Not that anything you said was wrong but I think I'd express it with a
slightly different emphasis
It mostly focuses on what you contribute vs. what you "borrow." If you take
something and "just" reworked it then you'd be in violation of the
copyright, but if you take something from several sources and expand it to
your own creation then your not, even if it were word for word the exact
writing as someone elses. Now in case of a dispute one of two things will
happen. 1: a judge will ask you "did you copy that work?" and either
believe you or not or 2: (AND VASTLY MORE LIKELY) look at the works in
question and based on the likelyhood that such a work could be spontaniously
created as well as how much HE feels was original content decide weather you
in violation or not. Now guess how much the average judge knows about RPGs
and then realize he'll get most of his information from the side that
provides the most information, which would directly corelate to amount of
$$$ spent on the trial. Remember in American Law its not what you did but
what you can prove.
> The trick is how the re-write is managed. If someone sits down with your
> work and paragraph-by-paragraph or even chapter-by-chapter rewords your
> writing, then it is a violation of your copyright.
>
> However, if someone reads your work, distills the 'essence' of your game
> rules, and then writes those rules down in their own words (and probably
in
> their own format, but this is not necessary), then it is possible that
they
> will have created a new work that does not infringe on your copyright. It
> is also possible that they have infringed on your copyright anyway
> (depending on how well they rewrote the rules), and if any significant
> dollar value is involved it will probably wind up in court.
>
> You can take someone else's ideas and 'make them your own' through your
> unique expression of them, but you can't do that with some else's words.
>
> -Brad
>
> -------------
> For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
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