't want to respect it. At the same time I fully realize that sometimes if a developer wants to have a successful business then one has to play by the rules. Even if those rules sometimes suck.
Besides, all of your points are forgetting the fact those same laws that protect the fat cat corporations also protect the small indie developers as well. What I mean by that is that if an indie developer like USA Games comes up with a really revolutionary game series Draconis, GMA, etc can't legally rip it off and start making money off USA Games' ideas, nor could USA Games steel their game ideas. This is more like what the law was created for, and to keep competition going between competitors. The idea was to drive the market by introducing alternative ways of doing things, by creating and marketing separate innovative products, without steeling the other guy's ideas and intellectual property.
Seen from that perspective I am okay with copyrights. If I were the owner and creator of Star Wars I wouldn't exactly want someone taking my characters, ideas, etc and making lots of money off it either. Although, I am sure I would be more generous than someone like George Lucas a bout it I can empathize with the principle it is his dream, his ideas, and people should have to pay him to use his ideas the same if they were my ideas.
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